Nonlinear, Interactive Stories

Linear stories move from beginning to middle to end, or from point A to point B to point C. Think of novels, movies, radio, and TV shows where viewers have little or no interactivity. The narrative of the story might jump around in time. For example, the story might begin in the middle of an event’s time frame and then flash back in time to what caused the event. But the reader follows the author’s chosen path, without interaction.

With nonlinear, interactive stories, readers become active participants, making choices that determine the progression of the story. Web content, games, and even books such as dictionaries and encyclopedias are all nonlinear and interactive. If you want to look up zemstvo in the dictionary, you don’t have to scramble through all of the pages for A through Y to get to it. Books were a great improvement upon prior forms of publishing, such as the cuneiform tablets (FIGURE 6.3) and scrolls. The difficulty in searching for information in the middle of a scroll is akin to the difficulty in finding a song in the middle of a cassette tape.