Leading British authors drawn to experiment with the scope of interactive storytelling
Blake Morrison argues that the success of experimental ebooks will depend on making interactivity more than just a feature. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe
Online fiction is a remote world, peopled by elves, dragons and whey-faced vampires. At least that is the view shared by millions of devoted readers of the printed novel. But now serious British literary talent is aiming to colonise territory occupied until now by fantasy authors and amateur fan-fiction writers.
It is a challenge that also intrigues acclaimed authors Blake Morrison and Will Self, although they detect some obstacles. As professor of creative writing at Goldsmiths College, at the University of London, Morrison has just launched a £10,000 prize for innovative new writing and argues that the success of experimental ebooks will depend on making interactivity more than just a feature. "Reading by its very nature is interactive – whether you do it on an iPad or with a printed book, you participate," he said. "The novelist creates a world and the reader brings something to it. Reading is not a passive process. Literary interactivity means more than computer games. Or should do."
Self, the Man Booker-shortlisted author of the unorthodox 2012 novel Umbrella, points out that early novelists such as Cervantes and Laurence Sterne were happy to play with format. "The sheer idea of experimentation in that form is interesting and people will want to mess around with these possibilities," he said, adding that, for him, there remains "an unavoidable linearity to the reading experience".
According to Scott Pack, head of digital development for HarperCollins, the days of just embedding music and a couple of videos into the text of an ebook are numbered: "Content doesn't need to be just words any more. We have to push to make it integral, and we can do this if writers really embrace it."
Pack's boss at HarperCollins, Victoria Barnsley, recently pinpointed online innovation as crucial to the survival of the industry. "There is a hell of a lot you can do and this has taken me into a lot of new areas," said Pack, who last year published Caroline Smailes's 99 Reasons Why, which offered 11 different endings. "By adding a GPS element, for instance, you could alter a text according to your location."
Innovation has so far centred on non-fiction and mass market ebooks, but Pack thinks the online era has broken down old boundaries between genres of writing. "There is a much broader crossover now," he said, "but literary fiction is difficult because it needs to be taken seriously. It will come down to the writing, of course, although it is unlikely authors can do it alone."
Morrison sees the possibilities opened up by interactive books, but will not give up on the printed page. "I don't see this as a war between old and new, between the fustiness of print and the excitement of reading on Kindles and iPads," he said. "Most authors are interested in both technologies. Most readers are too. We all want the best of both worlds. And why not?"
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