This is a very interesting thread for me because I've been saying prose fiction is dead for awhile, I even intended to write a legitimate essay about it and get it published. Basically what I would posit is that the novel was a phase, whereas poetry is eternal. The ability for stories to be told on a screen has supplanted a lot of prose fiction's power, in the past it was the only option. This is especially the case as we increasingly become cyborgs and so much of our time is spent online. How are you supposed to realistically convey a day in the average person's life when it consists of gooning on X and updooting on reddit? In the past the novel could show conversations over a distance very eloquently, because people wrote very literate letters to each other. Now the average person is a subhuman who sends a string of emojis or reaction gifs. It's very easy for a camera to show a phone or computer screen, but a writer sounds retarded if they have to say "Jayden sent five fire emojis with one laughingcrying emoji and added 'Fr bruh'." But at the same time if you don't show the digital part of a person's life, which these days is like 85% of it, you're simply conceding that you're not capable of rendering a full picture. The camera also has the advantage of focusing on exteriority, we can simply take it on faith that people are also online. Whereas the novel is primarily about interiority, if you're going to realistically show someone's thought processes you can't leave out that most of it relates to content they see on a screen. Beyond this, a screen is far more capable of achieving scope and kinetic effect. This is why any sword and sorcery slop can be elevated to legitimate cinema. You can read "Dany had a dragon that went woosh" or you can see the fucking dragon and hear it go woosh and go holy shit, that's a dragon. So both actual literature (which is interior) and genre fiction (more about action) are no longer capable of competing with stories on screen, which is not hampered by the need to translate the digital world into undignified description, while also outmatching words for kinetic effect. This is why modern novels, like Sally Rooney's, are increasingly spare in description and light in substance. People who grow up reading classic novels still dream of being novelists so that's what they try to do, unaware of the fact that it's over. The only way to write a legitimate novel anymore is for it to be Period, but once you concede that fact the question you have to ask is why even keep the medium alive at all. Just become a writer-director and do what you want.
This doesn't mean literature as a whole is over. Poetry preceded the novel and will still be here after. There is no medium that could replace it, whereas storytelling has a spectrum of options: novel, stage, screen. Literature will soon be exclusively poetry, and once again the pastime of a literate elite.
