Writers Return to Their Storytelling Roots - Andrew Crofts
In the beginning there were only storytellers and those who made up their audiences. Then the storytellers learned to write and the audiences learned to read. Next came the middlemen offering bags of gold and countless ideas on how to bring these two sets of people together more effectively. Some offered to print the words, design covers and transport the results to the audiences. Others offered to open shops where the stories could be displayed and promised they would be able to ensure that the stories were talked about and praised by all the right people. Then they offered the possibilities of displaying the most favoured stories on stages and screens, building cinemas and theatres for the audiences to come to and inventing radios and televisions which would carry the stories into people’s homes. All these services that the middlemen were offering were so useful to the storytellers and their audiences that both became lazy, willing to allow the middlemen to do all the hard wo...