Electronic Literature

This week's discussion focused on Electronic Literature. First we should talk about hypertext. During the break we made Twine Games which use a lot of hypertext. This means clicking on one link to take us to another place. For instance when you read a wikipedia article you usually find yourself clicking on hyperlinks to find out about other stuff. I'm sure this has led to many late nights reading about the eating habits of Pandas or something random like that.

By Xtina Yu, retrieved from https://unsplash.com/photos/mf94VWJlMwU

The twine games we made this week were very basic so mostly just used hyperlinks to connect decisions to different parts of the story. It was like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book. For instance, in my story you could choose whether to move in with a girl named Victoria, or with the main character's mother or father. Each decision led to a different ending.

Hyperlinks are a way of navigating. As Jessica Pressman says in her essay Navigating Electronic Literature, navigation gives each user a unique perception of digital texuality. Since electronic literature is not physical in the way a book is, navigation leads us to different parts of a story that would not exist for us without that decision, unlike in a book where everything is physically written on a page. The input of a command affects the digital world. For most people, the most familiar example would be video games. In World of Warcraft you can experience the entire world differently just by choosing a different type of character at creation. Some characters are on opposite sides to one another, some are strong and wield swords while others are spell-casters. You could also choose to run around and pick flowers instead of slaying dragons. Your experience of the game as a heroic flower picker would be different from someone who chose to play as a dragon slayer. This is not like a book or TV show in which every reader navigates the world in the same linear way (Of course every viewer may have their own interpretation, but they still see the same content).

Sergeant Soup is a professional flower picker AND dragon slayer.
All rights to Blizzard Entertainment. 

While on the topic of games, here's an artwork of an elf I finished recently.

Interactivity is important for these types of things. Interactivity doesn't just mean clicking on something - it means that the reader/user is engaged. Having the decisions that the player makes affect the story is a good way of doing this. Having a challenge for users to overcome is another way. This is advantageous in many ways as it gets the reader participating. Especially when it comes to children, who generally have short attention spans, interactivity can transform learning experiences. For example, I'm sure many of us who grew up during the 2000s know of Cool Maths Games. These games were a fun way of getting children engaged in maths, which most children think of as being something exceedingly boring. However, making maths into a game engages children's attention so they can learn faster.

There are many more things I would love to discuss but sadly I am running out of words. Leave a comment about your favourite video game or non-linear narrative! Ciao!

Works Cited:

Pressman, Jessica. "Navigating Electronic Literature" Retrieved from https://newhorizons.eliterature.org