Writers have always shaped their stories around the realities of their audience, but those realities have changed over time. Gone are the days when books were the only form of home entertainment. Modern audiences face more competition for their attention than ever before. Even streaming services have begun to adapt, encouraging screenwriters to repeat key plot points as a way to combat viewer distraction. Like it or not, modern storytelling must adapt to survive.

In today’s blog, Ginger helps make sense of it all by tracing the evolution of attention, pacing, dialogue, and book length over the past two centuries, and what those shifts mean for self-published authors right now. From the rise of romantasy to the disappearance of many male readers, the modern market offers both challenges and opportunities. By understanding how storytelling has changed and why, authors can make smarter choices about structure, length, and audience, and craft books that fit the way people actually read today.

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Judge me all you want, but sometimes I still tune into The Joe Rogan Experience. I do it ironically, okay? Or for the memes. Or whatever excuse you’ll believe. 

In any event, the most recent episode I watched was pretty interesting. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, best friends, actors, screenwriters (and long-time friends of Harvey Weinstein) joined Joe to discuss their long careers telling stories from both sides of the camera; and they revealed something that should alarm every writer.

According to Matt Damon, in their discussion with Netflix, they were told that screenwriters should reiterate important plot points three or four times during a movie written for their streaming service because “viewers are on their phones.” 

Netflix effectively admitted that modern audiences aren’t fully engaged with the stories they’re consuming, and rather than fighting this trend, they’re adapting to it.

This represents a fundamental shift in how stories are told. For perhaps the first time in literary history, storytellers are designing narratives around distraction rather than attention. But this didn’t happen overnight. The evolution of storytelling over the past two centuries reveals a fascinating journey from drawing rooms to second screens, and understanding this trajectory can help self-published authors navigate the landscape of modern fiction.

The Golden Age of Attention

When Jane Austen published Pride and Prejudice in 1813, she could assume something extraordinary: her readers had nothing else competing for their attention. No phones. No television. Not even electric lights to extend the reading day much past sunset. 

(Okay, admittedly, Jane probably didn’t envision these exact things, but you get my point, right?)

Back then, reading was a deliberate act, even often performed aloud in family gatherings, with full focus given to the text.

Austen’s prose reflects this luxury of attention. Her sentences unfold leisurely, packed with subtle irony and social observation that rewards close reading. The famous opening line—”It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”—works on multiple levels, but only if you’re paying attention to the gap between what’s said and what’s meant.

Similarly, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from 1818 assumed an engaged reader who was willing to tackle nested narratives and philosophical digressions. The novel opens with letters from an Arctic explorer, which contain the story of Victor Frankenstein, which also contains the story of his creature—a nested structure that demands the reader hold multiple perspectives simultaneously in their mind.

These authors could write with confidence that their audience would give them sustained, focused attention. That social contract between writer and reader has been slowly dissolving ever since.

The Birth of Plot-Driven Fiction

The mid-19th century brought the first major disruption: Serialization. Charles Dickens didn’t publish The Pickwick Papers as a complete novel, he released it in monthly installments from 1836 to 1837. This changed everything.

Suddenly, writers had to think about hooks, cliffhangers, and momentum in ways Austen never did. Each installment needed to be satisfying on its own while compelling readers to buy the next one. Plot became king. Character development had to happen in more discrete, memorable chunks. Dickens couldn’t rely on subtle callbacks to events from 600 pages earlier, readers might have forgotten what happened in an installment from six months ago.

This shift accelerated with the rise of pulp fiction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Writers like Arthur Conan Doyle refined the art of the compact, propulsive story. Sherlock Holmes adventures averaged about 8,000 words, which made them short enough to read in a single sitting, punchy enough to remember, and formulaic enough that readers knew exactly what they were getting.

Pulp magazines took this further. Writing for publications like Black Mask, Weird Tales, and Amazing Stories, authors developed a new aesthetic: Lean prose, rapid pacing, visceral action, and clear stakes established within the first few paragraphs. Writers were paid by the word, but publishers wanted stories that grabbed readers immediately and didn’t let go.

Dialogue Takes Center Stage

One of the most significant changes in storytelling over the past two centuries has been the elevation of dialogue. In Austen’s era, dialogue was used sparingly, often summarized rather than presented directly. When characters did speak, their words were formal and carefully constructed, reflecting actual speech patterns of the literate classes. In fact, books about writing like The Technique of Fiction Writing by Robert Saunders Dowst, published in 1921, even criticized writers for using too much dialogue, calling it a “crutch” for writers who can’t show character through action. He suggested that speech should be the last resort for revealing a character’s nature, prioritizing “Executive Technique”—how a character moves and reacts—over what they say.

But even by the 1920s, this advice seems outdated. Compare the work of Austen to Ernest Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants from 1927, where nearly the entire story consists of nothing but dialogue. 

Hemingway pioneered what came to be called the “iceberg theory”, the idea that most of a story’s meaning should remain beneath the surface, implied rather than stated. This only works if readers are paying close attention to what characters say and, more importantly, don’t say.

This shift toward dialogue intensified with the influence of cinema and, later, television. By the mid-20th century, readers expected stories to sound like they could see them. Dialogue became the primary vehicle for characterization, conflict, and plot advancement. Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe novels are essentially scaffolding for brilliant dialogue. Elmore Leonard famously said he tried to leave out the parts readers skip, which meant minimizing description and internal monologue in favor of sharp, revealing conversation.

For self-published authors today, this legacy is crucial. Readers expect snappy, realistic dialogue that reveals character while advancing the plot. The patience for lengthy descriptive passages or extended internal monologues has largely evaporated outside of literary fiction.

The Compression of Time

Perhaps the most dramatic change in storytelling has been the relentless compression of narrative time. Early novels took their time. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson (written in 1748, so you’re forgiven if you haven’t read it) runs to nearly one million words and was published in nine volumes. Even popular Victorian novels routinely exceeded 200,000 words.

Then came the paperback revolution. In the 1930s and 1940s, publishers like Penguin discovered they could sell compact, inexpensive editions of books to mass audiences. This created commercial pressure toward shorter lengths. The standard novel shrank from three volumes to one, from 150,000 words to 80,000.

Pulp fiction went even further. The original James Bond novels by Ian Fleming averaged around 60,000 words, short enough to read on a long flight or over a weekend. Mickey Spillane’s hard-boiled detective novels were similarly compact. These weren’t literary masterpieces, but they were complete, satisfying stories that respected the reader’s time.

For decades, this created a healthy ecosystem where readers could choose their level of commitment. Want something substantial? Pick up a James Michener epic. Want a quick thrill? Grab a paperback thriller.

But then something strange happened: Mainstream fiction started getting longer again. Fantasy series exploded in length, with individual volumes routinely exceeding 150,000 words. Thrillers that once clocked in at 70,000 words began pushing 120,000. Contemporary fiction saw page counts balloon.

This happened even as attention spans were supposedly shrinking. The result? A growing divide between readers who have time for 600-page novels and those who don’t, which brings us back to Matt Damon and Netflix.

The Attention Economy Strikes Back

Netflix encourages simplified storytelling and clearer exposition to accommodate viewers who are only half-watching, according not just to Matt Damon, but to multiple writers who have worked with the platform. This isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. Streaming services have recognized that their content often plays in the background while viewers scroll social media, answer texts, or do household chores.

In their defense, this is a technique television writers have been aware of for a while, understanding that each episode of their show needs to be self-contained (in case you watch episodes out of order) and tailored to accommodate multiple advertisement breaks.

But the implications for storytelling are profound. If you can’t count on sustained attention, you can’t build complex narrative structures. You can’t rely on subtle foreshadowing. You can’t develop ideas slowly over time. Instead, you need to be clear, direct, and repetitive.

This represents a return to some pulp fiction principles—clarity, momentum, hooks—but without the compact length that made pulp respectful of the reader’s time. Instead, we get the worst of both worlds: simplified storytelling stretched across inflated runtimes.

For self-published authors, this creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that readers have been conditioned to expect constant stimulation. The opportunity is that there’s a hungry market for stories that acknowledge modern attention constraints while still delivering complete, satisfying narratives.

The Romantasy Revolution

One genre has managed to thrive despite—or perhaps because of—these changes. Romantasy. (I even wrote an article about it here.) This blend of romance and fantasy has become the dominant force in contemporary publishing, with series like A Court of Thorns and Roses selling millions of copies.

Romantasy’s success offers important lessons. These books are long (often exceeding 500 pages) but they’re structured around frequent emotional payoffs. Every chapter delivers some combination of romantic tension, magical discovery, or plot advancement. The books are designed to be devoured, not savored, with enough momentum to overcome their length.

They also benefit from strong community engagement. Readers discuss these books in online spaces, sharing fan art, theories, and reactions. The books become social objects, not just solitary reading experiences.

But here’s what’s crucial for self-published authors to understand: romantasy’s audience skews heavily female. According to recent data, women are reading fiction at roughly double the rate of men, and romantasy is a major driver of that gap.

The Missing Readers

As I explored in my previous article about how shorter paperbacks might entice male readers back to fiction, men have largely stopped reading novels. The reasons are complex, but length is a significant factor. When books require a six-week commitment and competition for leisure time is fierce, many men simply opt for entertainment with a quicker payoff like movies, video games, or hands-on hobbies.

This gender gap in reading isn’t just about attention spans or preferences. It’s about how storytelling has evolved to serve one audience while leaving another behind. Romantasy works brilliantly for readers who want emotional intensity and are willing to invest deeply in lengthy series, but that doesn’t work for readers who want complete stories they can finish in a weekend.

The pulp fiction of the early 20th century understood something we’ve forgotten—you can tell a complete, satisfying story in 40,000 words. You can create memorable characters and deliver real emotional impact without requiring readers to commit to a multi-book epic.

What This Means for You

If you’re a self-published author trying to make sense of this landscape, here’s what the evolution of storytelling over the past two centuries teaches us:

Attention is the scarcest resource. Whether your readers are in Jane Austen’s drawing room or watching Netflix with their phones in hand, you’re competing for attention. The difference is that Austen could assume she had it. Today, you have to earn it constantly.

Dialogue matters more than ever. Readers expect stories that move quickly and sound natural. Long descriptive passages and internal monologues are harder to justify than they once were.

Length is a choice, not a virtue. Longer books aren’t inherently better. The expansion of contemporary fiction hasn’t been driven by storytelling needs, it’s been driven by market forces that may not serve all readers equally.

Structure around payoffs. Whether you’re writing a 40,000-word novella or a 150,000-word epic, readers need regular rewards for their attention. Romantasy understands this. Pulp fiction understood this. Netflix, for all its flaws, understands this.

Know your audience. The gender gap in reading is real and growing. If you’re trying to reach male readers, you may need to think differently about length, pacing, and genre conventions. If you’re writing for the romantasy audience, you need to understand what drives that community’s engagement.

The Path Forward

Storytelling hasn’t declined over the past two centuries, it’s adapted. Sometimes brilliantly, sometimes awkwardly, but always in response to changing technologies, economics, and reading habits.

The challenge for contemporary authors is to take the best lessons from this evolution while rejecting the worst ones. We can embrace the clarity and momentum of pulp fiction without dumbing down our stories. We can use dialogue effectively without neglecting description. We can write shorter books without sacrificing depth. We can acknowledge that some readers are distracted without designing exclusively for distraction.

The writers who succeed in this environment will be those who understand that storytelling has always been a negotiation between the author’s vision and the reader’s reality. Jane Austen could assume focused attention in a quiet drawing room. You’re competing with Netflix, TikTok, and a thousand other distractions.

But here’s the good news: Readers are still hungry for stories. They’re just waiting for stories that fit their lives. Whether that means a tight 30,000-word thriller they can finish in a weekend, or a sprawling romantasy epic they can discuss with their online community, the market is there.

The question is: What story will you tell, and for whom?

The evolution of storytelling over the past two centuries teaches us that there’s no single right answer. There are only stories that work for their intended audience and stories that don’t. The most successful authors will be those who understand which readers they’re writing for and what those readers need from a story.

In an age of fractured attention and competing entertainment options, that clarity of purpose may be the most valuable thing a writer can possess. Jane Austen had it. The pulp writers had it. Sarah J. Maas has it. Even Netflix, with its demand for repeated plot points, has a clear understanding of its audience’s viewing habits.

The question for you as a self-published author is simple: Do you know your readers well enough to give them what they need? Because in the end, that’s what storytelling has always been about, not following trends or copying formulas, but understanding the fundamental transaction between writer and reader.

That transaction may have changed over the centuries, but it hasn’t disappeared. Readers are still willing to give you their attention. You just have to earn it in the way they need you to earn it, whether that’s through propulsive dialogue, compact storytelling, emotional intensity, or the promise of a complete experience they can actually finish.

The art of storytelling hasn’t died. It’s just evolved. And the authors who evolve with it will be the ones whose stories endure.

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