The Reader as Co-Author

In his 1991 landmark history of composing and computers Writing Space, Jay David Bolter defines the “producer” and “consumer” roles in interactive media by saying that when an author writes in hypertext, he or she essentially “defers” words in a space where they sit until they encounter a reader who “reactivates” them, creating a new context for their meaning which “may be close to or far removed from the author’s original context” (30). Indeed, while watching others interface with their work, some hypertext writers may flinch at their loss of control in this new media, even as the reader basks in the new freedom to move about and determine his or her own path through the text.

One of the key elements of traditional rhetoric and essay writing has been organization, or the spatial orientation of material on the pages, from the placement of the three-pronged thesis statement in the old five-paragraph themes to the strategic understanding of “power positions” in arranging an argumentative essay. In hypertext, however, much of this kind authorial authority is lost. The reader clicks through the essay in any order they choose, undercutting the geography of persuasion many authors have learned to rely on. In almost any form of hypertext – sales, informational, gaming, fiction – it is the user who determines what information they will expose themselves to and in what order.  

Two essential properties for successful digital environments (out of four Janet Murray outlines in Hamlet on the Holodeck) are that they are procedural and participatory, which brings us to the role of the reader as collaborator. Whether the hypertext in question is helping the user register for classes, rescue a fictional princess, or take a virtual cruise down the Nile, Murray points out that a textual experience is only created when the participant becomes physically involved, making choices that will cause the computer to execute a set of rules. 

Though modeled in part on the absolute freedom of cognitive interactivity and chaos theory, the non-linearity possible in hypertext is, relatively speaking, a highly structured sort of chaos. Murray describes the author’s role by comparing it to “a choreographer who suppliers the rhythms, the context, and the set of steps that will be performed” (153). So although the reader can travel on many potential paths in an order of their choosing, at this point in time, it is the writer who lays the rhetoric of the path. 

This, however, might change in the future. Murray asserts that “interactors can only act within the possibilities that have been established by the writing and programming,” and so far, this is true; however, it will remain true only so long as our ideas about property rights and the necessity of publishing on discrete, read-only media exist.

Interactivity is already increasing both in terms of the level of user participation and in terms of shared access to the programming on servers and through the re-writable CD. Within a generation at most, users of computer programs, hypertexts, and games should be able to easily supplement what the original author has created by adding in complications, storylines, and characters from their own imaginations (consider the amount of fan fiction posted on almost any web site concerning a popular TV show, movie, or book series). 

Likewise, as computers themselves grow “smarter,” it will be simple for a program to execute a command to search for a compatible text when the user has fewer than five or so paths left to explore. So, for example, if you are nearly through reading the Arthurian Romances, the computer might link you into any of a number of related texts – from Gawain to Malory to late twentieth century pulp fantasy. What stops this kind of interactivity right now is not technology, but the financial sense of copyright and prevailing sense of ownership, two barriers that may prove too strong to be overcome. 

Consciously handing the reader responsibility for determining the meaning of a text is a challenge the writers in interactive media must confront directly. Reading comprehension theories have suggested for decades that all readers interpret texts in their own way; however, when we are the authors of linear texts, we still have enough control of the direction of our plots and the perceived development of characters to create the self-delusion we are in charge of a text’s meaning. This illusion – which may be stronger in the young writers who fill my classes and who haven’t heard of reader response theory – cannot be maintained in hypertext where everyone who interacts with the product not only concludes their reading with different interpretations of the resolution but frequently concludes at different physical points in the text. 

In some ways being unable to control the order in which readers will encounter scenes or to decree a set resolution to a text changes the writer’s role from Omniscient Creator to traffic cop. The primary role for the writer becomes to avoid creating the end of the story, to resist reaching a single, definitive conclusion and, instead, to provide gaps and links for the readers so they continue on until they reach their own resolution.