New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age

Introduction In recent years developments in digital technology have played a signii-cant role in the transformation of narrative theory and practice. Stories that exploit the capacity of digital media (that is, those that necessitate the computer for their production and display) have provided vital new territory against which the tools of narrative analysis could be tested and reened. As such, technological innovations from the s onward have been pivotal in providing an alternative to the conventions of print media narrative, allowing those working in narrative theory to scrutinize the nature of narrative production and reception from a fresh perspective. By the s a wealth of criticism was available that made radical claims for a narrative revolution in the light of hypertext, gaming, s, and s (Douglas ; Aarseth ; Landow ; Murray ; Hayles). is criticism engaged with a range of narrative concepts, including questions about plot, event structures, and temporality, as well as questions about how stories are produced and experienced, debated in relation to matters such as interactivity, immersion, and agency. At the start of the twenty-rst century, much has changed both in the kinds of narratives that are now available in digital media and in the approaches taken to analyze them. e hypertexts of the s published on-by Eastgate have acquired almost canonical status, and have since been supplemented by " born digital " hypertext narratives, that is, digital ctions that were created to use Internet applications to link to sites beyond themselves. Meanwhile, the development of multimedia so-ware such as Adobe's Flash in the mid-s enabled creators to integrate an increasingly sophisticated multimodal range of resources into digital texts. While visual and verbal elements have always been present in digital ction—for example, in the use of icons, illustration, and layout—in early hyperction the textual content remained central. Typically, narra-Introduction tive was carried primarily in the verbal elements of the text, and navigation was enabled through hyperlinked words (illustrative examples are found in Deena Larsen's Disappearing Rain [[[[] and Geo Ryman's [[]). What Kate Hayles (((() describes as the second wave of digital ction enriches the multimodal capacity of electronic literature. No longer are words so prominent, but graphics and animation are just as likely to communicate story content or be used as part of the interactive interface. Contemporary examples include the quasi-cinematic qualities like Pullinger and Joseph's ongoing work Inanimate Alice, or the visual richness of …