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E-lit is intentional fiction created to use the unique features of a digital space.

• The first wave of e-lit writing mostly used the current possibilities of the internet: HTML-based webpages
• Later e-lit uses everything: Flash animation, 3D virtual spaces like Second Life, code work (e.g. poetry that uses some of the terminology and structure of programming languages), interactive fiction, games, and rogue uses of platform that weren’t intended for fiction (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, GoogleMaps… basically anything that can be used to tell a story)
• With so many types of e-lit, it’s hard to talk about features all e-lit shares, but there are a few commonalities: multi-linear (many paths of reading), interactivity and choice instead of passive reading, multimedia (use of more than one form of media: video, text, music, navigable 3D space…), and exploitation of our expectations for a digital space (e.g. we assume a link will bring us to another page–what if it does something else? If a writer’s trying to make the reader share a protagonist’s frustration, perhaps they seed they story with links that don’t actually go anywhere no matter how often you click them)
• As well as e-lit has explored these possibilities, don’t forget that a lot of them are usable in print form, too (though they’re used far less often). Think of Choose Your Own Adventure books (multi-linear!). Robert Coover has a short story called “Heart Suit” that’s printed on large playing cards; there’s a set first and last card, but you shuffle the rest of the cards and place them between in any order before reading.

Some questions to ask yourself:

• What e-lit have you encountered already? (e.g. Twitter/Facebook accounts for someone’s cat)
• Is there anything you saw in your reading of e-lit that you might use for your own work, either for a class project or outside class?
• Did you have trouble navigating any of the works? Did you want to make maps or other devices to help you find everything or get back to where you were before?
• Did any works seem broken or not work with your device? Did the works seem dated in other ways?
• How do you feel about e-lit as a way to tell stories, in comparison to more traditional forms like a novel?

Three questions for evaluating e-lit:

1. What is the work trying to do, both in the story it’s trying to tell and how it’s trying to make the reader think and feel?
2. What are the significant and/or noticeable features of the e-lit’s digital design? (Does it use GoogleMaps, video, link to jarring images…?)
3. How successfully does #2 match up with #1? That is, how does the digital design of the work support its narrative?

Another way to describe the homework assignment:

Imagine the narrative you created last week as a piece of electronic literature–what might stay the same about the narrative, and what might change? For example, might you use hyperlinks to tell different characters’ viewpoints? Would music help the reader identify more with a given character? After spending some time imagining the e-lit you’d create if given the tools and know-how, make a list of specific things you’d do to your narrative to use the full power of the digital at its service. Go beyond basic statements like “links” and “video” to explain how these features might expand your narrative. Consider:

• erasure. What happens if you strike out, obscure, or replace certain parts of your narrative text? What happens if it’s hard to read against the text’s background?
• visual design (changes to the typography, layout, animation, legibility, division of text onto multiple pages…)
• linking in multiple ways:
  • to continue one line of thinking or plot
  • to provide alternate paths of plot
  • to illustrate (graphics, sound, etc.; not only in a purely one-to-one illustrative fashion, but also in evocative or interpretive ways. Marble Springs’ author Deena Larsen notes that “connections do not have to be tangible to be real.”)
• to provide context (flashbacks, definitions, intertextuality)
• media (videos, music, still images; created by you or referenced by the text)
• interactivity (how might you let the reader interact with your story?)

Homework assignment example:
1. Caitlin’s short story (“Literally a Hat”) describes an ace amateur detective checking out a crime scene. Two possibilities for an e-lit version:

• Follow you process of thinking and secretly gives you points depending on how early you figure it out (figures of suspects at side, you highlight ones you’re still suspicious of)
• Add items to your inventory, can’t go forward if you don’t pick up the right clues or know how to juxtapose them (Indiana Jones: statue + mayo)

Your e-lit version doesn’t need to be game-like, though–and in fact, many of your stories might not be suited to a game as well as to other tactics. Using an inventory to pick up objects works great with a story that rewards noticing and clue gathering, but an inventory might not make any sense for a story that doesn’t contain crime or mystery. You can always use things Deena Larsen suggests on her site, or imagine something entirely different–the story just needs to use (or abuse!) the digital platform.
2. Justin’s “Mirror Mirror” story made me think about doubling (mirrors, obviously), so one e-lit intervention might be to have every reference to a mirror in the story be hyperlinked to a page that looks like it’s the same story… except it’s slightly different and slightly odd (a through-the-looking-glass effect).

Looking forward to seeing what you dream up!

Here are many of the small notes and ideas that I’ve collected as part of the first few weeks of a creative writing course.

Stories

What is a story?

A story is a conspiracy involving the author and the reader to create something from the text on the page. There is no story until the reader breaths life into the author’s creation. This doesn’t mean that writing can’t be for the author’s benefit. Consider the essay.

The story process is similar to how we translate languages: the writer has a story to tell, so they produce a text which represents the story as they understand it; the reader acquires the text and builds a story which represents the text as they undertand it. A successful author is able to reproduce in the reader’s mind the same story that they started with.

What do stories do?

Successful stories change the reader. If the reader doesn’t feel or think differently after reading the story, then the story might as well not exist. The effect is the same.

Stories are a form of communication. Communication is negotiation. Effective storytelling allows for more effective communication, which results in better negotiation.

Stories should be believable. If they aren’t, they will trigger a mental defense reflex that makes the mind reject what the stories are trying to do. This is called “verisimilitude,” or “being like truth.” If you are a fan of Stephen Colbert, you can consider this the “truthiness” of the story.

Stories can have impossible things happen, but they have to be introduced in a way that the mind will accept them as consistent with the setting. This is a part of the negotiation between the author and the reader.

Even small things can affect the mind’s perception of the story. A successful text (the words on the page, not what the reader imagines) disappears, and the reader is only aware of the story that springs up as they read. Wrong spelling, grammar, or syntax will interrupt this perception of the story because the mind anticipates what should be coming next. When it gets something that isn’t anticipated, it has to stop and reorient itself. This reorientation breaks the flow of the story and makes the reader aware of the text.

Where do stories come from?

Stories come from everywhere: survival strategies, reporting, investigation, learning by playing, entertainment, and escapism. Imagination. Dreams. Synchrony, coincidence, and observation.

How do we develop stories?

We develop stories through mental role play: we talk to ourselves. We also develop stories through writing, stream of consciousness, editing, revision, and reflection.

Plots and Time

Plot is the emotional momentum in the story: how the story progresses in the reader’s time. Time within the story doesn’t have to be linear, but the emotional buildup and release should be fairly straightforward for the reader.

Plots have four ingredients:

• Setup,
• Discovering the problem,
• Discovering the solution,
• Implementing the solution.

The “climax” is the move from discovering to implementing the solution.

Traditional stories have all of the parts. Modern stories tend to leave off the beginning or the end.

Showing and Telling

Characters

Point of View

Story Ingredients

When everyone rolls into class today, you are going to see that MITH transformed in the short seven days since you were here last. After much wrangling and pain with construction folk, the MITH display spline (courtesy Matt Kirschenbaum’s photo) has been installed. The spline was conceptualized as a way for MITH to provide physical space to display research artifacts we use for e-literature, gaming, and born-digital research. We have one of the foremost collections of this stuff in the US and having it all stacked away in closets is a bit like hiding diamonds in a bag of rock salt—you know it is there but trying to find it is a pain in the rear. Our spline is stocked with items from the Deena Larsen and Bill Bly Collections as well as MITH’s antique/vintage computing collection.Last night, we had an open house and without a doubt, the spline (and Testudo) were the hit of the evening. Everyone seemed to use the display as an opportunity to reminisce about their own experiences with the various computing systems on display. Stories abounded of people’s first encounter with Nintendo, Apple II’s, wordprocessors, etc.

Last night, as I was trying to wind down from the event and simultaneously shoving copious amounts of pizza down my gullet (how come I never get around to eating at these types of things?), I kept thinking of how different the event would have been had the physical objects not been part of the space. What if instead of the Apple II physical computer you had an Apple II emulator? Would people still have begun telling stories or would their recollections have been tempered by the fact that they weren’t able to physically experience the computers? In some ways, we tested this premise at last year’s Maryland Day….we loaded up a couple of computers with emulators (because having historical artifacts sitting outside in the rain on the quad isn’t good archival practice) and made them available for people to play. Without the recognizable Apple II computer, fewer people stopped than we anticipated and while those who stopped did navigate the emulator, only a couple stayed more than a few minutes to play or chat. Almost no one stopped and also used the time to reminisce about their own use of the technology.

I was reading Kelsey’s post and she was talking about how she’d never move to an e-reader. That has been a hot topic of discussion among writers and publishers…whether the experience of reading a book has been destroyed by kindle/e-readers. I made the switch to an e-reader (a Kindle first and now kindle app for iPad) almost three years ago. I’m a huge reader…usually around a 1000 to 1500 pages a week of pleasure reading (fiction, mystery, romance, sci-fi—anything but biographies really) and another 200 or so for academic reading. It’s what I do on the bus, between appointments, nights/weekends. I used to buy on order of 15-20 physical books a month…now I’m buying/renting 3-5 physical books and another 10-15 e-books. What’s been interesting about all of this (and what relates to the spline) is that I used to share books way more frequently than I do now that I’ve moved to e-books. I used to loan out books to friends and family, academic books to students and colleagues, and now that happens much more rarely. I continue to invest in physical books for my scholarly reading but when it comes to fun reading, it’s all about the e-book. I can get them on the day they are released, from any wi-fi network. I even downloaded a new book on an international flight this summer while winging my way to germany. But I can’t loan them out the way I do with physical books…and there is no used e-book market the way there is for physical books. I’m paying full price on a book even if it is 5 or 6 years old….and that’s a problem.

So, we are talking about storytelling and digital spaces and I’m wondering what happens to stories when they die….where do stories go? is there a story heaven somewhere for those stories people no longer read? and if stories only exist in one medium (physical or digital but not both) how do understand the limits of their survival? What’s the lifecycle of a digital story?

 

 

If you look closely at my avatar, you’ll notice some trees in the background. That’s because the picture was taken on the Texas A&M University campus, where I worked before coming to MITH almost two years ago. If you ever visit TAMU, you’ll notice people saying “Howdy!” to each other.

I grew up in Texas around San Antonio. Summers were hot. Winters weren’t all that cold. If snow fell, school was let out for the day because everyone was afraid the roads would close. Hard to imagine with the winters we have around here.

We didn’t have air conditioning. In the summer, when temperatures would rise above 95 degrees, the operating limit for computers back in the ’80s, we’d plop down in front of a fan and read a book. I tried to imagine a world where books were available on-line and on-demand, computers had gigabytes of memory (and would fit in my hand), and computer screens were as good as a laser printer. It’s taken twenty years or so, but we’re almost there.

I was fortunate in high school to have an internship at Southwest Research Institute where I explored chaos theory by building a digital model of a dripping faucet to explore energy transfer patterns between the solar wind and the earth’s magnetosphere. It was fun and challenging. I later used that experience in a math modeling class to see how well I could predict stock prices. The trick in life is to use what we learn in new and interesting ways.

Around the same time, I became interested in text adventure games, both the single and multi player varieties. I’ve played around with LPMuds and played MMORPGs like EverQuest for the Mac and World of Warcraft. Over the course of the semester, we’ll explore how these games work as stories. If you have an interest in text game development, planet mud-dev is a good place to check out.

My background is in Physics, Math, and English, so don’t be surprised if I bring in some science or math into our discussions. I’ve asked you to view a wide range of TED talks and read a lot of stuff about writing and story telling for the second week. Some of it is academic, but there are also a few pieces that aren’t all that scholarly. Communication happens in many ways.

Hi everyone. My name is Porter Olsen and I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the English department working on a dissertation exploring the relationships between digital culture and postcolonial literature. What does that mean? It means that I’m interested in how authors in the global south (the preferred term to “third world countries”) think about, represent, and integrate cell phones, computers, GPS devices, etc. in the stories they tell.

For this class, I’m interested in how space and place figure into stories, especially in our digital world of 3D video games and virtual worlds (such as Second Life). We’re going to talk about how humans have been “virtualizing” spaces and places through writing long before we started making 3D worlds with computers, and then we’ll apply what we learn by creating our own machinima (machine + cinema) videos, paying special attention to the importance of space in our story telling. Just to give you a sense of what machinima is and how it’s been used in the past to tell stories, here are two examples. (The first is somewhat less serious than the latter, but it does include a pretty interesting discussion of the importance of space. See if you can spot it.)

Red vs. Blue (using Halo 2)

History Channel Decisive Battles: Attila The Hun (using Rome: Total War)

I look forward to studying digital storytelling with you this semester, and if you have a favorite machinima, feel free to link it in the comments section!

The official story of how I ended up here is this (stolen from my usual venue at MITH): Jennifer Guiliano received a Bachelors of Arts in English and History from Miami University (2000), a Masters of Arts in History from Miami University (2002), and a Masters of Arts (2004) in American History from the University of Illinois before completing her Ph.D. in History at the University of Illinois (2010). She has served as a Post-Doctoral Research Assistant and Program Manager at the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (2008-2010) and as Associate Director of the Center for Digital Humanities (2010-2011) and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of South Carolina. Her post-doctoral work contributes to the growing discipline of digital humanities through her explorations of how computing transforms both the questions humanists can ask as well as the answers that can be generated with digital tools, methods, and pedagogies. Her day to day responsibilities at MITH focus on project development including grant writing, project management, staff supervision, and aiding the MITH team in their digital humanities endeavors. Lots of words that really just point to a bunch of degrees and a host of former jobs….all of which boils down to the fact that I’m a historian who works at a digital humanities center.

so why am I blogging here: When I was 10 years old, I was bored to death one summer and my mother challenged me to read every book in our public library about Abraham Lincoln. If I read everything by the end of summer, she’d take me and my younger brother to visit Lincoln sites in Illinois. Probably doesn’t sound like a cool summer to most but for a kid stuck in Ohio in the middle of summer who was fascinated with history and particularly the history of the 19th century, the idea of getting to go visit the places I read about in books was awesome. So fast forward 10 plus weeks ( all 6 volumes of the Carl Sandburg biography of Lincoln and over 3000 pages), and I was loaded into the car with my mom and my brother to go spend a long weekend visiting the places I’d been reading about. Between my love of reading and my love of talking, I decided that summer that I wanted a career where I could tell stories that mattered. Stories of the past that could help us remember and stories that could transform our understanding of the future. Since unpaid know it all was taken, I decided being an academic would have to be second best.

So where does the digital play into this? I was a lucky kid in the 1980s. My mom loved technology so we were the first family in our group to have an Apple computer, an Atari, and a whole host of other 1980s tech. I was the only seven year old obsessed with answering every question on Jeopardy (1986, Apple IIe), and playing every possible permutation of the Oregon Trail (which we’ll play in class). When my brothers were fighting over the atari, I was memorizing every play sequence possible. All of this translated into a summer in a program run by my local college for kids interested in technology—we toured state of the art (for 1989/1990) facilities for robotics and computing and even got to build our own robot. Geeky I know but it was seriously fun at the time and kicked off a decades long fascination with technology that has only grown. And when the graphical browser moved us from green screens and terminals to visual interfaces, it was like an entirely new world for me. I lived through CompuNet, Compuserve, AOL, dial-up….each something built on an older technology that we now call obsolete. I learned to build CPU’s from scratch in the basement of a friends’ house and how to solder circuit boards into place on laptops. Hardware, software, didn’t matter. I love the notion that technology constantly evolves and challenges not just how we communicate but what we know and how we know it.

I trained in one of the most conservative disciplines…history. Three different times when I was in graduate school I was told by a faculty member that the type of research I wanted to do wasn’t “historical” enough. It was too contemporary, too cultural, or too interdisciplinary. So, I became a digital humanist. Where I could tell the types of stories I wanted to tell, with technologies that would not just let me tell the stories but became essential modes of how I got to the answers. So, when DCC proposed I teach a course, I thought about all the things I would want to know when it comes to digital culture and creativity and then I turned to the people I work with…who are experts in their particular fields…and we brainstormed. What united our work as a historian, two literature scholars, and a physicist/computer scientist? What types of things would we want to learn in a class on digital culture and creativity? And how could we make this course interesting? If we were going to spend 16 weeks together, where would we want to end up?

So, each of you ended up here because you chose to take the class….I’m here because I want to see what stories each of you want to tell. They can be personal, public, private, political, apolitical, historical, ahistorical, I don’t care. I just want, by the end, for each of you to understand what is narration, how it plays into the modern digital world, and how storytelling forms an integral part of everyday experiences. Along the way, I want each of you to think about how digital spaces and platforms enable and limit you in telling stories. And if I get to sneak in all the cool stuff I love (like oregon trail), all the better.

Now for the avatar portion: the avatar is my standard professional avatar representing how I work best…on my couch, in my pajamas, at home.

 

 

Hey, everyone! My name is Amanda Visconti, and I’m one of your four course instructors for Digital Storytelling. My background is in both literature and technology–I’m a web developer at MITH and am also working on a doctorate in literature here at UMD. I chose to teach this course because I spend a lot of time thinking about how the material design of literary forms–physical and visual stuff, like the layout of books, hardware of the SNES, or the technological constraints on the code behind web pages–influences what a narrative can do, and there’s a much wider, weirder frontier of unexplored possibilities for stories in the digital realm then there is for book form (though artists’ books are also really neat!).

I never encountered anything digital in my college English classes ( : / ) and I felt more mentally and creatively challenged in my undergrad digital art courses, crafting stories through 3D animation or building websites to teach other people cool stuff I’d learned (an ongoing project is making websites that help people enjoy James Joyce’s amazingly complex, rewards-you-on-multiple-readings novel Ulysses, like this and this). Figuring out that I could combine my passions for the geeky (code, design, 3d animation) and nerdy (wacky Modernist novels and the visual design of books) was an important moment for me, so I’ve tried to pass that awareness on by teaching literature that includes the digital and hypertextual, from multilinear print stories to web comics and digital games.

Speaking of games as something you can study: I ran a digital humanities unconference earlier this year where we built and discussed digital and analog games, and strongly recommend you check out the next version (in Cleveland this February) if you’re thinking about studying games seriously. I’m also part of a UMD research team that builds, runs, and studies alternate reality games (real-world and digital games where you play yourself, but the world is slightly augmented, more dramatic, more challenging).

I’d love to swap recommendations for graphic novels, video/computer games, and any other type of new media you’re into. Looking forward to reading your introductory blog posts and getting to work with you!

We’re looking forward to the first day of class this week! Please email guiliano@umd.edu with any general course questions about the course. We’ll see you at Hornbake Library 0301 (in the basement; look for the “MITH” sign) on Thursday.

During our third class, we’ll be building a basic webpage in class using HTML (we’ll also be eating astronaut ice cream, because why do one awesome thing when you can do two?). To help me get a sense of your backgrounds and structure the class appropriately, please answer this quick poll now (you’ll need to log in first).

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