Behind the Scenes of Electronic Literature and Media

asip

As a kid, I always loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books because I was constantly amazed at the seemingly endless possibilities. I often wondered how long it took the authors to compile these stories and more so, how they were able to keep track of everything. Sam Ashwell’s article “Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games” and Marie-Laure Ryan’s book Narrative as Virtual Reality 2 help uncover the behind-the-scenes intricacies of Choose Your Own Adventure books and other electronic media. 

Ryan defines interactivity as “a dimension of face-to-face interaction that was shut off by manuscript and print writing and introduced into written messages by the electronic medium” (Ryan 160). She focuses on ergodic literature and its relationship with interactivity. Throughout this chapter, Ryan explains the types of interactivity, the various interactive structures and even the levels of interactivity. Reading this chapter definitely made me more aware of the affordances that electronic media has over printed media. The way that creators choose to utilize interactivity in their electronic media impacts users in a way that print media often fails to do. For example, The Braided Plot, or the House of Many Windows, was my favorite structure because of how complex it can be. Usually, when reading a printed book, it is told from one point of view and I am often left wondering how the story would differ if it was told from another character’s point of view. This structure allows multiple perspectives in one story and to me, that is fascinating. 

After reading both Ashwell’s and Ryan’s pieces, I am in awe of the work and thought that goes behind games that I thought were “simple.” I am looking forward to learning more about the intricacies behind electronic literature.

Digital and Printed Storytelling

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In her book Narrative as Virtual Reality 2, Marie-Laure Ryan examines interactive storytelling and the different forms it can take. Ryan examines the various types of interactive storytelling as well as the different interactive structures found in different stories. I found her discussion regarding these different structures to be particularly interesting because it reminded me of the interactive structures I encountered while playing various mobile games when I was younger. I remember encountering “The Vector”, which Ryan defines as a linear structure but can include side branches that may or may not be completed by the user (165-166). “The Flowchart” also stuck out to me because of Ryan’s explanation that the user’s choices within the story can affect the ending, such as whether or not the user is able to gain a certain ability (171-172).

It is interesting to compare digital storytelling to printed literature. Digital storytelling allows for much more flexibility and interactivity that printed literature cannot. However, Ryan explains that many people play computer and video games for the action and entertainment, as well as the “thrill of beating the game” as many games reuse the same basic storyline (181). It is easy to get lost in the action of a computer and video game and not pay much attention to the storyline. On the other hand, printed literature puts the focus on the story and allows for more complex storytelling. While digital storytelling offers interactivity and levels of customization for the user, there is beauty in the detailed storytelling provided by printed literature.

Why would you read a book twice?

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I’ve never been someone to reread books or re-watch movies. The main reason is because if I try to reread a book I will almost always remember the ending before I finish the first chapter which spoils the whole book for me. However, when I picked up my first choose your own adventure book (CYOA) as a child, I read it multiple times. I spent much more time on a single CYOA book than on a traditional book. I loved that instead of having to go out and choose another book, you can reread the same one over and over and never really know what ending you’re going to get. Another reason I was driven too reread CYOA books was the idea that there were multiple endings and that maybe I could find the BEST ending. It became a game for me to see how long I could last or if I could complete all the quests and come out on top. In the article “Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games” from These Heterogeneous Tasks, the author Sam Kabo Ashwell describes various patterns that can be found in CYOA books including one called the gauntlet. The gauntlet proves that my childhood goal of correctly navigating to the best ending could’ve been reachable. The gauntlet is a pattern that has one clear thread but many side branches that can lead to abrupt death. The clear thread, if followed correctly, will lead the reader to the finale. However, this is not the only pattern that CYOA books can take. Ashwell describes patterns like open map, sorting hat, loop and grow, and time cave. While some of these also have one “best” ending, many have multiple viable endings or many different paths to the same happy ever after. I loved choose your own adventure books because in a way they are competitive, addicting and consuming. These qualities ensured that I didn’t put my CYOA book down even during dinner as a child.

Patterns and Structures: Exploring Interactivity and Immersion in Electronic Literature and Media

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As someone who used to spend hours hunched over a computer navigating the world of Sims4 and the various intricacies that accompany all choices from the construction of the house to socialization between people, I never took the time to ponder the behind-the-scenes steps required to create the game.

Maurie-Laure Ryan’s book Narrative as Virtual Reality 2 examines the forms of interactivity and the resulting organizational nuances and levels. Her commentary exists in contiguity with Sam Kabo Ashwell’s piece “Standard Patterns in Choice-Based Games,” which analyzes the structures specifically of Choose Your Own Adventure games. Reading both pieces led me to wonder the sequential development of CYOA games alongside other forms of electronic media. As we discussed in class, the years during which CYOA were most popular and most widely produced spanned from the early 1980s up until the late 1990s. The depth of some of these games’ options, as Ashwell outlines, limit their mainstream use, but still remain as integral parts to the development of both CYOA games and other forms of electronic literature.

The chapter of Ryan’s book examines ergodism and its bounds as they compress, expand, and  relate to interactivity. What stood out to me was, amidst all of the structures, the levels of interactivity. Ryan, as she declares, “propose[s] to peel this onion” that is narrative text (Ryan 176). With this perspective, Ryan allows the reader to unpack the complexity of the games we have taken for granted all this time. Ultimately, Ryan and Ashwell force their audiences to consider the relationship between form and product. What does an author lose and gain with each decision regarding the form of her piece? Do these forms lend themselves to future development and innovation? If so, to whom does that responsibility fall, the author or the player? Moving forward in this class, I look forward to the chance to discuss the relationship between the people on both ends of the production and reception of electronic media and its CYOA counterparts. 

Out with the Old, In with the New?: Examining Interactivity Digitally and in Print

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In “The Many Forms of Interactivity,” Ryan dissects the phenomena of ‘interactivity,’ suggesting that the term is not so straightforward as it may first appear. In her discussion of the varying types of interactivity–the variety of which could constitute several blog posts–Ryan states that “the purpose of interactivity is to probe the field of the possible for its own sake” (163). This quote summarizes my current feelings towards the field of online narration: overwhelmed with the vast possibilities. However, I am also excited by the results of comparing this new digital field with the field of tactile literature, of which I am familiar. A close look at a few of Ryan’s forms of interactivity reveals new meaning between these forms of literature. 

Within her discussion of ‘Interactive Structures,’ Ryan touches on ‘The Vector,’ which is the most similar to narrative in that it is linear and causal. Ryan proposes that “there is still something magic about summoning new information to the screen as a result of physical action–magic because it takes hidden, mysterious code to mediate between the gesture of the hand and its visible effect” (165). This quote reminded me of our discussion in class about whether we participate in online games for the narrative storyline or to feed our fascination with the technological structure of the game. I also wonder if we have this same thought-process in regards to printed literature? While I’ve often wondered how online stories are formed, I can’t recall a time that I’ve questioned the process of writing a novel. I think this distinction between reading for plot versus experience also feeds into Ryan’s discussion of the levels of interactivity; she divulges that game players often differ from traditional readers in that they do not play for the narrative story but rather for the aesthetics of the game’s competition (181). 

Ultimately, I am intrigued by the malleability of online narration that printed literature does not always afford. How would the experience of reading change if novels took on ‘The Network’ format in which multiple nodes allow us to bypass chronological narration (i.e. meet again with a character who had died in a previous story node (167))? Similarly, how would ‘The Vector,’ category’s ability to incorporate audio and additional documents enhance our relationship with print? Is it the responsibility of print literature to ‘keep up’ with the advances of the digital age or can the traditional ways prevail? Perhaps throughout the course of this class we will find that such a dichotomy need not exist.

Exploring the Affordances of Electronic Literature

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We live in a digital day and age, where everything has become electronic, even our books. We discussed the five affordances that books grant us, but there are also affordances that electronic literature and media can offer. Janet Murray describes the four essential properties of digital environments in Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Murray spoke about digital media being participatory, procedural, spatial, and encyclopedic. Digital media can be also be interactive, as well as immersive.

Moreover, I believe that the affordances of electronic literature can go beyond the affordances granted through physical books. Books are finite and grant us a fixed story, where we can only imagine what has already been presented to us. The participation is limited, because we are given the setting, tone, characteristics, etc. With electronic literature and different digital  programs, the participation is endless. Murray gives us the example of the program ELIZA. Although, it initially wasn’t running at top efficiency, it was able to be an interactive story teller that followed the readers imagination and even gave different twists. Programs like this can allow audiences to not only follow a pathway, but also create their own. Growing up, I always wished that I could change the conclusions of different novels. Would slight changes in characters’ decisions result in a completely different outcome? Digital media has now allowed us this opportunity and many more.

Books are both writeable as well as readable, to some extent. We discussed the advantages of marginal spaces and sizes in books. This allows readers to leave notes, comments, and interpretations, but as stated earlier these comments are limited to the finite text already given. With electronic literature this affordance can live up to its full potential. You are able to actually write and read a story that can incorporate your ideas, as well as previously programmed ideas.

Coincidentally, many people feel as if this digital era has caused people to become “lazier” and create “shortcuts”. I disagree, if anything this era has caused many authors to become more innovative. These different media outlets have allowed others to explore an array of creative outcomes to a story that was once very limited. Books have set the foundation for the creation of electronic literature and digital media and the affordances of both platforms are equally advantageous.

The Intersection of Academic Humanities and Technology: Thoughts and Questions on Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace

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Following my reading of Chapter 3 in Murray’s Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, I am left with lingering thoughts and certain questions about particular aspects regarding the critical intersection between academic humanities and technology.

I wish to further explore Murray’s idea of “multimedia” as a medium through which storytellers potentially discover how to tell their stories more effectively. Under this idea, Murray examines what it means for a medium to be “digitally sophisticated” which she explains through the capabilities of digital narratives such as an internet soap opera which she contends can be “sophisticated” if it provides features like “audio as an integral part of the plotline” such that readers are more interested in the story itself rather than the technology used to convey said story (67, 68). Here, I wish to expand upon Murray’s exploration of the influence of multimedia in movies, Web soaps, and books and add to her list podcasts and audiobooks that likewise employ aspects of “dramatic richness” through inclusion of technological resources such as “the wiretap of a murder threat or a political negotiation” (68). To this end, I believe that podcasts and audiobooks as sources of digital humanities and alternatives to traditional oral – person to person – storytelling provide an interesting conceptualization of what Murray terms “electronic narrative art” (68). One of my favorite podcasts which I believe assumes Murray’s standards of dramatic richness and electronic narrative art is Dr. Death – give it a listen.

Using our continuous discourse about affordances as they relate to books versus electronic literature as a launching point, I turn to Murray’s final affordance of four relating to digital environments: “Digital Environments Are Encyclopedic” (83). I found this particular affordance the most intriguing in that it further revealed to me the disconnect between academic structures of access to resources versus technological, or digital, approaches to encyclopedic accessibility. During the summer of 2019, I collaborated with a Davidson College English Professor in the process of publishing a book at Duke University Press. He wished to create for his book a digital archive as an electronic receptacle in which to provide sources cited within his book thus producing an accessible electronic platform to view and retrieve relevant materials. This experience strongly correlates to Murray’s belief in the “encyclopedic capacity of the computer” to grant readers access “from any point on the globe” (84). However, ideas about the accessibility of materials in relation to the competitive nature of humanities academia and the way that competitive – and almost capitalistic – attitude interacts with digital environments lingers with me because while many more resources are available to users through the internet a strong disconnect remains between the prestige seeking egos of academic scholars who wish to make exclusive their work and the highly collaborative and open-access spaces of digital humanities and computer science communities at large. Nevertheless, as I learned through my research last summer, Davidson College professors are working to make smoother the intersection between technology and academic humanities.

Lastly, I leave readers with a moment in Murray’s work I continue to muse over. She writes, “the encyclopedic capacity of the computer can distract us from asking why things work the way they do and why we are being asked to play one role rather than another” (89). It is important to remember that games such as SimCity that simulate life, are in fact not modeled based on real life but rather certain perspectives on it. Thus, the conflation of the game simulation and real experience I believe Murray claims can be dangerous.

Characteristics of Electronic Literature

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In Janet Murray’s article, Hamlet on the Holodeck, she talks about the different characteristics of electronic literature and what makes it unique compared to traditional literature. She explains how these four characteristics come together to make the literature both interactive and immersive. She uses Zork as an example as the game allows for the player to enter commands to change where the story is heading through their decisions and how Zork paints a narrative landscape through the descriptions of the area in the game without using any graphics. The point Murray brings up on how immersive electronic literature through it being participatory is very important with what makes electronic literature so appealing. It allows the reader to be a part of the story in a way most books can not, as the reader can make decisions and see how those decisions in turn affect the story. It also allows for the reader to feel like they are the main character of the story, which in turn makes the reader become more immersed in the story and care a lot more about in which direction they take the story. Another interesting point brought up is how the encyclopedic nature of interactive literature distracts us from the sets of rules that guide our decisions in these works. I’ve never really seen it as a problem that interactive literature guides you in a certain direction with your decisions within the work as it makes most sense with how the story is going, but it is interesting to think about how the lack of freedom to go in whatever direction you want with certain simulation games, in particular, is masked by the seemingly endless amount of options presented to you in line with the set story. However, I still do not think the encyclopedic nature of electronic literature is a handicap as Murray suggests, as I think it allows for people to have more content and more possibilities to explore thanks to the encyclopedic nature of electronic literature.

Computer Science at the Center of Electronic Literature

Ethan Evans

Janet Murray characterizes digital environments using several properties in her article Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. These electronic spaces act as infinite expanses for free expression due to their interactive and immersive qualities. As a computer scientist, many of Murray’s examples sounded familiar to innovations in deep learning and language processing about which I have heard. Examples of unconventional, electronic works that Murray and Dr. Sample have showcased are often feats of cutting-edge computer science.

The ELIZA program, in particular, interested me because it bridged the gap between computers and humans and integrates computers as functional “members” of society. Similarly, the IBM Watson computer can interpret human questions and search for answers online in record time. I saw IBM Watson play Jeopardy, and I was astonished by how quickly the computer could listen to Alex Trebek and translate his voice into something understandable to a computer. In an internship I had last summer, a mentor of mine discussed a natural language processing algorithm that “read” a doctor’s note and inserted that information into a database. This is impressive considering how notoriously sloppy doctors’ handwriting is. These examples of language processing are critical advancements in the digital world and unlock a whole new way in which we interact with games, literary works, and business projects.

Today’s electronic literature reminds me a lot of modern abstract art. There are no rules or conventions with abstract art; there are experiments and unlimited styles. The user/viewer’s interpretations or decisions are incredibly valuable in the meaning of the work, like with the Zork game or choose your own adventure novels. With the rise of technology and the wide variety of current digital environments, it begs the question if there any boundaries or limitations to digitized spaces. Murray argues that digital narrative holds “new beauty and new truths about ourselves and the world,” so as long as we continue to push the boundaries of English, computer science, and digital studies, our digital world will have unlimited potential.

Genre and the Categorization of Electronic Literature

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In the first chapter of his book, Electronic Literature, Scott Rettberg discusses the genres of electronic literature. Using arguments from both Tzvetan Todorov and Jaques Derrida, he comes to the conclusion that genre, in the case of traditional literature, is a set of guidelines and norms that identify and classify works. He goes on to argue that electronic literature is difficult to place into these categories because it has “cycles of creation that move at the speed of technological change” (Rettberg, 9). One of the reasons that this genre is so hard to define is because technology has a completely separate set of affordances that the traditional book does.

In her article, Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, Janet H. Murray elaborates on these affordances. She largely focuses on discussing hypertext games, specifically Zork, which exemplifies many of these affordances. Zork is an interactive game where players move through a dungeon environment slaying trolls and solving puzzles. Zork demonstrates three of the four affordances that she identifies: digital environments are participatory, spatial, and encyclopedic. The final affordance being digital environments are procedural. All of these affordances succeed in making Zork, and other forms of digital literature, both interactive and immersive in a different ways from printed literature.

I agree with Rettberg that it is too difficult to try and confine the hybrid, unwieldy body of electronic literature into formalized genres like traditional literature. Because of their complicated, multi-media features, categorizing these works by only one criterion or set of norms is not sufficient. While traditional literature certainly has affordances that make it ideal for certain things, the technology used to create electronic literature is able to create vastly more varied and multi-faceted forms of literature. Further, at the end of her article, Murray discusses how much of today’s electronic literature is a form of experimentation. Much like the refinement of film that she discusses previously, electronic literature is still in the early stages and only through time and experimentation will “narrative art… come into its own expressive form” (Murray, 93). I believe that only once electronic literature is fully established can we begin to label and define its “genres.”