The primary shift, it seems to me, is a kind of rebalancing of literature and storytelling away from exposition and toward scenes. The adjective “cinematic” is noted as a selling-point for stories, more so than “musical” or “architectural” or “sculptural” or “painterly,” because the ideal of storytelling is no longer the epic novel, but instead the film. This shift isn’t just a slow move, though, it’s an ongoing vector of movement: because film and literature – as major narrative art forms – are tied together, a shift in one often has a knock-on-effect on the other.

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