flash fiction

Alan Bigelow tells in this interview how he started publishing online works of digital poetry around the year 1999 and where his inspirations for his work come from. Furthermore he explains why he chose to change from working with Flash to working with HTML5 and in which way this decision subsequently changed his way of writing. Then he considers the transition from printed books to digital literature from the point of view of the reader also in regards of the aesthetics of digital born literature. In the end he gives his opinion about the status of electronic literature in the academic field.

Analyzing Digital Fiction offers a collection of pioneering analyses based on replicable methodological frameworks. It offers analyses of digital works that have so far received little or no analytical attention and profiles replicable methodologies which can be used in the analyses of other digital fictions. Chapters include analyses of hypertext fiction, Flash fiction, Twitter fiction and videogames with approaches taken from narratology, stylistics, semiotics and ludology. Essays propose ways in which digital environments can expand, challenge and test the limits of literary theories which have, until recently, predominantly been based on models and analyses of print texts.

Chapters:

1.Introduction: From Theorizing to Analyzing Digital Fiction Alice Bell, Astrid Ensslin and Hans Kristian Rustad

Section 1: Narratological Approaches

2. Media-Specific Metalepsis in 10:01 Alice Bell

3.Digital Fiction and Worlds of Perspective David Ciccoricco

4. Seeing into the Worlds of Digital Fiction Daniel Punday

Section 2: Social Media and Ludological Approaches

5. Playing with rather than by the Rules: Metaludicity, Allusive Fallacy and Illusory Agency in The Path. Astrid Ensslin

6. 140 Characters in Search of a Story: Twitterfiction as an Emerging Narrative Form Bronwen Thomas

7. Amnesia, the Dark Descent: The Player's Very Own Purgatory Susana Tosca

8. Wreading Together: The Double Plot of Collaborative Digital Fiction Isabell Klaiber

Section 3: Semiotic-Rhetorical Approaches

9. (In-)Between Word, Image and Sound: Cultural Encounter in Flight Paths. Hans Kristian Rustad

10. Figures of Gestural Manipulation in Digital Fictions Serge Bouchardon

11. Hyperfiction as a Medium for Drifting Times: A Close Reading of the German Hyperfiction Zeit für die Bombe Alexandra Saemmer

Afterword Roberto Simanowski.

Since the demise of the 'Golden Age' of literary hypertext (Coover 1999) and the theoretical debates surrounding online and offline electronic literature that followed in its wake, the study of digital fiction in particular has undergone a significant paradigm shift. Recent research has moved from a 'first-wave' of pure theoretical debate to a 'second-wave' of close stylistic and semiotic analysis. While the theoretical intricacies of second-wave digital fiction theory have been well debated (e.g. Ciccoricco 2007, Ensslin 2007, Ensslin and Bell 2007, Bell 2010 forthcoming), the discipline and practice of close-reading digital fiction require a more systematic engagement and understanding than offered by previous scholarship. With this in mind, the Digital Fiction International Network ('DFIN', funded by The Leverhulme Trust since January 2009) has been exploring new avenues of defining and implementing approaches to close-reading, with the tripartite trajectory of developing a range of tools and associated terminology for digital fiction analysis; of providing a body of analyses based on the close-reading of texts, which are substantiated by robust theoretical and terminological conclusions; and of fostering a collaborative network of academics working on inter-related projects.

In following this agenda, this paper offers a comparative approach to second person narration in two exemplary digital fictions: geniwate and Deena Larsen’s satirical flash fiction, The Princess Murderer (2003), and Jon Ingold's interactive fiction mystery, All Roads (2006 [2001]). We aim to explore the extent to which print-oriented narratological approaches to the textual 'You' (e.g. Herman 1994) apply to the texts under investigation and suggest theoretical tenets arising from their distinct (inter-)medial and ludic qualities (cf. Ryan 1999). Of particular interest will be the ways in which the reader and his/her role in the cybernetic feedback loop are constructed textually and interactionally.

(Source: Authors' abstract for ELO_AI)

This article offers a close-reading of geniwate's and Deena Larsen’s satirical, ludic Flash fiction The Princess Murderer (2003), with a specific focus on how the text implements second person narration and other forms of the textual you (Herman 1994, 2002) in juxtaposition with other narrational stances.