How the Crowd Is Shaping the Future of Storytelling

by Molly Barton, president of Book Country, an online community for genre fiction writers, and VP of Digital Publishing, Business Development and Strategy at Penguin Group (USA).

Stories are the foundation of human communication, even when first relayed over campfires — an inherently social and communal setting. The storyteller can change his tale based on the expressions on the faces of his audience — speed up here, slow down there, give more background on a character. The storyteller may hear someone else retell his or her own story in a different way, and use that experience in telling new stories or iterating upon the original. The story gets stronger and more nuanced in the retelling.

In the modern world of broadcast and publisher media, the traditional model relies on a series of individuals reading and choosing which stories will appeal to broad audiences. These gatekeepers evaluate commercial and literary potential based on books that have previously succeeded. Daring stories that push boundaries and bend categories may be passed over because they are more difficult to market. But the tastes of readers and viewers often progresses more quickly than the stories readily available to them reflect.
But what if we created lots of little fires around which writers could tell their stories and gauge the reaction of a keen audience, improving their storytelling before bumping up against the traditional media filter? Would we get more interesting stories? Could we uncover a new group of brilliant creators who might not have connections to those gatekeepers?
Crowdsourcing fundamentally alters the process of content selection — and by extension, storytelling itself — by bringing authors and readers (and, potentially, viewers) closer to the acquisition process. If viewers and readers are given a structured, fun way to give feedback on cutting edge stories, stories that might have been passed over before, these tales have a better chance of gaining the attention of editors and producers who have the funds to bring them to a broad audience.
Full piece at Mashable.