Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Why the cli-fi term caught on with media and why other terms did not catch on....

WHILE all possible names are interesting and useful for climate related fiction and movies ....but.... as a ''media eyeball-catching term for headlines and subheadlines'' and even the news articles and lit criticism as well, the ''five letter short cli-fi'' works perfectly. I think that is why it has caught on so much now in 2016 after 2013 NPR radio first introduced the cli-fi term to a wide public and things just went on from there to more and more media appearances. L

onger headlines like "Eco-Fiction catching in colleges nationwide" or "Ecolit catching on in nation's colleges" or "anthropocene fiction'' catching on with colleges nationwide" or even "Climate fiction catching on with colleges classes nationwide" -- all of which are good terms -- they are too long for print media purposes where space is a priority and where catching eyeballs is paramount. and they just don't have ''the eye catching APPEAL of the short five letter moniker ''we use now for cli-fi.

It's a term ''made for the media headline world,'' and I planned it that way.

 Unlike novelists and data base archivists, I am a creature of the media, i am a lifelong reporter, and when i coined cli-fi as a short nickname i had a ''hunch'' it might catch with media headline writers. I was right. THEY LOVE IT..... As for literary critics and top novelists and literary theorist, who are long form novel writers and literary people, I am a media person through and through and i only think in media headline terms.

So that's all I ever tried to do with cli-fi. Give it ''a place in the media'' and see if it might catch on and serve a purpose. I was right. It did catch on and it DOES serve a purpose in its own small way.

But if other people don't want to use the term, that's fine. I didn't create the cli-fi term for them. I created it for newspaper editors and newspaper reporters first and foremost. It worked!

No comments: