Positioning the Reader: The affordances of digital fiction

Angela Thomas
University of Sydney

Abstract

Over the past decade a range of new forms of narrative have emerged in digital spaces.
Many of these forms have integrated the modalities of text, image and sound. Some include
hypertext, requiring the reader to navigate through a fictional world. Others require a new
degree of reader choice and interactivity, whereby the reader becomes a character of that
fictional world. The aim of this paper is to explore the affordances of digital fiction –
multimodality, hypertext, spatiality, multiliteracies and interactivity – and suggest how
they position readers in ways which are at the same time similar to, yet different from,
print-based fiction. A corpus of sample texts is discussed to illuminate those features
which are unique to digital fiction and which position the reader in new and different ways
from the past. Finally I suggest that identity construction in an additional affordance of
many forms of digital fiction.

Introduction

According to Roland Barthes (1966), narratives are universal in the human condition,
informing our very understanding of life itself. He claimed:

The narratives of the world are numberless…Able to be carried by articulated

language, spoken or written, fixed or moving images, gestures, and the ordered
mixture of all these substances; narrative is present in myth, legend, fable, tale,
novella, epic, history, tragedy, drama, comedy, mime, painting… stained glass
windows, cinema, comics, news items, conversation. Moreover… narrative is
present in every age, in every place, in every society; it begins with the very
history of mankind and there is nowhere nor has there been a people without
narrative…. It is simply there, like life itself. (Barthes, 1966, as cited in
Sontag, 1982, pp.251-252)

It is not surprising then that with the advent of technological changes, new forms of digital
narrative are emerging. These narratives are distributed across digital spaces such as email,
CDRom, the web, webcameras (to mention just a few) and come in various forms, from
text to streaming video. Like all narrative forms, a series of events are represented and the
reader pieces them together in some chronological sequence (Abbot, 2002). The role of the
reader has always been to perceive and interpret the meanings of the text and in that
respect, to engage with and interact with the narrative. In many senses, digital fiction has
all of the same components as their print based counterparts. However, there are five
significant changes and/or developments in digital fiction that I want to argue blur the
boundaries of the writer and the reader and thus position the reader in new ways: the
affordances of multimodality, hypertext, spatiality, multiliteracies, and interactivity.
Furthermore, I will show that identity construction through engagement in many forms of

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digital fiction is a sixth affordance, one of considerable relevance and significance
particularly for young people.

Affordance 1: Multimodality

Lankshear and Knobel (2004) argue that literacy educators need to be taking into account
the increasingly prominent contexts of multimodal texts. Kress (2003) argues that in these
contexts, representation and meaning-making in textual forms are undergoing important
changes compared to traditional printed texts. Kress (2003) notes a distinction between
traditional writing which is governed by linear space and time or sequencing, and images,
which, as Lankshear and Knobel (2004, online) also argue, ‘are governed by a logic of
space and function that attributes meaning to the placement of images, the spatial relations
between an image and space or other images and text, to size, to colour and shape, and so
on’.

Kress (2003), Lankshear and Knobel (2004), Cope and Kalantzis (2000), Lankshear,
Snyder and Green (2000) and many others all argue for a new theoretical approach to
reading which emphasises the multimodality of new forms of texts, particularly given the
burgeoning nature of digital forms of texts with which young people are interacting on a
daily basis. In fact, Kress calls for a move away from examining texts linguistically,
arguing for a need for semiotic examinations and reading of such texts. He argues:

The theoretical change is from linguistics to semiotics—from a theory that

accounted for language alone to a theory that can account equally well for gesture,
speech, image, writing, 3D objects, colour, music, and no doubt others (Kress
2003: 35-6).

And as Lankshear and Knobel (2004, online) argue, such semiotic analyses and readings of
texts no longer privileges the linguistic, instead, it ‘necessarily highlights the importance of
the representational and affordance work carried out by these modes to meet a given social
purpose’. That is, Lankshear and Knobel’s argument, following Kress, is that within this
new way of thinking,

language becomes just one mode among many that people can draw on to
communicate with others to represent meanings and that needs to be ‘dealt with’
semiotically rather than linguistically. (Lankshear and Knobel, 2004, online)

According to Unsworth et al. (2005), the semiotic affordances of multimodal texts include
any combination of written text, image and sound. Digital forms of multimodal fiction
have actually developed over the past decade to become art forms in their own right. As
Walker (2003) remarks,

The original form of publishing and distributing hypertext fiction was clearly
within a literary model… The web has a radically different delivery form… [but]
in the last decade’s web works, network-specific genres have been increasingly
incorporated in web narratives and poems… Webcams, web diaries and serial
narratives have become more common both as artistic endeavours in their own
right and as elements of and inspirations to hypertext and interactive narrative.
(Walker, 2003:14)

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An excellent example of a multimodal fiction that is an art-form in its own right and which
uses text, image and sound (as well as hypertext) is the award-winning These Waves of
Girls (Fisher, 2001). Fisher has compiled and linked segments of texts which recount her
childhood and adolescent years as a woman discovering her lesbian identity. Through
fragments of memories, sounds of girls laughing, and the links between visuals and
textuals, the reader discovers Fisher’s identity much as she did – over time, as the hidden
meanings of the text are pieced together in a labyrinth of meaning. There are also a
multitude of paths through Fisher’s semi-autobiographical fiction, so much so that each
reading yields a slightly different understanding of it.

Affordance 2: Hypertext

In relation to digital fiction, a number of theorists (Morgan, 1999; Morgan, 2004;

Moulthrop, 1997) have commented on the significance of hypertext to reading. Morgan
(2004, online) claims that hypertext ‘forces a reconsideration of the role of the reader’.
Based on Morgan’s (1999) argument, I have previously noted (Thomas, 2004a) that the
cognitive work associated with reading hypertext fiction was related to reader’s abilities to
anticipate what might be uncovered by the link, by filling in the gaps, using background
knowledge up expectations and linking together the individual pieces of hypertext
information to form a coherent whole.

Following this notion of the gap or space in digital fiction, Moulthrop (1997) explains his
idea that there are three types of spaces in digital texts: the imaginary space of the fictional
world, the presentation space or interface used for the fiction, and the semantic space, the
domain of writing. These spaces are all interconnected and he argues the reader needs to
assemble meaning from each space to understand the world of the fiction.

Ever since the now classic and earliest known fictional hypertexts such as Joyce’s (1989)
Afternoon, A Story, the relationship between hypertext and the role of the reader has been
widely discussed (Walker, 2003). Though strongly linear in narrative if the reader chooses,
Afternoon has many possible reading paths due to its fragmentation and spatial scattering.
The reader is asked yes/no questions, to which a ‘yes’ response will bring up one lexia and
no will bring up a different lexia. To press return would take the reader on a pre-set
journey through the narrative, the default chronology of events, which is told in a
‘descriptive, poetic, dreaming… and reluctant’ manner (Walker, 2003), which leaves the
reader to imagine and assemble both the sequence and meaning of the narrative.

Affordance 3: Spatiality

The spatiality of hypertext fiction is discussed in detail by Hayles (2000). Discussing

Jackson’s (1995) notable digital fiction Patchwork Girl, Hayles argues that it:

like many hypertexts, chronology is inherently tenuous because linking structures

leap across time as well as space. As if recapitulating the processes of
fragmentation and recombination made possible by digital technologies,
Patchwork Girl locates its performance of subjectivity in the individual lexia…
Sequence is constructed by accumulating a string of present moments when the
reader clicks on links… This situation reverses our usual sense that time is passing
as we watch. Instead, time becomes a river that always already exists in its

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 entirety, and we create sequence and chronology by choosing which portions of
the river to sample. (Hayles, 2000, online)

Allen (2003) argues that hypertext as a concept is not necessarily new or innovative but it is
the reader’s role that is extended in dramatically different ways to traditional print based
texts. He terms this new agent the ‘wreader’ – both the producer and consumer of textual,
hypertextual practices.’ He states:

In this new reader, both production and consumption of texts is combined into one
process that is self-contained. The new reader navigates through lexias to find
threads of connected meaning where no author placed them…. This new reader is
reminiscent of the old reader who has always decoded texts and made new
meanings with them, prowling them for paths that go toward new textual centers
and make new experiences. These readers are … "radial" readers, which means
that they read texts in an open-ended search for meaning. (Allen, 2003, online)

Some exemplary types of digital fiction which requires the reader to piece together a
narrative are those of distributed narratives- digital narratives which are divided into a
number of components are distributed both spatially and temporally, such as the email
narrative Daughters of Freya, and the web narrative, Online Caroline. In Daughters of
Freya, a sequence of approximately 100 emails is delivered to your email box over the
period of several weeks. The emails are actual email conversations between the characters
in the narrative, and the reader is required to piece together the narrative from these letters.

In Online Caroline, the narrative is pieced together through a range of texts: email, webcam
video episodes, Caroline’s diary and photo album, her phone messages and more. What is
particularly fascinating with Online Caroline is that the reader is required to fill out a
personal facts form, and this information is then explicitly used throughout the emails and
web text to develop intimacy with the fictional character. Caroline calls the reader her
friend. This results in the reader becoming a part of the diegesis of the fictional world. The
reader is given agency to traverse the spaces of the text, or to ‘perform’ Bolter’s (2001) and
‘explore’ (Saltz, 1997) the text.

Affordance 4: Interactivity

The notion of reader interactivity and control is one that I have previously emphasised as a
critical affordance of digital texts (Thomas 2004; 2005b). In thinking about the nature of
interactivity, I propose that interaction requires the reader to act upon the text in some way
in order to access it. As Douglas comments, ‘the text draws us into it because it cannot
exist without our participation’ (Douglas, 1996, p.209). It seems to me that the element of
interactivity and reader control is at the heart of the “radical change” (Dresang, 2003) in the
reading of digital fiction. Walker (2003:11) argues that the relationship between the reader
and the text is: ‘central to the meaning of the work’. In cases where digital fiction includes
hypertext and distribution across online spaces (though not all examples of digital fiction
do this), we are finding, as Morgan (2004, online) argues, ‘the distance between writing
and reading is once again seriously reduced, only this time … the process of writing and
reading nearly overlap’.

The reader / writer overlap is a pronounced feature of blog fiction. In a previous study
(Thomas, 2005a), I have argued that blog fiction is where author or authors have used a

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blog as a writing device, using all of the affordances of the blogging or journaling software,
such as hyperlinks, graphics, and the commenting system. These authors are experimenting
and manipulating the software to exploit it for their writing purposes, and in this way are
creating a genre which has both continuities and disruptions with other narrative genres.
Their innovative play with the medium is creating a narrative, which at its best is
multimodal, hypertextual, episodic, serialised and interactive.

The most common form of blog fiction is a chronicle of the adventures of one or more
people told in first person diary style. This seems to suit the journaling software and is
congruent with other uses of blogs, which include chronicling the thoughts and ideas about
news, pop culture, research, and so on across time. The personalised narrative relates well
to readers who are accustomed to reading blogs, as they feel invited into the writer’s world
and enjoy returning each day to find out what has happened to the person. The Glass
House is an excellent example of blog fiction which manipulates the blogging software for
all its affordances, thereby creating a narrative which is characterised by the use of
multimodal, hypertextual, episodic, serialised and interactive features. In the Glass House,
the reader gets to see inside the life and mind of James. And James is invisible.

The writer, (James) uses standard literary devices such as flashbacks and allusions to
explain and suggest the state of his current life (such as the hilarious line: invisible people
should not work with hand tools). James also directly addresses the reader at points in the
narrative (Imagine, unknown reader, that you were possessed with the miraculous power to
make people happy), making meta-fictive comments as well as instructing the reader to be
patient with his storytelling. He also includes out of character comments in parentheses
occasionally to explain or apologise for being disrupted in the middle of his writing.

However what also makes the writing distinctive as well as incredibly amusing is that he
uses the commenting system of the blog to leave fictional comments by his friends and this
not only exploits the potential of blogging for this purpose to its fullest, but it cleverly adds
another layer to the narrative. Each of the fictional commenters adopts a particular style
also, and the repetition of this style constructs an image of their personae. And when real
people leave comments or questions about the story or seeming incongruences in the story,
James weaves the answer or explanation into a later post. Sometimes in his posts, James
directly talks to one of his friends (To Dana: No, I’m not going to be on IM), and as the
narrative progresses the 'blog'-ness of it begins to emerge more, with the use of hyperlinks
to songs, wikipedia, poetry, books he is reading, news items and even to the posts of other
bloggers. James becomes more playful with the genre as he progresses too, including email
excerpts, movie reviews, his own poetry, chat transcripts, and images. We are also privy to
the occasional guest posts by his (fictional) girlfriend Callie. The exploitation and
manipluation of the blog features in this blog fiction is playful and innovative, and defines
a standard for blog fiction.

Affordance 5: Multiliteracies

By multiliteracies here I draw in aspects of Unsworth (2001) and Cope and Kalantzis
(2000) to define it as multiple forms and genres of texts. Although multiliteracies is often
equated with multimodality I have separated it out (somewhat artificially) to make the
distinction here between modes and genres. The text Online Caroline for example, has both

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multiple modes and multiple genres: the personal and conversational genre of the emails
and letters, the even more intimate conversations she has on the webcam, the online
shopping genre and so on. Similarly, the blog fiction The Glass House uses confessional
discourse, poetry, movie reviews, chat transcripts and so on. To successfully read digital
fiction requires readers to make meaning of a multiplicity of genres, codes and forms of
text across all modes.

Affordance 6: Identity Construction

In my own research (Thomas 2004a; 2004b; 2005a) I have focussed closely on fictional
digital spaces in which the reader and writer roles are completely overlapped. Such spaces
include online role-playing sites and fictional character journals and blogs. I have argued
that one of the critical aspects in online role-playing relates to how writers will insert
versions of themselves into their characters, which is known variously as “fusing
identities”, “hybrid identities”, or creating a “Mary Sue” character (Black, 2004). In the
role-playing community called Yoda Clones, for example, two of the leading characters,
Tiana and Jandalf, both openly state that their fictional characters are very much
adaptations of their own identities, made all the stronger through both the role-playing,
which relies upon a considerable degree of instinctuality, and the character diaries (in the
form of blogs and livejournals), which allow a more introspective reflection into ways in
which their characters might be facing issues and angst-ridden insecurities similar to what
they are facing in their real lives.

The fusion of identity can be observed in this comment by Tiana, as she describes the
characteristics of her fictional character:

Tiana is my biggest character, as I role-play with her and write with her voice the
most, so she's the most like me. I've kind of fused Tiana into my internet identity
completely. Her looks and all that, not to mention personality. Tiana's a bit more
headstrong than I am. She's more willing to jump into things. However, she's
almost other than that completely like me. does/says is what I'd do and say. Now,
what you'll see of me in Shadow is the side of me that is searching. This side of
me reflects what I was going through earlier in the year. At the time I was
searching – for God (rolls eyes), a purpose in my life, and all that. If that makes
any sense.

In Yoda Clones, a careful reading reveals several discursively constructed themes of

adolescent angst emerging: hiding from the world, inability to open up and trust another,
not sharing one’s feelings, anxiety about change, relationships with others, peer pressure,
idealism, fear of failure. As Gauntlett argues, ‘to interpret the choices we have made,
individuals construct a narrative of the self, which gives some order to our complex lives’
(Gauntlett, 2000, p. 113). It is my contention that role-playing fiction serves as a strategy
for the young people in particular to interpret and make sense of their everyday lives. For
example, Tiana, feeling moody and suffering from pre-menstrual pains, quite deliberately
chose to make her character rant and rave, make snippy comments or provocative posts to
seek attention. Her outbursts are contained in both the role-playing and in her fictional
character diary that she uses to create back story. The role-playing provides her with the
discursive space in which she can record and examine the effects of her pre-menstrual pain.

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From a Foucauldian (1977) perspective, these entries are in fact an approach to self
awareness.

Gauntlett said that in forging our identities, we construct a narrative in which we play a
heroic role. The fictional characters played by Tiana and Jandalf allow the girls to
exaggerate that heroic role and to play with the fantasies of who they want to become. By
placing themselves in the God role of narrator, they let us glimpse inside their thoughts and
feelings. These thoughts and feelings integrate events from their external worlds, from
their past in the instance of Tiana’s memories of being teased as a child, and from their
idealised futures, such as the romantic scenes played out by Tiana and Jether. Giddens
(1991) states that identity is found in ‘the capacity to keep a narrative going’ (p. 54) and as
Tiana and Jandalf project themselves into their ongoing fictional characters, their characters
are developing and growing parallel to their real selves.

For Giddens, the narrative self of women was traditionally caught up in romantic
storylines. Walkerdine (1998) states that the images and stories we construct consume and
construct our identity. Walkerdine discusses how films of Gidget and My Fair Lady
provided her with a strongly gendered view of feminine identity linked intimately with love
and romance. However Tiana and Jandalf are writing their own science fiction narratives,
in which they are Jedi knights, fighting with light sabres, and are active agents of their own
futures. Following the current trend of strong female action heroes (such as Buffy)
represented in the media, the girls are creating that archetype as their idealised selves. As
Gauntlett (2000) states, ‘it is common for the narratives of the self to be influenced by …
the heroic in films’ (p. 110). In this case, it is common for the narratives of the girl’s own
identities to be both influenced by the fictional protagonists that they construct, role-play,
and explore through their fictional livejournals and blogs. The process of discovering their
character is also a journal of self-discovery, for understanding their pasts and for forging
new identities for their futures. My argument is that identity construction should be
included as another affordance of many forms of digital fiction.

CONCLUSION

In considering the range of digital fiction above, it is no longer conceivable to think of

reading through a linguistic lens, instead we need to see reading more about engagement
through a piecing together of the multimodal, hypertextual and spatial components of text
to make meaning: the words, the image, the sound, and the ‘bits’ of information which are
positioned across several spaces that may or may not be directly linked through hypertext.
In some instances, such as the blog fiction and more so the role-playing fiction, it is even
more than piecing together and puzzling through the component parts of a text; instead
reading is intimately connected to characterisation, identity and the performance of a text.
The six affordances I have identified in this paper: multimodality, hypertext, spatiality,
interaction, multiliteracies and identity construction, are not necessarily unique to digital
fiction, but in many cases the fact that they co-exist in a concentrated form means that
successful reading requires the reader to draw upon a multitude of resources simultaneously
to make meaning from the text.

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