Digital Fiction, Readers and ‘You’: An Empirical Approach

Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin, and Jen Smith

Overview

• What is digital fiction?

• Reading Digital Fiction

• Research context– Narrative ‘you’

• Empirical study with The Princess Murderer – Method– Some initial findings

CAVE Fiction Web Hypertext Fiction

Interactive Fiction (IF)CD-ROM Hypertext Fiction

Flash Fiction

Literary Videogames App-Fiction

• How can we use empirical literary methods to examine reader responses to digital fictions?

• Do readers’ responses to digital fictions corroborate or challenge current theories of narrative ‘you’ ?

‘You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveller. Relax. Concentrate.’

Print fiction

‘In Shadow of the Colossus, you play as an unknown soldier, tasked with finding and killing 16 Colossi that roam the land, in order to appease the spirits that inhabit a shrine.’

Videogame

‘You’ve funnelled the lion’s share of the palace’s improvement budget…’

Interactive Fiction (IF)

Ensslin and Bell 2012

Empirical Approach: Initial Study

• 3 readers (1 female, 2 male)

• Part 1: Free reading to provide ‘naturalistic’ reading experience (Swann & Allington 2009).

• Part 2: Structured reading for ‘experimental’ (Swann & Allington, 2009) empirical research and to present ‘textual stimulus, enduring properties of the text [that] do not vary with the reader or the reading situation’ (Bortolussi & Dixon 2003).

11

You = ‘me the reader’

You = ‘a fictional character’

Address ‘you’

‘Double-deixis’ → ‘Fictional reference’.

P1

“I’m the reader” there, because it’s asking me “Don’t I believe in their pain?”, which makes me think, “Do you know what? I don’t. I remember I’m reading fiction”.

‘So I’m going to stick with [me the reader], but if I was reading it as one individual sentence and had not read the one before, then I’m trying to save the character by being the character because I’m emotional and I do feel things.'

You = character You = reader

Don’t you xsaves you xYou look xyour hands x

P2

‘It’s exactly how I feel at the moment reading it. I don’t really believe the pain.’

‘It’s a bit between’

‘It’s like a physical action. “You look at your hands dripping in blood”. There’s no interpretation in that. The reader’s hands aren’t dripping in blood. The character’s hands must be.’

You = character You = reader

Don’t you xsaves you x You look x your hands x

P3

‘It’s trying to connect you with what’s going on so rather than randomly clicking, it’s trying to suggest that, trying to get you to think about your action while you’re doing it.’

‘It’s going back to a reference of looking at your actions again, rather than earlier, just up there, I felt like it was talking about your . It’s saying “Look at your hands, they’re dripping in blood”. I feel it’s going back more towards the character’.

You = character You = reader

Don’t you xsaves you x You look x your hands x

What has the data told us?

• Resistant 'actualised address’ (cf. Stockwell 2009: 150-2, Gavins 2007: 170-2)

• Phelan's (1994) 'ideal narrative audience' (cf. Whiteley 2011)

• ‘Double-deixis’ • Style of reader responses

Conclusions and Future Research• New method for ‘you’.• Applicable to more texts.• Analysis combined with empirical approach. • character you reader. • ‘You’ more generally

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