I was reading this article, by Alain Miles on Writers Without Borders, which enthuses about where novels may be headed now that eReaders are becoming more and more common.
The article is great, although I disagree with the idea that more interactivity will make books better. I can see illustrations you can "play" with being a great addition to children's books, but to me, having to interact with the book itself, in any significant way, is just a distraction from the story.
To me, a book should slurp you into its world, not yank your attention away from it. I find flipping the page an invisible-enough activity, but if there are moving pictures on the screen? If I am prompted to pause my reading in order to play a video? Good Google, I find typos annoying--interactive content would drive me mental.
What I want from a novel is to get sucked in so powerfully that I miss my bus stop, that I don't hear the phone ring, that I find myself unable to put the book down even though I have to be up for work in 4 hours and my eyeballs feel like matzo ball vindaloo.
That said, if a story is gripping enough, I'm sure the interactive content would become as invisible as my bus stop does. Regardless, to me, it's not a desirable feature to add things that I plan to ignore anyway.
However, one thing the article mentions did zap by brain with thrill-juice. It notes Stefano Boscutti has a project to try to create "stories that can change in reaction to a reader’s physiological responses".
Now that could be awesome. Imagine an all-purpose book that turns into a romance novel, a horror novel, or an adventure novel, all based on which sentences make your palms sweat. The whole concept may be science fiction at this point, but it's the right idea: a device that measures my unconscious responses could potentially add value to my novel-reading experience without distracting me.
However, an infinitely-changeable, all-purpose book would also ensure people couldn't discuss their books with each other. The novel's plot would become personalized and irreproducible--non-portable, to put it in computer terms. It would exist only in your head, and the novel you read and adore wouldn't be the same novel your friend reads and adores.
And that brings up the issue of copyright. Who really wrote the book, if your body's responses helped dictate its text?
Also, as a writer, I recognize creating an all-purpose book would be daunting. You would either have to write a multitude of books, each branching in separate directions like a choose-your-own-plot novel, or the book would have to be written by a cloud of writers, each handling their own separate sub-plots.
Or--even more frighteningly--you would have to devise a computer program that seamlessly branches the story into uncountable directions. Sure, human writers would be needed to set up such a program, but once it's completed, would the computer then make human writers obsolete?
My brain is buzzing with the possibilities. None of this will happen soon, based on our current level of technology, but what if it does someday? Do you think an all-purpose book would be a fantastic creation, or the end of artists? (Or the beginning of machine-artists? Which is also a cool/alarming idea.)
Wow! This would make awesome science fiction. I may have just given myself a plot bunny.
Or a death sentence.
9 comments:
Every time I hear people talk about "interactive books," I think, "Computer games have been doing that for decades."
The main difference is an emphasis on the story vs. the gameplay. (Emphasis on the latter being the main reason a lot of games have crappy stories). I think there's definitely room for that, but I don't think it's anywhere near as innovative or revolutionary as people say it is.
Actually, what I think it is is cleverly putting video games in front of book people and saying, "Look, it's a book!"
Adam Heine: That's a great parallel you make. I was thinking about gaming in relation to this issue too, although in a different way.
To my mind, the perfect entertainment experience would be virtual reality. Video games--like other forms of art--imitate virtual reality only as far as they succeed in "immersing" the player. That is to say, the player's imagination has to be so caught up in the fictional world of the game that they forget about the real world. It's very much akin to what novels attempt to do.
The difference, with books, is that the images are formed solely inside the reader's mind, rather than being supplied directly by the book. A book that supplies the pictures becomes less a book and more a movie, and--as you note--if you add interactivity to the experience too, then it becomes a video game.
I think it's kind of a spectrum (and I feel a post coming out this somewhere). Books leave the visuals up to the imagination, but they supply the story. Computer games (the better ones, anyway) provide all the visuals, but leave certain aspects--sometimes many aspects--of the story up to the reader.
Interactive stories seem to lie between the two. Videos interspersed with text are supplying some visuals, while not handing over story decisions to the reader. While choose-your-own-adventure style texts give the reader more control over the story, closer to a game.
The real problem is that people read books because they want the story supplied for them. So branching tales are something of a niche market--one already done better by many games.
As to the impossibility of discussing a changeable story with your friends, that's already done in games too, and I don't think it's a problem.
Lots of people have played Half Life, for example, and the main story doesn't change based on how you play it. But the individual scenes, and reactions to it, are different for each player.
One person might tell the story of how they beat the assassins after they had run out of ammo. Another person--who conserved ammo better--might not have that story. Instead, they'd tell how they were pinned down by four enemy soldiers, but they shot them in the head with a Desert Eagle from 100 yards away.
Same foundation. Different stories. But still exciting for people to share them with each other.
One could raise the argument that these stories are interesting because the speaker created it from their own decisions. That might not be the case with a computer-supplied plot, however changeable it might be.
Then again, maybe it would. I don't know.
Ok video games have been doing this for a while now, Silent Hill is the most pure example of this. In Silent Hill as you solve problems, chose dialog options the character you meet, the scenes they are in, there clothing change.
In the example at Paris AI conf last year if you indicate a fear of spiders, then you will start encountering more spiders as you play, if you indicate a suggestive option, the city cop will change from a fat donut eating copy to a blond busty cop.
Ont he book idea, it also has the possibility that if you re read the book months or years later it wouldn't be the same book, if nothing else you wouldn't be scared by the same things as you know they are there and expect them so the book would adapt to be a new story on the next reading.
interesting idea.
Adam: That's a good point, about how a game can provide different experiences layered atop a single plot arc, and thus remain something people can talk about with one another.
As an aside, as a kid, I always hated those choose-your-own-adventure books because you had to stop reading and make decisions. It made it impossible for me to immerse myself the story. That's definitely part of the reason I'm so sceptical about interactive books now.
Sarf: Hey, now that's a cool thought! Or perhaps an unhappy one--you might really love a story, and then never be able to read it again.
Then again, given how popular fanfiction sometimes is, some people might think it's great being able to pick up a book featuring a favourite set of characters and read it over and over again, always getting a slightly different variation on the story they love.
There's some amazing ideas there. I keep hoping we'll get a holodeck but I think that's a bit optimistic - at least in my lifetime!
FairyHedgehog: I think holodecks would be amazing!
If we could harness the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, and guide it, that would provide virtual reality. It's also something that could conceivably happen in our lifetime, but only if someone gets busy with the idea soon!
Might make murder mysteries a bit scary.
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