Is interactive fiction the future of books?

Global design agency IDEO thinks merging the digital novel with playful interactions might lead to a new era of writing...
by: Keith Stuart


The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

What impact will digital books have on the experience of the written word – apart from the form factor, and the ability to store hundreds of works on a single ebook reader? Will the rise of gadgets like Kindle and tablet computers like iPad actually contribute to the medium in a creative way?


This is a question that design consultancy IDEO has grappled with, producing a Vimeo clip to show three possible book-reading applications for tablet computers and ebook readers: Nelson, Coupland and Alice. It's the third (from 3:03 onwards) that interests us. Alice, the narrative informs us, is "an interactive reading experience that invites the reader to engage with the story-telling process [...] Stories unfold and develop through the reader's active participation."

For example, clues could be unlocked by shaking the screen so that most of the words 'fall off' revealing hidden codes. Other narrative elements could be unveiled by opening the book while in a specific geographic location. The video also mentions the possibility of receiving text messages and emails from characters in the book. I guess Silence of the Lambs would be a bit more scary if you started getting texts from Buffalo Bill asking what your dress size is.

But these are more like reading enhancements than truly interactive narrative features. Later, the narrator talks about the reader adding to the narrative, co-developing the story, thereby gaining access to secret events, character backstories and new chapters. "In time a non-linear narrative emerges, allowing the reader to immerse themselves in the story from multiple angles."

Of course, interactive fiction is far from a new idea. 'Choose your own adventure books' were massive in the eighties, and the adventure gaming genre has been a mainstay of the computer games industry since the likes of The Hobbit and Zork. There's also been a thriving interactive fiction scene on the web for a decade, with independent developers creating interesting experimental examples to download.

But can 'traditional' novels really be enhanced in this way? I can sort of see the value in an ebook app that will hyperlink from any real-life location, item or person mentioned in a story, to further information online. I spent much of my time while reading James Ellroy's American Tabloid, looking up information on the Kennedy presidency, Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. But then, this is something of a distraction while you're trying to become engrossed in a novel, and could easily be commercially exploited – the last thing most readers will want is an electronic novel stuffed with contextual advertising so that every place name or brand comes with a link to the relevant manufacturer or tourist board.

There's also the question of longevity. It's all very well setting up lots of nice little augmented reality stunts for a book's launch, but how long will the publisher support geo-tagging and 'secret events' for a single work? We don't all read the same books at the same time. And also this concept of a non-linear, multi-perspective narrative – well, that might be fine for, say, Bret Easton Ellis, but the core of most novels is their very subjectivity.

I think there are definite possibilities, though, for a new breed of novels, and a coming generation of writers, to play with the ebook format and develop lots of new interactive ideas. There's already a growing mass of writers who are simultaneously contributing to games, films, comics and novels, combining narrative methods as entertainment evolves. Readers of crime fiction enjoy sorting the clues from the red herrings, so why not make that process more visual and haptic?

I'm not sure this concept should be applied to the canon of printed literature already available. I don't want to have to hang around in Clerkenwell to unlock some extra info on Bill Sykes, or play a balloon piloting game to ruin the beginning of Enduring Love. We all know that imagination is the ultimate form of narrative interactivity. But I quite like the idea of fresh novels that allow us to use the functionality of the technology to open up new elements. It's not sacrilege, is it? It's just... new.