Wake is a first person narrative which tells the story of a girl trying to reach the mountain summit with her close friend, unaware that he and the rest of the world around her is nothing more a dream. As the dream world is often composed more of impressions and emotions rather than specific details, this narrative would benefit greatly from adopting the style of an e-lit. Due to the lonely mountain environment in which the scene takes place, as well as the vague nature of dreams, this e-lit should be minimalist in nature, balancing sparse text, sound, and video to create this effect.
Visually, the effect would be reminiscent of Donna Leishman’s Deviant: The Possession of Christian Shaw, in which the scenes remain static until readers explore further through interaction. For Wake, I would reverse the placement of the videos and static images as it is seen in Leishman’s e-lit. Each scene (the climb, the detour, and the waking) would take the form of a looped video with sparse detail and emphasis on environmental scenes. The video will take up the entirety of the window, mimicking true first person view, and will repeat until the reader until the reader clicks on key pieces of scenery. These key items are in fact buttons marking hyperlinks, which would direct the reader to a static, close up image of the object in question before the narrative moves on to the next video.
Text would be sparse compared to the original blog post, including only the literal thoughts of the character rather than describing more action heavy scenes, as the video sections should sufficiently communicate. Attempting to overlap these mediums would be redundant, and complicate the emotional reception of the narrative. Text would primarily appear accompanying interactive scenes, or at the beginning of a looped video in order to set the scene.
While the text is an important aspect though, music can tell a narrative just as effectively. Thus in my opinion, it is a necessity of e-lit. In the case of this narrative, however, it should be used in moderation. Gentle, simple music should be used in the background of each video (I imagine it being light but bittersweet,) accompanied by occasional ambient background noise. This music, like the videos, will be on constant loop until the reader progresses, and should be non-repetitive.
IT IS CRUCIAL, however, that this music stops during the static images. Such silence represents a slowing of pace in the narrative, encouraging a pause in thought as the reader contemplates the item of interest uninterrupted. The ambient noise, however may continue, and in some cases may even intensify, as it may originate from the key object.
An example of all these factors working together can be seen in the final scene of the narrative. Each quadrant of the video is a button which shakes the “camera” in various directions and zooms in on the target area, putting the reader entirely in control of the scenery. However, this control is in itself an illusion, similar to the endgame of Shadow of the Colossus, in which the player maintains full control of the character without being able to alter his fate through their struggles. The music begins to intensify and become incoherent, mimicking the increasing loss of control. The scene will eventually light to a white background, which serves as one large hyperlink. Upon clicking this, the music will first calm, then cease entirely. A video will then play in which the white scene transitions to the familiar sight of the bedroom.