Cindy Tackles a Digi- Novel

Coiuld this be the shape of books to come? Cindy Tham at The Nutgraph writes about her encounter with a hybrid book, a "digi-novel" called Level 26: Dark Origins, in which :

... readers are given a code to access cyber-bridges or videos that flesh out parts of the plot in vivid detail. There is also an interactive forum for readers to chat with other readers and contribute ideas on how the authors could revise the story for future editions and sequels.

and she wonders whether this is the shape of books to come as society becomes more immersed in digital technology.

Two problems she highlights based on this experience - little is left to the reader's imagination, and of course this is the best part of the reading experience, and the cyber-bridges can be disruptive to the reading flow.

But she vows to keep an open mind about the future of "vooks" ... and so will I.

Weaving the Wovel

We know the nature of reading is changing due to the technology. Well, are you ready for ... the wovel?

Web+novel: you must have guessed the semantic origins, even as the naffness of the term made you groan. (It's as bad, if not worse than blook!)

Where the wovel differs from its more traditional linear counterpart is with its interactivity.

Programmer Jesse Pollack who works for Underland Press declares it has :

...the technical functionality of Web 2.0, the creativity of fiction and the pace of print journalism ...

The wovel is serialised fiction, and works like those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books you may remember from your childhood. It allows the readers to choose the direction the plot will take ... which, of course, demands great flexibility on the part of the author. (Go and read some of the fiction on Underland Press' website to see this genre in action.)

Of course Dickens was the master of the serialised novel, and more Alexander McCall-Smith has embraced it more recently. Closer to home, isn't this exactly what Nizam Zakaria has been doing with his Malay novels on his blogs? (Though his site seems to have disappeared now.)

Nizam the wovelist has a nice ring, come to think of it!

New Ways to Tell Stories?

Following the announcement that the MIT Media Laboratory has announced the creation of the Center for Future Storytelling and will work collaborate with Plymouth Rock Studios :

... to revolutionize how we tell our stories ...

Sam Leith in the Telegraph writes a piece which seems to miss the point of the initiative entirely!

It isn't that stories are at risk. We will always need narrative. I don't believe books will die any more than he does. There clearly aren't more plots to invent. It isn't (of course) possible to "run out of narrative". And the Centre for Storytelling project seems to refer much more to the interface between film and the online world than it does to text based fiction.

I do totally agree with him though that :

... the internet does some things very well, and the codex book does other things very well. There is an overlap - they are both means of preserving and sharing information - but it's foolish to see the two as interchangeable, or the former as supplanting the latter.

But with computer technology there are new ways to tell stories, and fiction will become undoubtedly become more interactive and there will be more hybrid forms of storytelling. I don't know about you, but I feel excited about that.

I must say though, that I am horrified, along with Leith and Philip Pullman about the decision to close a school library with its books and librarian for a "virtual learning environment".

E-Fiction is Eli

It was a nice surprise to see that my blog buddy Eli James was grabbed for interview by Sheila Rahman today. Eli as you know is the amazing (don't blush, Eli!) young chap from Sarawak behind Novelr pioneering, as Sheila says, the interface between fiction and the digital world.

It’s really only through community that you can raise the bar of quality in a medium.

says Eli (and that strikes me as a very wise observation). And he talks about why he started the blog :

I originally wanted to explore the medium of blog storytelling. There are actually people who blog their novels first, gain reader feedback, and then publish them through Printing-On-Demand publishers like Lulu. There are others still who blog and are then approached by publishing houses to turn their blogs into books. I found this interesting. I’d done a blook before so I leveraged Novelr to be a starting platform for new authors looking for an alternative to the traditional publishing industry.

We need blooks of significant literary merit so now Novelr has a forum. I also encourage and help set up quality filters for online fiction, plus whenever I can, highlight works of merit.

And how has blogging changed his life? :

My work in Novelr has put me in contact with a lot of really amazing professionals – SharonBakar, who writes Bibliobibuli for instance*. I’m mostly gobsmacked to be even in touch with these people.

I’ve also met a number of writers and editors.

A few of the ideas and the articles in Novelr have also been referenced in a PhD thesis on blog fiction – which was really very flattering. I suppose blogging has done wonders for my analytical ability.

I’m being quoted now, so I better make sure each and every post I write is well thought-out, well argued, and clearly presented… or else!

His immediate plans? :

Sometime next year, I’m starting up a digital publishing house (for want of a better name) – where we promote, redesign and highlight online fiction. ... I’ve started prelim discussions with several other writers, editors and programmers.

You see just what you start when young people get internet access and start communicating with others across the world?

* Nope, it's me who'd humbled, Eli. I believe you are going to go very far, and if there is anyone who has a spare scholarship to a top-notch university hidden about their person, please send it Eli's way.

Digital Fictions

A couple of months ago, I put up a post on digital fiction which provoked a fair bit of discussion. Now there are some beautiful examples of how such stories might work on the Penguin website.
Over the last six weeks top authors have been putting their work on line at We Tell Stories. Each tale pays homage to one of the novels in the Penguin Classics series and shows the possibilities of the medium.

Charles Cumming's 21 Steps of course echoes John Buchan's 39 Steps, and is designed for Google maps. Toby Litt revisits M.R. James classic ghost story The Haunted Doll's House. Litt's Slice is told through blog entries and Twitter messages.

Kevin Brooks offers you an interactive fairy story. Husband and wife team Nicci French actually wrote Your Place or Mine live online in real time. (How brave is that?)

Matt Mason and Nicholas Felton write an updated Hard Times for teenagers in the information age, while Mohsin Hamid draws on 1001 Nights for inspiration for his The (Former) General in his Labyrinth.

Just a little footnote. Over the past few weeks I've been back in teacher education watching trainee teachers doing microteaching (a simulation lesson using their classmates to roleplay their class). I have been so pleasantly surprised by the confidence with which the trainees have integrated internet and computer technology into their lessons ... and really jealous that none of this was available to me when I was an English teacher!

As I read these digital fictions, I was imagining what great use could be made of them in the language classroom. And I think it would be fun to write interactive stories too.

(Thanks to friends who dropped by to nudge me to blog about this. Sorry I took so long!)

Hybrid Fictions

I had an epiphanous moment a few weeks ago reading Eli James post about digital fiction and the examples of Dreaming Method's interactive stories, and this is what occurred to me:

We've had a lot of talk (on this blog and elsewhere) about whether ebooks will take off or not. I now believe that yes, they will be fine for text books, reference books, and some people may use them to read a novel (though the buzz is clearly that most of us wouldn't want to).

And I believe that if the only way to access books was through an electronic device, it would be the end of novels as we know them.

Why? Because if you are going to use these clever hand-held thingies, which over time are going to get cleverer, then why stick to just words-on-a-page when other media can be integrated and the act of reading can become so excitingly interactive?

I think print books will go on being around for a very long time, but I think that along side them we will see new hybrid forms of ebooks.

This thinking also got further nudged along this morning by reading about thriller writer James Patterson's venture into writing computer games. (He isn't the first author to take this route - other early-adopters of this medium include Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum.) Lindesay Irvine posts a luddite response on the Guardian blog and wonders:

Should I look forward to the Iris Murdoch quest where players race to collect symbols and Jungian archetypes, and the first Martin Amis first-person shooter? To the Henry James adventure where you attempt to escape from inside 3-D versions of his sentences? The Crime and Punishment actioner where you must get away with murder; to rescue fantasies where you can save Tess or Anna Karenina?

(Please do feel free to add your own - I think this is fun!)

But Alasdair Harper reckons:

We need more real writers getting involved in making video games, not fewer. The results could be astounding. It will happen. Elitist suspicion of a new way of storytelling will only last so long, and I doubt the next generation of writers, who grew up on the likes of Beneath A Steel Sky, would have so many prejudices. Heaven only knows what a great writer could do with this new format. I can't wait.

I'm an old fashioned paper book loving grouch who will never mend her ways, but I do find the possibilities of these hybrid forms of fiction very exciting indeed.

Now what's an X-box?

Postscript :

Zedeck has some interesting things to say about this post on the Kakiseni blog.