Storyworlds across Media

se ries editors

Frontiers of

Narrative

Jesse E. Matz Kenyon College

David Herman Ohio State University

Storyworlds
across Media
Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology
edited by marie-laure ryan
and jan-nol thon

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln and London

 2014 by the Board of Regents of the University of

Nebraska. Acknowledgments for the use of copyrighted material appear on page xi, which constitutes
an extension of the copyright page. All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

Publication of this volume was assisted by the

Research Unit Media Convergence at the Johannes
Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Storyworlds across media: toward a media-conscious
narratology / edited by Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Nol Thon.
p. cm.(Frontiers of narrative)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8032-4563-1 (pbk.: alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8032-5532-6 (pdf)
isbn 978-0-8032-5533-3 (epub)
isbn 978-0-8032-5534-0 (mobi) 1. Narration (Rhetoric) 2. Discourse analysis, Narrative. 3. Storytelling
in mass media. 4. Mass media and language. I. Ryan,
Marie-Laure, 1946 editor of compilation. II. Thon,
Jan-Nol, editor of compilation.
p96.n35s86 2014
302.2301'4dc23
2014003405
Set in Minion Pro by Renni Johnson.
Designed by A. Shahan.

Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgments

xi

Storyworlds across Media: Introduction 1

marie- laure ryan and jan- nol thon
part 1. medialit y and transmedialit y
1 Story/Worlds/Media: Tuning the Instruments
of a Media-Conscious Narratology 25
marie- laure ryan
2 Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama: Selection,
Time, and Construal in the Discourse of Hamlet

50

patrick colm hogan

3 Subjectivity across Media: On Transmedial Strategies
of Subjective Representation in Contemporary Feature Films,
Graphic Novels, and Computer Games 67
jan- nol thon
4 Fiction across Media: Toward a Transmedial
Concept of Fictionality 103
frank zipfel
5 Framings of Narrative in Literature and the Pictorial Arts
werner wolf
part 2. multimodalit y and intermedialit y
6 The Rise of the Multimodal Novel:
Generic Change and Its Narratological Implications
wolfgang hallet

151

126

7 On Absent Carrot Sticks: The Level of Abstraction

in Video Games 173
jesper juul
8 Film + Comics: A Multimodal Romance in the
Age of Transmedial Convergence 193
jared gardner
9 Tell It Like a Game: Scott Pilgrim and
Performative Media Rivalry 211
jeff thoss
10 Those Insane Dream Sequences: Experientiality and
Distorted Experience in Literature and Video Games 230
marco caracciolo
part 3. transmedia story telling and
transmedial worlds
11 Strategies of Storytelling on Transmedia Television
jason mittell
12 A Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling 278
colin b. harvey
13 Game of Thrones: Transmedial Worlds,
Fandom, and Social Gaming 295
lisbeth klastrup and susana tosca
14 Transmedial Narration and Fan Fiction:
The Storyworld of The Vampire Diaries 315
maria lindgren leavenworth
15 The Developing Storyworld of H. P. Lovecraft 332
van leavenworth
Contributors
Index

357

351

253

Illustrations

1.1 A map of media 31

3.1 Perceptual point-of-view sequence from A Beautiful Mind 74
3.2 Perceptual point-of-view sequence from A Beautiful Mind 74
3.3 (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Fight Club 76
3.4 Intersubjective representation from Fight Club 76
3.5 Representation of internal worlds from Twelve Monkeys 77
3.6 Contextual marker of the representation of internal worlds
from Twelve Monkeys 77
3.7 Spatial point-of-view sequence from The League of
Extraordinary Gentlemen 80
3.8 (Quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence from
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 81
3.9 Contextual marker of (quasi-)perceptual overlay from
Sin City: Hell and Back 83
3.10 (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Sin City: Hell and Back 83
3.11 Representation of internal worlds from The Sandman:
Season of Mist 85
3.12 Representation of internal worlds from The Sandman:
Season of Mist 85
3.13 Intersubjective representation from Batman: Arkham Asylum 88
3.14 (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Batman: Arkham Asylum 88
3.15 (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Batman: Arkham Asylum 89
3.16 Representation of internal worlds from Batman:
Arkham Asylum 90

3.17 Contextual marker of the representation of internal

worlds from Psychonauts 91
3.18 Representation of internal worlds from Psychonauts 92
5.1 Frederick Sandys (18291904), Helen of Troy 131
5.2 Cesare Dandini (15961657), The Abduction of Helen of Troy 132
5.3 Jacques-Louis David (17481825), Napoleon at the
Saint-Bernard Pass 137
5.4 Christ in the Mandorla with Saints from Ratisbone (ca. 1100)
5.5 Jan Steen (162679), The Merry Family

138

139

5.6 Jan Steen, The Saint Nicholas Feast 140

5.7 William Hogarth (16971764), Before
5.8 William Hogarth, After

142

143

6.1 A typical multimodal page from Reif Larsens The Selected Works
of T. S. Spivet 158
6.2 The multimodal (multisemiotic) constitution of the
fictional world 167
7.1 Slicing carrots in Cooking Mama 174
7.2 Burning all the cutlets but receiving infinite replacement
ingredients in Cooking Mama 175
7.3 Three variations on rules and fiction in video games
7.4 Diner Dash: Flo on the Go

176

178

7.5 StarCraft and Age of Empires II

180

7.6 The Marriage 182

7.7 Karate Champ: 2-d game in a 2-d world 184
7.8 Super Street Fighter IV: 2-d game in a 3-d world 185
7.9 The Sims 2

187

7.10 ssx: Fictional space

188

9.1 Scott collects an extra life that pops up in the storyworld

(from Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness) 215

9.2 A pee bar is displayed as Scott visits the bathroom (from Scott
Pilgrim Gets It Together) 221
9.3 The film emulates the comic books use of the pee bar
(from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) 222
9.4 A panel is designed to resemble a frame from a fighting game
(from Scott Pilgrims Precious Little Life) 223
9.5 The film emulating the comic books fighting-game panel
(from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) 224
9.6 Video gamestyle displays during Scotts final battle
(from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) 226
10.1 A sketch of the experiential background

233

10.2 Max loses consciousness (a graphic narrative scene from

Max Payne 2) 241
10.3 Max wakes up at the hospital (a graphic narrative scene from
Max Payne 2) 242
10.4 Maxs alter ego (a dream sequence from Max Payne 2)

243

10.5 On linearity and the illusion of free will (a graphic narrative scene
from Max Payne 2) 245
12.1 The Doctor Who franchise 287
12.2 The Highlander franchise 289
12.3 The Tron franchise 291
13.1 Transmedial world and game world 298
13.2 A summary of the five senses puzzles 300
13.3 The life of game puzzle videos on YouTube 305
13.4 Sharing practices on Facebook, Twitter, and GetGlue 306
13.5 Reactions to the recruiting option

307

13.6 Interaction between transmedial world, tv series, and game

13.7 Social aspects of The Maesters Path
15.1 Photo of Cthulhu

340

311

309

Acknowledgments

All the contributions collected in this volume are based on papers

presented at the international conference Storyworlds across Media:
MedialityMultimodalityTransmediality, which took place from
June 30 to July 2, 2011, at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz,
Germany. We are greatly indebted to Karl N. Renner and his colleagues
from the Research Unit Media Convergence and the Transmedial
Narration Work Group for inviting us to stay in Mainz and for coorganizing the conference with us.
Patrick Colm Hogans contribution to this volume, Emplotting a
Storyworld in Drama: Selection, Time, and Construal in Hamlet, first
appeared in Hogans How Authors Minds Make Stories (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2013. Print).
Jesper Juuls contribution to this volume, On Absent Carrot Sticks:
The Level of Abstraction in Video Games, contains portions of his
chapter A Certain Level of Abstraction in Situated Play: DiGRA 2007
Conference Proceedings, ed. Akira Baba (Tokyo: DiGRA Japan, 2007. 510
15. Print).

xi

Storyworlds across Media

Storyworlds across Media

Introduction

Popular culture has accustomed us to narratives that refuse to leave the

stage, returning repeatedly for another round of applause and for another pot of gold. For examples, think of the many installments of the
novel-based franchises of The Lord of the Rings and A Song of Ice and Fire,
the movie-based franchises of Star Wars and Indiana Jones, the comicsbased franchises of Batman and Spiderman, or the video gamebased
franchises of Tomb Raider and Warcraft. Each of the sequels, prequels,
adaptations, transpositions, or modifications that make up the body of
these franchises spins a story that provides instant immersion, because
the recipient is spared the cognitive effort of building a world and its inhabitants from a largely blank state. The world is already in place when
the recipient takes his or her first steps in it, once again.
Following the established custom of the sequel, this book builds
upon another book one of us edited in 2004, Narrative across Media.
We decided to call the present book Storyworlds across Media instead of
Narrative across Media II, though, in order to reflect the new directions
that the study of the multiple medial incarnations of narrative has taken in the meantime. The replacement of narrative with storyworld
acknowledges the emergences of the concept of world not only in narratology but also on the broader cultural scene. Nowadays we have not
only multimodal representations of storyworlds that combine various
types of signs and virtual online worlds that wait to be filled with stories by their player citizens but also serial storyworlds that span multiple
installments and transmedial storyworlds that are deployed simultaneously across multiple media platforms, resulting in a media landscape in
which creators and fans alike constantly expand, revise, and even parody them. Another difference between the present volume and the original Narrative across Media is the scope of the term across. In Narrative
across Media, it referred to the comparison of the expressive power of
1

different media with respect to the cognitive construct constitutive of

narrativity, for stories and their worlds are crucially shaped by the affordances and limitations of the media in which they are realized. Now,
however, across is taken in both this comparative sense and in an additional sense that refers to the expansion of transmedial storyworlds
across multiple media.
Thinking of storyworlds as representations that transcend media not
only expands the scope of narratology beyond its native territory of
language-based narrative (native both because language was among the
first media in which stories were told and because classical narratology
was developed primarily with literary fiction in mind) but also provides
a much-needed center of convergence and point of comparison to media studies. The explosion of new types of media in the twentieth century and their ever-increasing role in our daily life have led to a strong
sense that understanding media (McLuhan) is key to understanding
the dynamics of culture and society. Media are widely credited with the
power to shape opinions and to participate in what has been called the
social construction of reality (Berger and Luckman). But where, might
we ask, does this power to construct social reality come from? For narratologists, the evident answer from medias ability to transmit stories that
shape our view of the world and affect our behavior. The stories transmitted by media do not have to concern the real world to produce real
behaviors. Indeed, one only needs to look at the fan cultures that develop around the sprawling fictional narratives of film and television or at
the distinctive social habits of the diverse groups of players who immerse
themselves in increasingly complex game worlds to find examples of a
much more direct interrelation between fictional narrative representation and real social interaction.
The proliferation of the term media convergence (Jenkins) in the
discourses of advertising and academia has created the sense that media are currently entering a new phase of control over culture and over
our lives, capturing us in their increasingly thick web. But until we are
able to tell what it is that media converge around, the term will remain
a buzzwordas it was in the slogan of a 2003 technology exhibit in
New Orleans: Come worship at the altar of convergence (Jenkins 6). In
Storyworlds across Media, we take the deliberate step of placing narrative at the center of media convergence. This center can be conceived of
2

Ryan and Thon

in both a concrete and an abstract sense. In a concrete sense, it consists

of a specific story or rather, to use the other concept of our title, of a specific storyworld; different media converge around this world by presenting different aspects of it. This form of convergence is illustrated nowadays by the previously mentioned tendency of popular narratives, such
as The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Batman, or Tomb Raider, to migrate
from medium to medium in any imaginable order. But while particularly widespread in contemporary culture, this practice is not unique to
it, as the multiple medial incarnations of Greek myths or biblical stories
demonstrate for Western civilization.
The other way to conceive of the center of convergence is to associate it
not with a particular narrative but more generally with the abstract type
of content constitutive of narrativity, a content that we can define as
that which all stories share. Here, again, the concept of storyworld plays
a prominent role, for it captures the kind of mental representation that
a text must evoke in order to qualify as narrative. David Herman describes narratives as blueprints for a specific mode of world-creation
(105), but it would be more appropriate to say world imagination, for
while the author creates the storyworld through the production of signs,
it is the reader, spectator, listener, or player who uses the blueprint of a
finished text to construct a mental image of this world. The convergence
of media around a common center that we may call narrativitya center that is itself organized around a storyworldwill serve as an opportunity to capture their distinctive narrative resources. In this case it is
not convergence per se that we are interested in but the divergences that
the common center reveals. To parody the title of an article by Seymour
Chatman, the leading question now becomes: what can medium x do in
terms of storyworld creation (or representation) that medium y cannot?
Any attempt to adequately discuss the manifestation of narrative
meaning in different media must begin with the assessment of the relations between narratological concepts and media categories. We would
like to suggest that these relations cover, at least theoretically, a scale
ranging from medium free to medium specific, with various degrees
of transmedial validity in the middle. Or to put it another way, the transmedial applicability of narratological concepts ranges from all media
to one or perhaps even to none. (This case would apply to the narratological description of media that have yet to be invented, such as a
Storyworlds across Media

medium that would allow users to touch the head of characters in a visual display and see a three-dimensional [3-d] film of their thoughts.)
Solid candidates for the medium-free pole are the defining components of
narrativity: character, events, setting, time, space, and causality. A good
example of a transmedially valid yet not medium-free concept is interactivity. It is applicable to video games, improvisational theater, hypertext fiction, tabletop role-playing games, and even oral storytelling, if
one considers the impact of the audience on the narrative performance,
but not to literary narrative, print-based comics, and film. Mediumspecific concepts, finally, are explicitly developed for a certain medium,
but they can occasionally be extended to other media through a metaphoric transfer. For instance, the concepts of gutter, frame, and the arrangement of panels on a page are tailor-made for the medium of comics.
But since narratologists hardly ever agree on the definition of any term,
the borders between the three types of concepts are relatively fuzzy. As
a point in case, some narratologists regard a narrator as constitutive
of narrativity, which makes it medium free, while others regard it as a
transmedial concept applicable only to narratives with a language track.
Furthermore, there is usually ample latitude for transferring seemingly
medium-specific concepts to other media, just as there is often a need to
modify seemingly transmedial concepts with regard to the specific affordances and limitations of a particular medium.
The essays collected in this volume are all concerned with the representation of storyworlds across media and with the further development of a media-conscious narratology, but they can be grouped into
three parts according to their specific focus.1 The first section addresses
theoretical problems of mediality and transmediality, the second section
deals with issues of multimodality and intermediality, and the third section discusses the relationship between media convergence and transmedial storyworlds. To help readers plan their journey through this book
we present a brief sketch of the theoretical background and core arguments of the various chapters.
Part 1: Mediality and Transmediality
The first section, Mediality and Transmediality, is devoted to the expansion of classical narratology, which has traditionally been concerned
with literary narrative, into what we have called a media-conscious nar4

Ryan and Thon

ratology. The particular focus of the section is on the distinctionor,

rather, the interrelationbetween medium-free, transmedially applicable, and medium-specific terms and concepts. The first chapter, MarieLaure Ryans Story/Worlds/Media: Tuning the Instruments of a MediaConscious Narratology, provides a common theoretical basis to both the
project of a media-conscious narratology and to the chapters to come by
proposing definitions of the two leading concepts of the titlemedia and
storyworld. Aiming to expand media theory beyond the purely technological approach that currently dominates the field in the United States
an approach that, for example, cannot justify regarding comics as an autonomous medium since they rely on the same technological support as
print literatureRyan suggests that medium is best understood as an inherently polyvalent term whose meaning involves a technological, semiotic, and cultural dimension. The degree of prominence of these three
dimensions differs from medium to medium, but all of them must be
taken into consideration in the description of a mediums narrative affordances and limitations. Ryans discussion of storyworld similarly reveals two different possible conceptions of this notionthe logical and
the imaginative. In a logical conception, storyworlds admit no contradiction. Thus if a text rewrites an existing narrative, modifying the plot
and ascribing different features or destinies to the characters, it creates
a new storyworld that overlaps to some extent with the old one. While a
given storyworld can be presented through several different texts, these
texts must respect the facts of the original text if they are to share its logical storyworld. In an imaginative conception, by contrast, a storyworld
consists of named existents and perhaps of an invariant setting (though
the setting can be expanded), but the properties of these existents and
their destinies may vary from text to text. Whether logical or imaginative, however, the concept of storyworld will only earn a legitimate place
in the toolbox of narratology if it opens new perspectives on the relations
between media and narrative. To demonstrate the theoretical usefulness
of the notion, Ryan examines the interplay of world-internal and worldexternal elements in various media.
Among transmedially valid concepts, few have caused as much controversy as the seemingly intuitive concept of the narrator. Debates have
been raging about whether it is medium freethat is, constitutive of
all narratives, limited to media with a language track, or even optional
Storyworlds across Media

within these media. Several scholars have spoken of a cinematic narrator, or narrator-ersatz, but comparatively few have applied the concept to
drama, as does Patrick Colm Hogan in his contribution to this volume,
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama: Selection, Time, and Construal in
the Discourse of Hamlet. Hogan believes that his notion of dramatic
narrator is not essential to the main point of his chapter, but the reasons
that lead him to speak of a narrator, even in the case of discourse spoken
by a character, are worth examining for what they tell us about drama.
Traditionally, drama is taken to represent dialogue between characters;
this dialogue supposedly takes as much time on stage as it does in the
storyworld. Against this overly realistic conception, Hogan argues that
the speech of the characters is not limited to communicative speech acts
and that time does not necessarily pass at the speed required by the dialogue. Soliloquies are a prime example of a noncommunicative use of
speech, if one conceives of communication as transmitting information
to other people native to the same world. Much of what is said in soliloquies is actually addressed to the audience. Moreover, soliloquies provide far more extensive access to the mind of a character than what one
can infer from most spoken discourse. Hogans reasoning can be reconstructed as follows: if the information provided by Hamlets speech were
offered in a novel, it would be presented as a report of thought, and we
would attribute it to an omniscient narrator. By analogy, Hogan proposes to speak of a dramatic narrator who can turn off and on the power to
read the mind of characters and to transpose the result of this reading
into what looks like speech. As already mentioned, however, we do not
have to accept this conception of the narrator to follow Hogans analysis of the emplotting strategiesthat is, the presentation of events that
aims at achieving a particular effect on the audiencein Hamlet. The
concept of storyworld plays a major role in this functional approach insofar as the idea of a large world containing far more facts, thoughts,
and events than the play can represent is essential to the notions of selection and construal. These operations represent the work of the playwright (or implied playwright or dramatic narrator) as deciding what
to show and what to keep hidden in order to arouse certain affective or
purely aesthetic emotions. In reading (or watching) Hamlet, then, it is
as if William Shakespeare contemplated a complete world in his mind, a
world where specific events took place, and out of the many ways to em6

Ryan and Thon

plot these events, he chose the one that would generate the greatest interest of the audience.
Not only are narrative representations emplotted by a (real or represented) narrating agent, but also they provide, as one of their most salient prototypical features, what has been described as experientialities
or qualia. It comes as no surprise, then, that both classical and contemporary narratology have given the problem of subjectivityor, more precisely, of the various strategies that a narrative representation may employ
in order to represent the mind of a charactera considerable amount of
attention. Accordingly, Jan-Nol Thons Subjectivity across Media: On
Transmedial Strategies of Subjective Representation in Contemporary
Feature Films, Graphic Novels, and Computer Games examines what
can be described as transmedial strategies of subjective representation.
These strategies allow the spectator, reader, or player to assume a specific kind of direct relationship between the narrative representation and
a characters consciousness. Arguing against the prolonged use of terms
such as point of view, perspective, and focalization, which have become increasingly vague and open to misunderstanding over the past
four decades, Thon begins by introducing a heuristic distinction between
subjective, intersubjective, and objective modes of representation that
allows for a bottom-up analysis of local, as well as global, structures of
subjectivity. If intersubjective representation can be considered the unmarked case in which storyworld elements are represented as they are
perceived by a group of characters, objective representation and subjective representation are both marked cases, albeit on opposing ends
of a continuum of subjectivity. While objective representation implies
that the storyworld elements in question are not perceived or imagined
by any characters at all, subjective representation implies that the storyworld elements in question are (subjectively) perceived or imagined
by only one character. In a second step, Thon identifies and discusses a
number of particularly salient pictorial strategies of subjective representation such as point-of-view sequences, (quasi-)perceptual point-ofview sequences, (quasi-)perceptual overlay, and the representation of
internal worlds. Finally he examines the medium-specific realization
of these transmedial strategies of subjective representation in the conventionally distinct media of contemporary feature films, graphic novels, and computer games, emphasizing the dual perspective of a narraStoryworlds across Media

tology that is both transmedial in analytic scope and media conscious

in methodological orientation.
Even if one accepts the idea of transmedially valid narratological
concepts, then, these concepts usually need to be fine-tuned to the medium to which they are applied. Comparable to Thons contribution,
Frank Zipfels Fiction across Media: Toward a Transmedial Concept of
Fictionality examines the medium-specific realization of the transmedial concept of fictionality for literature, theater, and film. Zipfel proposes a multilayered approach to fictionality based on three components:
a world criterion, which stipulates that in order to pass as fictional, the
storyworld must comprise invented elements; a cognitive criterion, according to which readers or spectators must engage in a game of makebelieve; and an institutional component, describing the cultural practices
and representational conventions that relate to the medium. While the
world criterion remains basically identical for the three media, Zipfel
shows that make-believe takes on different nuances in theater and film,
where the make-believe of the actors induces make-believe in the spectator, as opposed to literature, where it is a unilateral action of the reader responding to the text. When it comes to the institutional component of fictionality, however, medium-specific differences are much more
substantial. One of these differences relates to the number of worlds involved. Theater, as a performance art, depends on a tripartite distinction
between the fictional world of the invariant text, the production world
imagined by the director, and the highly variable world created by the
actors in every performance. A second institutional difference concerns
the role of the text, which is major in literature and theater, since drama
can be read as a form of literature, but minor in film, since scripts are
usually not published. A third difference lies in the possibility to present both fictional and nonfictional worlds. This possibility is available
in literature and film but not in drama, as even the most historically accurate play departs from the real world through its use of actors to impersonate the characters.
While Thon and Zipfel explore the various manifestations of subjectivity and fictionality in different media, Werner Wolfs Framings of
Narrative in Literature and the Pictorial Arts investigates the mediumspecific clues that lead audiences to apply a narrative frame to the interpretation of a text. Frame, in Wolfs terminology, has both a macro-level
8

Ryan and Thon

and a micro-level manifestation. On the macro level, it refers to the global cognitive model that users activate to make sense of a text; this type of
frame corresponds, broadly, to the narrative and descriptive text-types,
both of which can be realized in either language-based or visual texts.
On the micro-level, frame refers to the internal or external clues that activate a certain type of macro-frame. A particularly salient type of clue
resides in paratextual devices such as genre labels for literary texts (novel, memoir, biography) or titles for a painting. Yet as Wolf shows, in
some contexts the paratextual indicators are either absent or ambiguous. Many paintings lack titles, or their titles may be deceptive; think of
Marcel Duchamps La Marie mise nu par ses clibataires, mme (The
Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even), an abstract work that mocks
the narrativity promised by its title. In literature, while the term novel sends the reader on a search for narrative design, this search may be
frustrated (as in some postmodern novels), or the generic label may be
neutral with respect to narrativity. Such is the case, Wolf argues, with
lyric poetry. While Wolfs investigation could select any medium capable of both narrative and descriptive manifestations, his choice of literature and pictorial arts is particularly illuminating, because it pits against
each other two media with strongly contrasting features: literature is a
temporal art with immense narrative resources, while painting is a spatial art with limited narrative potential. While paintings can suggest stories, either these stories are known to the spectator from other sources,
or, as Wolf observes, they correspond to stereotypical scripts, such as the
seduction (or rape) of a young woman depicted in a pair of paintings by
William Hogarth. Through his choice of media, Wolf situates his analysis
in the time-honored tradition of Gotthold Ephraim Lessings Laocon,
whose distinction between temporal and spatial forms of art should be
regarded as one of the cornerstones of a media-conscious narratology.
Part 2: Multimodality and Intermediality
Moving beyond the rather fundamental distinction between mediumfree, transmedial, and medium-specific narratological concepts, the
chapters in the second part of this volume focus on two different kinds
of relationships between media that seem particularly relevant for the
project of a media-conscious narratologymultimodality and intermediality. Through multimodality (a term that is currently replacing multiStoryworlds across Media

mediality; see, e.g., Kress and van Leeuwen), different types of signs combine within the same media objectfor example, moving image, spoken
language, music, and sometimes text in filmwhile through intermediality, texts of a given medium send tendrils toward other media (see
Rajewsky). These tendrils can include cross-medial adaptation (film to
video game), references within the text to other media objects (a painting playing an important role in a novel), imitation by a medium of the
resources of another medium (hypertext structure in print), and ekphrasis, or other forms of description of a type of sign through another type
(music or visual artifacts described in language).
Multimodality is found on two levelsthe level of the medium and
the level of genre. The distinction between medium and genre is admittedly difficult to define (for an attempt see Ryan, Avatars 2728), but given
this distinction, the two types of multimodality are easy to understand.
On the one hand, multimodality is a feature of medium when the specific nature of the latter implies multiple types of signs; for instance, inherent to the medium of film is its inclusion of images, language, and music.
On the other hand, multimodality is a feature of genre when both monomodal and multimodal works are possible within the same genre (and
of course within the same medium, since medium is a defining feature
of genre). In this case, multimodality is an innovation with respect to a
standard monomediality that creates a new subgenre. Consider a musical composition that includes narration such as Sergei Prokofieffs Peter
and the Wolf as compared to a Beethoven symphony or a novel that includes images compared to a traditional text-only novel.
Wolfgang Hallet discusses this generic type of multimodality in The
Rise of the Multimodal Novel: Generic Change and Its Narratological
Implications. Hallet observes that, with its combination of text and
images, the multimodal novel comes closer to perception and cognition than monomodal novels do, since our ways of worldmaking
(Goodman) involve all the senses in addition to language. It is indeed
interesting to note that the rise of the multimodal novel coincides with
developments in cognitive science that put on equal footing visual and
language-based thinkingin stark contrast to the structuralist and poststructuralist claim that language is the foundation of all mental life.
Hallets chapter focuses on three recent American novels whose heroes
are children with exceptional cognitive abilities: a savant with Aspergers
10

Ryan and Thon

syndrome, a young inventor, and a genius cartographer. All three characters construct the world much more by means of the photos, maps, diagrams, and tables of data shown in each novel than through language,
though language remains the principal narrative mode of signification.
Take away the pictures and you still have a story, but take away the text
and you have only a disparate collection of visual documents that do not
cohere into a whole. Yet if the multimodal novel comes closer to perception and cognition than the monomodal novel does, it still cannot
be said to offer a simulation of perception, as does the multimodality of
film, because the novels various signs are presented in distinct frames
rather than fused into a homogeneous stream. Consequently it takes an
interruption of the process of reading or scrutinizing, one that Hallet
compares to the hypertextual practice of jumping from lexia to lexia, in
order to pass from text to image and vice versa. This breaking up of linear continuity results in a much more acute meta-semiotic awareness, or
modal self-referentiality, than the fluid and perceptively much more natural multimodality of film, drama, or computer games.
In contrast to Hallet, who discusses an occasionally multimodal genre,
Jesper Juuls On Absent Carrot Sticks: The Level of Abstraction in Video
Games deals with an inherently multimodal medium, since most video games involve haptics, visuals, music, spoken language, and written
text. For Juul, video games are not storiesat least not stories in the sense
that films and novels arebut rather fictional worlds in which a variety
of actions can take place. The common notion of a fictional world forms
the basis of a comparison that highlights the (medium) specific features
of games on the one hand and novels and films on the other. Borrowing
Ryans principle of minimal departure (md), as expressed in Possible
Worlds (chapter 3), Juul claims that both players and readers engage in
acts of imagination that conceive of the fictional world as fuller than
its strictly textual representation. When a novel mentions a knife lying
next to carrots in a kitchen, you imagine that it should be possible in this
world to cut the carrot into sticks. md would tell you to make the same
assumption for a game that takes place in a visually represented kitchen;
yet, and this point is where an important distinction between interactive game worlds and traditional fictional worlds kicks in, the player
may find out that the knife can only cut carrots, not turnips nor peoples
heads, and that it can only cut them into slices. While the game depends
Storyworlds across Media

11

to some degree on md (to facilitate the learning process), it resists its full
application. Playing a game in a fictional world therefore means learning
which aspects of the world have rules attached to them and which ones do
not; thus the proportion of world features attached to rules determines a
games level of abstraction. The rules of video games, Juul reminds us, are
abstract principles implemented by the computer through calculation; yet
unless the rules allow for fascinating gameplay (as in chess), it is the imaginative act of locating oneself in a fictional world that makes many games
exciting. While in novels and films immersion in the fictional world is a
sufficient source of satisfaction, in games it must be complemented by a
sense of achievement that the ability to play the game efficiently provides.
In order to develop this ability, the player must be able to detect the abstract structure determined by the rules, a structure that attributes strategic significance to certain aspects of the fictional world and treats others as decorative, immersion-enhancing features.
While Hallets and Juuls contributions focus on the narrative affordances and limitations of two multimodal media that could hardly be
any more different from each other, Jared Gardners Film + Comics: A
Multimodal Romance in the Age of Transmedial Convergence examines the relationship between graphic and audiovisual narratives from a
more historical perspective. Tracing the history of the intermedial relationship between comics and film from their birth at the end of the nineteenth century and their rise in popular demand throughout the twentieth century to the current situation, where film often appears to be the
dominant partner, Gardner combines an encyclopedic knowledge of both
film and comics history with an acute awareness of the institutional and
economic contexts of convergent media culture in order to paint a precise
picture of how the texts of each of these media are shaped, at least partly,
by their long-standing intermedial relationship. According to Gardner,
certain changes in the ways contemporary Hollywood cinema narrates
its stories can be explained by the influence of comics conventions on
both directors and spectators, as the advent of dvds increasingly taught
the latter how to read films closely, engagedly, and repeatedlythat is,
how to read films as comics readers tend to read comics. While comics
have proved to be one of the media most resistant to digitalization, they
also seem, at least to Gardner, to be the form most capable of teaching
us how to explore the multimodal narratives of the twenty-first centu12

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ry. With their looping, elliptical, and multimodal storytelling strategies,

comics have always been a medium open to experimentation, but their
status as a gutter form, both in the formal and in the cultural sense, as
well as their resistance to being co-opted by film and other media, serves
as a reminder of the importance of institutional and cultural contexts
for media-conscious narratology.
Jeff Thosss Tell It Like a Game: Scott Pilgrim and Performative Media
Rivalry also deals with the intermedial relationships between film and
comics, but rather than examining these relations from a broad historical perspective, as Gardner does, he focuses on a particular casenamely,
Edgar Wrights 2010 film adaptation of Bryan Lee OMalleys comic book
series Scott Pilgrim (200410). According to Thoss, the comic book and
the film version attempt to outdo each other in their imitation of a third
mediumin this case, computer games. The comic book series already
makes its readers well aware of the ubiquity of the intermedial references
through its plot, which revolves around twenty-something Scott Pilgrims
attempt to win over Ramona Flowers in Toronto. While this brief description may sound similar to any other tired boy-meets-girl story, it turns
out that in order to win Ramona, Scott must defeat her seven evil exboyfriends in a number of ever more spectacular fights, evidently inspired
by the beat-em-up genre of video games. Moreover, the film and the comic books present a number of features, such as representational techniques,
extra lives, or save points, that clearly originate in the worlds of computer
games. Though these intermedial references are all already present in the
comic book series, Thoss goes on to show that the film attempts to outdo
the comic book series in its emulation of video game features both on the
level of the storyworld and on the level of its representation. But as neither
of these two works emerges victorious, their so-called rivalry appears less
as a real competition than as a way to illuminate the specific narrative affordances and limitations of comics, films, and computer games.
Concluding the section, Marco Caracciolos Those Insane Dream
Sequences: Experientiality and Distorted Experience in Literature and
Video Games uses a more general comparative approach to capture a
fundamental, almost paradoxical feature of narrative: in order to let recipients attribute mental states to the characters, stories must tap into
their experiential background, yet at the same time narrative expands
this background so that recipients can share with the characters experiStoryworlds across Media

13

ences that they have never had in real life. Caracciolo addresses this paradox through a close reading of two texts that focus on altered states of
consciousnessWilliam Burroughss experimental novel Naked Lunch
and the video game Max Payne. Both of these texts represent distorted
experience through textual clues that exploit the particular resources of
their respective medium. In Naked Lunch, the reader is shuttled back and
forth between the world of a characters drug-induced hallucination and
the real world through the use of three strategies typical of literary narrative: metaphor, internal focalization, and a handling of dialogue that
brutally brings the hallucinating character (as well as the reader) back to
reality. In Max Payne, the experience of waking up from a coma is represented through the embedding of visual panels inspired by graphic novels. This borrowing of resources from another medium reminds us that
digital technology is not only a medium but also a meta-medium capable of encoding and displaying any type of signs. In addition to static
graphic panels, Max Payne uses cut-scenes, a standard feature of computer games, to represent dream sequences, but it gives them an unusual twist by allowing the player a low grade of agency. Rather than watching the dream sequences as though they were movies, the player guides
Max, the dreamer, in a tour of several locations. Since this tour is strictly
linear, offering no choice of itinerary, the dream sequences blur the borderline between pre-rendered cut-scenes and genuinely interactive episodes in which the player must display gaming skills. This limited form
of interactivity not only reflects the painful lack of agency that dreamers may experience but also allegorizes the illusory nature of the players sense of free will, since the games developer considerably shapes the
course of events in the vast majority of narrative games.
Part 3: Transmedia Storytelling and Transmedial Worlds
In the first section of this volume, the term transmediality was used
to describe the applicability of a theoretical concept to different media.
Here we turn to another kind of transmediality commonly found in the
age of media convergence, the representation of a single storyworld
through multiple media. This specific type of transmedial phenomenon
has been discussed under a variety of labels, but the terms transmedia
storytelling (coined by Jenkins) and transmedial worlds (coined by
Klastrup and Tosca) have proved to be most influential. According to
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Jenkins, [a] transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms,

with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to
the whole (9596). While Jenkins tends to emphasize the coherence of
the transmedia story, favoring a logical understanding of the concept of
storyworld, Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca propose to understand
transmedial worlds as abstract content systems from which a repertoire
of fictional stories and characters can be actualized or derived across a
variety of media forms (n. pag.), favoring an imaginative understanding
of the concept of storyworld. Whether we follow Jenkins or Klastrup and
Tosca, whose respective concepts may best be thought of as complementary rather than contradictory anyway, the steadily growing phenomenon of the transmedial representation of storyworlds is a highly productive field of study for the project of a media-conscious narratology.
Emphasizing that few kinds of storytelling can match the tv serial for narrative breadth, Jason Mittells Strategies of Storytelling on
Transmedia Television examines how television has given rise to innovative narrative forms in the 2000s and beyond. Briefly touching on
the history of transmedial representationsfrom biblical narratives
to nineteenth-century transmedial characters such as Frankenstein or
Sherlock Holmes, as well as from the comparatively rare forms of transmedial expansion in the early twentieth century to the proliferation of
transmedia franchises in todays media cultureMittell focuses on contemporary forms of transmedial expansions whose functions go beyond
merely hyping, promoting, or introducing another text to a larger audience. Acknowledging, at the same time, the challenges presented by the
economic and institutional realities of commercial television and the
powerful and innovative potential of some of its attempts at transmedia storytelling, Mittell examines two fairly different transmedial strategies as they are realized by the franchises surrounding the television
series Lost and Breaking Bad. Mittell describes Lost as being primarily
characterized by a centrifugal, or storyworld-driven, use of transmedial expansions aiming at a coherent and consistent representation of the
storyworld across media. When compared to Losts focus on consistent
storyworld expansion, Breaking Bad is primarily characterized by a centripetal, or character-driven, use of transmedial extensions aiming not
so much at an expansion of the storyworld itself but at providing additional depths to its already well-established characters. Since the cenStoryworlds across Media

15

trifugal expansion of Lost tends to focus on a logically consistent expansion of the storyworld while the centripetal expansion of Breaking Bad
more readily offers hypothetical scenarios and alternative story lines to
the audience, Mittell concludes by suggesting that the two shows exemplify what can be described as What Is versus What If? strategies of
transmedia television.
Colin B. Harveys A Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling engages
even more explicitly and comprehensively with the variety of phenomena commonly associated with transmedia storytelling than Mittell does.
Building on the well-established notion that consistencyor the lack
thereofis a central feature of transmedia storytelling, Harvey develops a
taxonomy based on the legal relationship between elements in a franchise,
as well as on the specific forms of collective remembering, misremembering, non-remembering, or forgetting that they engender. Emphasizing
that digitalization is not a necessary condition of transmedia storytelling and that the sheer vastness of possible combinations between analogue and digital media renders a medium-based taxonomy problematic, he distinguishes between six particularly salient forms that may play
a part in a given transmedia storytelling franchise: intellectual property, directed transmedia storytelling, devolved transmedia storytelling, detached transmedia storytelling, directed transmedia storytelling with user
participation, and emergent user-generated transmedia storytelling. Using
the Doctor Who, Highlander, and Tron franchises as his primary examples, Harvey shows that parts of a franchise are authorized in different
ways and that these parts vary in the requirements they make on both the
producers and the recipients memories. On the one hand, what parts of
a franchises previous stories should be remembered is subject to negotiations not only between the producers and the recipients but also between
the various parties of what one may call the author collective. On the
other hand, legally binding contracts allow the legal owner(s) of a given
franchise to control the extent to which their in-house operatives and licensees are allowed to remember, forget, non-remember, and misremember parts of the transmedia story, its characters, and its setting.
Building on their previous works on transmedial worlds, Lisbeth
Klastrup and Susana Toscas Game of Thrones: Transmedial Worlds,
Fandom, and Social Gaming explores the various ways in which fans
can be involved with a transmedial world, particularly focusing on the
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still under-researched area of fan participation and involvement through

social media. As we have already mentioned, Klastrup and Tosca understand transmedial worlds as abstract content systems that can be identified via a common core of features defining their worldness: first, the
mythos of a transmedial world establishes its backstory, key events that
give meaning to the current situation of the world; second, the topos describes the worlds setting in space and time, the changing landscape,
and unfolding of events; and, third, the ethos of a transmedial world defines its explicit and implicit norms and values, moral codices, and ethical conducts. Taking as their example The Maesters Path, an online game
experience designed to generate excitement for the launch of Game of
Thrones, the tv series based on George R. R. Martins best-selling novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, Klastrup and Tosca combine qualitative
and quantitative methods to explore both the development and reception
of the social game and the surrounding marketing campaign that took
place from February 2011 to July 2011. They show in some detail how the
recipientsor fansresponded to the specific medial affordances provided by the combination of online game elements and social media in
the context of a considerably larger transmedial world. Not only does
Klastrup and Toscas contribution remind us of the importance of detailed case studies for coming to terms with the various forms of transmedial worlds in contemporary media culture, but it also sets out to illustrate how a text-based media analysis can be combined with both an
interview-based qualitative and a survey-based quantitative approach to
get a clearer picture of the specific patterns of use through which fans
participate in transmedial worlds.
Maria Lindgren Leavenworths Transmedial Narration and Fan
Fiction: The Storyworld of The Vampire Diaries examines the problem
of audience participation in transmedia franchises from a slightly different angle, focusing on unauthorized fan contributions to the transmedial storyworld of The Vampire Diaries. Leavenworths case study, however, is different from the other case studies discussed in this section in
at least two ways. First, the novel series written by L. J. Smith and the tv
series produced by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec represent fairly different stories with clearly different characters. While these differences
seem to establish two distinct storyworlds rather than one, the franchise
also establishes some continuities. Second and perhaps more important,
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17

Lindgren-Leavenworths focus on fan fiction allows her to draw attention

to the fact that, even in franchises dominated by what Mittell describes as
What Is strategies of transmedial representation, there is usually some
kind of fanon (as opposed to canon, the term refers to fan-produced,
unsanctioned products) that produces hypothetical What If? narratives, thereby modifying and challenging the logically consistent storyworld of the canonical texts. This practice leads Lindgren-Leavenworth
to propose that transmedia franchises should be regarded as archontic
texts, thereby suggesting that scholars should grant equal status to unauthorized fan contributions and to the sanctioned creations of copyright
holders. Another noteworthy point of Lindgren-Leavenworths chapter is that unauthorized fan contributions are often used to question the
authority of the canonical products regarding not only what is the case
in the transmedial storyworld but also the moral or ideological implications of the authorized parts. The fan fiction of The Vampire Diaries
demonstrates this rebellious spirit by regularly renegotiating and reexamining questions of gender and sexuality in ways that subvert the often rather conservative norms and values implied in many of the more
recent entries in the genre of the vampire romance.
In a final extensive case study, Van Leavenworths The Developing
Storyworld of H. P. Lovecraft examines the transmedial storyworld
that has developed around the writings of American Gothic writer H. P.
Lovecraft. The Lovecraft storyworld is truly transmedial, being represented across a wide variety of media and genres such as traditional textual fiction, interactive fiction, short and feature-length films, fan art,
comics, music, board games, role-playing games, computer games, and
interactive environments in Second Life. Accordingly, the resulting storyworld is not defined by a specific story (or collection of stories) but by
a common thematic focusthat is, the cosmic fear inspired by the Old
Ones, such as Cthulhu, whose very existence lies beyond the limits of
human imagination. Building on Klastrup and Toscas concept of transmedial worlds as abstract content systems, Leavenworth examines the
defining features of the Lovecraft storyworlds worldness in considerable detail, focusing on three main questions: Wherein lies the appeal
of the Lovecraft storyworld? How can works engage with the Lovecraft
storyworlds mythos in familiar yet medium-specific ways? How has
the development of the Lovecraft storyworld contributed to the eleva18

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tion of the pulp writer H. P. Lovecraft into the American literary canon? In pursuing these questions, Leavenworth examines a wide range of
media texts that contribute to the Lovecraft storyworld, particularly focusing on the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Societys silent film The Call of
Cthulhu, Chaosiums role-playing game Call of Cthulhu, and Michael S.
Gentrys text-based interactive fiction Anchorhead: An Interactive Gothic.
His contribution, then, not only illustrates the importance of detailed
case studies for the understanding of the forms and functions of the
transmedial representation of storyworlds but also demonstrates how
such case studies can be connected to broader issues of literary, medial,
and cultural historiography.
Not all of the work collected in this volume explicitly use the term storyworld or refer to the corresponding narratological concept developed in
Marie-Laure Ryans contribution, but they all rely on the notion of represented worlds as sites of creative activity in which cultures elaborate their
collective social imaginary. Storyworlds hold a greater fascination for the
imagination than the plots that take place in them, because plots are selfenclosed, linear arrangements of events that come to an end while storyworlds can always sprout branches to their core plots that further immerse
people, thereby providing new pleasures. As a filmmaker told Henry
Jenkins: When I first started, you would pitch a story because without a
good story, you didnt really have film. Later, once sequels started to take
off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. And now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media (116).
Exploring how media old and new give birth to different types of
storyworlds and different ways of experiencing them is the purpose of
this volume, as well as the general concern of a media-conscious narratology that gives sustained attention to both the similarities of and
the differences in the ways in which conventionally distinct media narrate. Our goal, however, is not to suggest a rigid program for a supposedly new brand of narratology but to invite readers to join a theoretical
conversation focused on the question of how narratology can achieve
media-consciousness.
It is now time to tune our instruments and to let the storyworlds concert begin.
Storyworlds across Media

19

Note
1. It is, of course, evident that what we propose to call media-conscious narratology in this volume, in order to emphasize the medium-specific features
of storyworlds across media, shares at least some characteristics with what has
previously been described as transmedial narratology. See, for example, Herman; Ryan, Avatars; Thon; Wolf.

Works Cited
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckman. The Social Construction of Reality: A
Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City ny: Anchor Books, 1966.
Print.
Chatman, Seymour. What Novels Can Do That Films Cant (and Vice Versa). On
Narrative. Ed. W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. 117
36. Print.
Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis in: Hackett, 1978. Print.
Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden ma: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
New York University Press, 2006. Print.
Klastrup, Lisbeth, and Susana Tosca. Transmedial WorldsRethinking
Cyberworld Design. Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on
Cyberworlds. Los Alamitos ca: ieeee Computer Society, 2004. N. pag. pdf file.
June 1, 2012.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and
Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001. Print.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry.
Trans. Edward Allan McCormick. Baltimore md: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1984. Print.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extension of Man. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964. Print.
Rajewsky, Irina O. Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in
the Current Debate about Intermediality. Media Borders, Multimodality and
Intermediality. Ed. Lars Ellestrm. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 5168. Print.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Avatars of Story. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2006. Print.
, ed. Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Print.
. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991. Print.
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Thon, Jan-Nol. Toward a Transmedial Narratology: On Narrators in

Contemporary Graphic Novels, Feature Films, and Computer Games. Beyond
Classical Narration: Transmedial and Unnatural Challenges. Ed. Jan Alber and
Per Krogh Hansen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. 2556. Print.
Wolf, Werner. Narratology and Media(lity): The Transmedial Expansion of a
Literary Discipline and Possible Consequences. Current Trends in Narratology.
Ed. Greta Olsen. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011. 14580. Print.

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Part 1

Mediality and Transmediality

Story/Worlds/Media
Tuning the Instruments of a
Media-Conscious Narratology
marie- laure ryan

Both of the two terms that form the title of this book, storyworlds and
media, are common in contemporary narratological and critical discourse, but they tend to be used in a very loose way. In this chapter, I explore the difficulties involved in turning them from conveniently vague
catchphrases that can be used in many contexts into the sharp analytical
tools that will be needed to impart narratology with media consciousness.
Media
Gregory Bateson once described media as a difference that makes a difference (453). This formula is seductive, but it cannot offer a satisfactory definition of media because it rests on an unanswered question: a difference for what? Media studies would operate in a vacuum if they were
not able to name the object of this difference. But if we take a narrative
approach to media, the answer becomes obvious: the choice of medium
makes a difference as to what stories can be told, how they are told, and
why they are told. By shaping narrative, media shape nothing less than
human experience.
Narrative is not, admittedly, the only possible answer to the question a
difference for what; we could say, for instance, a difference for art or a
difference for communication or even a difference for human relations.
The various domains for which media can make a difference mean that the
list of all phenomena that have been called media by one scholar or another is strangely reminiscent in its heterogeneous character of the Chinese
taxonomy of animals that Jorge Luis Borges mentioned in an essay. This
taxonomy divides animals into the following categories: those that belong
to the emperor, embalmed ones, those that are trained, suckling pigs, mermaids, fabulous ones, stray dogs, those that are not included in this clas25

sification, and so on (Borges 103). The list of phenomena that have been
labeled media includes: (a) channels of mass communication, such as
newspapers, television (tv), radio, and the Internet; (b) technologies of
communication, such as printing, the computer, film, tv, photography,
and the telephone; (c) specific applications of digital technology, such as
computer games, hypertext, blogs, e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook; (d) ways
of encoding signs to make them durable and ways of preserving life data,
such as writing, books, sound recording, film, and photography; (e) semiotic forms of expression, such as language, image, sound, and movement;
(f) forms of art, such as literature, music, painting, dance, sculpture, installations, architecture, drama, the opera, and comics; and (g) the material
substance out of which messages are made or in which signs are presented,
such as clay, stone, oil, paper, silicon, scrolls, codex books, and the human
body. Some scholars even consider air to be a medium (as the substance
through which sound waves travel in oral communication), and the term
biomedia has been floating around to designate manipulations of the
dna code (see Thacker); however, in this present volume we can easily ignore these interpretations because they have no direct narrative relevance.
The confusion that reigns in media studies is epitomized by the occasionally heard term of multimedia media (or mixed media media),
which describes the vast majority of the categories I have just mentioned.
Only the purely semiotic categories of language, image, and sound are
single-medium media. (W. J. T. Mitchell goes as far as claiming that all
media are mixed media.1) If we give the same meaning to both occurrences of media in the expression multimedia media, we get something as difficult to conceive of as a set that is a member of itself, which is
a well-known paradox in logic. But people have no trouble understanding the expression multimedia media because they spontaneously interpret the two uses of media differentlythe first (in multimedia) in a
semiotic sense and the second (in media) in a technological or cultural
sense. Multimedia media are technological or cultural phenomena such
as film or theater that use signs of various kinds and speak to various
senses. We have become so accustomed to live performances and art installations that mix various types of signs and technologies in an innovative way that multimedia almost becomes a medium in itself.
Like most words in a language, medium or media has multiple meanings. Working out a definition of media that covers all of its particular
26

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uses has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of establishing a

unified, global definition is that it could serve as a rallying point for the
various disciplines concerned with media and create a convergence, if
not of media, then at least of media researchers. In this age of interdisciplinarity, finding common interests is always a welcome event. Without
a common definition, the sociologists will continue to mean p, the art
critics q, the philosophers r, the historians of culture and technology s,
and so on, and interdisciplinarity will remain a dialogue of the deaf.
The disadvantage of a unified global definition is that the more phenomena the definition encompasses, the less useful it becomes as an analytical tool. Language is polysemic by nature, but while polysemy is good
for poetry it is bad for science and for the discourse of the humanities.
It is better to work with a large collection of sharp tools that fulfill precise tasks than with a single blunt one, even if everyone cannot share the
tools. It could be that the concept of medium is similar to the concept
of game. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein has suggested that the
word game does not stand for a collection of necessary and sufficient
properties that make a given activity a member of the set of all games;
rather, it designates a family-resemblance notion (sec. 132). In a large
family, some features are widely distributed, but no trait is shared by all
members and there is no prototypical individual. Should we conceive of
media based on this model? The idea of family resemblance, if it is appropriate in this case, should not be used as an easy cop-out for giving
up the attempt to define medium but as a challenge to identify the features on which the resemblance is based.
A widespread trend in media studies, especially in the United States,
consists of associating media with specific technologies of communication, such as writing, film, photography, tv, radio, the telephone, and all
the uses of digital technology known as new media. This conception of
media as technologies permeates the newly developing fields of media archaeology (the unearthing of the dead ancestors of contemporary media)
and comparative media studies, a project that, so far, has mainly consisted of comparing the book with digital forms of writing (Hayles 910).
While a narrowly technological conception of media presents the advantage of resting on a solid definition, it cannot serve the purpose of this
chapter because it excludes many culturally important narrative forms,
especially art forms, that do not have their own technology. Comics, for
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27

instance, rely on the same printing technology that the press and literature do; the theater and the opera make only optional use of technologies, such as stage machinery, light effects, microphones, or film projection; and oral storytelling does not need any technology at all. It could
be argued that as an unmediated form of communication, oral storytelling does not qualify as a medium, but from the point of view of narrative it certainly fulfills the conditions of mediality because the live performance of face-to-face interaction makes a difference as to what kind
of stories are told, how they are told, and why they are told. This example demonstrates how problematic it is to establish a basic list of media
that transcends disciplines; what is clearly a medium for the narratologist may not be one for the historian of culture or technology.
Another way to avoid the ambiguity of the concept of medium is to
focus on what Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen call modes. The
study of multimodal textsthat is, texts that use a variety of signs, such
as image, language, and soundis currently one of the hottest fields
of narratology (see Wolfgang Hallets contribution to the discussion in
chapter 6 of this volume). But mode is as difficult to define as medium is, and Kress and van Leeuwens attempt to list and classify modes
of signification are similar in their apparent randomness to Borgess
Chinese taxonomy. Their list includes any semiotic resource, in a very
broad sense, that produces meaning in a social context; the verbal, the
visual, language, image, music, sound, gesture, narrative, color, taste,
speech, touch, plastic, and so on (Ellestrm 14; emphasis added). If narrative is itself a mode, how then can one study the modes of multimodal
narrative? In addition, modes of signification do not make the concept
of medium dispensable, for there must be a way to distinguish the various cultural forms in which a given mode appears. Comics and illustrated stories, for instance, share the modes of language and image, but
they certainly differ in their use of these modes and, hence, meaning in
their narrative affordances. In Reading Images, Kress sketches a theory that includes both modes and media: he regards text as a mode and
book as one of its media, image as a mode and the screen or the
cdrom as some of its media, and, conversely, the teachers body as a
medium and his or her speech, movements, and gestures as the bodys
modes. The list of media that this approach produces is not a catalog of
culturally recognized forms of communication, as would be film, pho28

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tography, literature, painting, or music, but rather a catalog of their material supports.
In contrast to the analytical approach, which takes a top-down method to determine media by applying certain criteria (such as asking if written text is a mode and the book one of its media, then what are the media of oral language, of still pictures, or of sound), I propose a bottom-up
approach that takes as its point of departure the media categories informally used in Western cultures. These categories, which form a kind of
folk taxonomy, rest on three kinds of criteria: semiotic substance, technical dimension, and cultural dimension.
Semiotic substance encompasses categories such as image, sound, language, and movement. These basic types of signs can be further analyzed in terms of spatiotemporal extension, signifying dimensions (that
is, line, color, shape, and dimensionality for images or pitch, rhythm,
and loudness for sound), sensorial impact (auditive, visual), and mode
of signification (iconic, indexical, or symbolic). Examples of semiotically based media categories are mostly art forms: music (sound), painting
(two-dimensional image), sculpture (three-dimensional image), and oral
verbal art (language).
Technical dimension includes not only media-defining technologies
such as film, tv, photography, and so on but also any kind of mode
of production and material support. Not all media involve technologies, but all of them have a technical dimension since they cannot exist without a mode of production and a material support. In film, the
mode of production involves the technologies of live-action recording
or of animation, and the material support apprehended by the user is
the silver screen. In certain cases the mode of production cannot be
distinguished from the material support; for example, in the theater or
in ballet, the human body fulfills both of these functions. In other cases, the mode of production is multilayered. In literature, for instance,
it involves the technology of writing (with pen and paper, with a typewriter, or with the computer) and the technology of printing. The material support produced by the second stage of production is the book.
The case of multilayered modes of production suggests a distinction
between technologies that record and transmit other media (writing
for language, books for writing, scripts for video, radio for speech and
music, and digital technology for every kind of visual or verbal mediStory/Worlds/Media

29

um) and technologies that capture life directly (photography, film, and
sound recording). The technologies that transmit other media may,
however, develop their own idiosyncrasies and evolve from mere channels of transmission into autonomous media of information or artistic expression (e.g., artist books for books, serials and live broadcasting for tv, and computer games and hypertext for digital technology2).
Cultural dimension addresses the public recognition of media as forms
of communication and the institutions, behaviors, and practices that
support them. I regard as culturally based media those means of communication, such as the press, the theater, or comics, that are widely
recognized as playing a significant cultural role but that cannot be distinguished on purely semiotic or technological grounds.
Corresponding to these three dimensions of mediality are three approaches for what I call a media-conscious narratology (see also figure 1.1 for a map that shows the relationships between media, art forms,
and technologies):3
t
A semiotic approach, which investigates the narrative power of
language, image, sound, movement, face-to-face interaction, and
the various combinations of these features (Wolf, Problem der
Narrativitt; Wolf, Narrative).
t
A technical approach, which explores such issues as how technologies configure the relationship between sender and receiverfor instance, one to one, few to many, many to many, and close or remote
in either space or timehow they affect dissemination, storage, and
cognition (Ong); and what affordances certain types of material
supports bring to storytelling (for instance, interactivity in the case
of digital technology). It is also under this heading that the cognitive impact of material supports, such as the page or the screen, will
be investigated in the future.
t
A cultural approach, which focuses on the behavior of users and
producers, as well as on the institutions that guarantee the existence of media. Applied to narrative, this approach will investigate such topics as fan cultures (Hellekson and Busse; Jenkins;
Thomas), the kind of stories one tells in blogs or on Twitter
(Page), and the process of production and selection of tv news
stories.
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Human activities

Media

Language arts
Music
Painting
Dance, Mime
Comics
Theater
Opera

Arts / entertainment
Technologies
The press

Art installations
Computer games
Radio
TV
Internet
Photography
Film

Non-communicative
technologies: Axe,
Wheel, Cars

Conversational storytelling

Fig. 1.1. A map of media. Radio, tv, and others, have both artistic and
informational manifestations. The press uses a technologyprintingbut it is
not distinctive. Art categories are either semiotically defined (music, painting,
dance, mime) or culturally defined (comics, theater, opera). In this case they do
not rely on a distinctive set of signs.

Storyworlds
The other component of our title, storyworlds, is only slightly less problematic than the concept of medium. As Ji Koten (47) has pointed out,
its genealogy comprises two lines of ancestry: one is the possible worlds
of analytic philosophy, adapted to literary theory by Thomas Pavel,
Lubomr Doleel, Umberto Eco, and myself; the other lies in cognitive
approaches to literature and linguistics as represented by Richard Gerrig,
David Herman, and the British linguist Paul Werth. The possible worlds
of analytic philosophy are used in literature to solve such problems as
the definition of fiction, the truth value of statements about fictional entities, the ontological status (complete or incomplete?) of these entities,
the semantic classification of literary worlds (historical, realistic, fantastic, impossible), the relationships between the worlds of distinct texts
(expansion, transposition, modification), the description of the mechaStory/Worlds/Media

31

nisms of plot in terms of conflicts, and the general organization of the

semantic domain of texts as a universe in which an actual world is opposed to a variable number of alternate possible worlds created by the
mental activity of characters. As for the worlds of cognitive approaches, they focus the attention of scholars on how they are constructed and
simulated in the mind of the reader, on what kind of cues trigger this
process of simulation, or on the description of the narrative experience
as one of immersion.
The concept of storyworld differs from what literary critics (or readers) have in mind when they speak about the world of Marcel Proust,
the world of Ingmar Bergman, or the world of Friedrich Hlderlin. In
this traditional but informal sense, world stands for various ideas: the
social and historical setting typical of the authors works (the Proust example), the major themes and recurrent images of this work (Bergman),
and the authors general ideas and philosophy of life (Hlderlin)or
what we call, not coincidentally, a worldview. The narratological concept of storyworld differs from this interpretation of world in at least
three major ways. First, it is something projected by individual texts,
and not by the entire work of an author, so that every story has its own
storyworld (except in transmedial projects, where the representation of
a world is distributed among many different texts of different media).
Second (and this point may seem obvious), it requires narrative content,
so the applicability of the concept of storyworld to lyric poetry is questionable. Finally, it cannot be called the world of the author because
in the case of fiction, authors are located in the real world while the storyworld is a fictional world. If a storyworld is anybodys world, it is the
world of the characters.
Narratology and literary criticism have not awaited David Herman to
connect the idea of world to individual texts. The term textual world
has long been part of critical vocabulary, and more recently the concept
of text world has gained currency in linguistics under the influence of
Werth (Text Worlds). But if we conceive of a world as some kind of container for individual existents, or as a system of relationships between individual existents, not all texts project a world. For instance, a philosophical text that deals with abstract topics and general ideas does not create
a world, even though it does speak about the real world. Among the texts
that do represent individual objects, some (such as travel guidebooks or
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ethnographic reports) are purely descriptive while others represent events

that unfold in time and create changes of state within their world. The
former texts have a world, the latter a storyworld. The recipients mental
construction of a static text world can be represented by something that
resembles a classic map. But a storyworld is more than a static container for the objects mentioned in a story; it is a dynamic model of evolving situations, and its representation in the recipients mind is a simulation of the changes that are caused by the events of the plot.4 Because
of their temporal nature, storyworlds are very difficult to diagram. The
famous Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin captured this inseparability of
space and time in narrative thought in his concept of the chronotope.
Narratologists also commonly use the concept of fictional world,
which resembles the concept of storyworld but does not completely correspond to it. Storyworld is a broader concept than fictional world because it covers both factual and fictional stories, meaning stories told as
true of the real world and stories that create their own imaginary world,
respectively.5 But it could be argued that in the case of nonfictional stories, the notion of storyworld is superfluous. If these stories are told
as true of the real world, doesnt reality serve as their referent? In this
case we could divide stories into those that project an imaginary storyworld (in which case storyworld would be just a new term for fictional
world) and those whose storyworld is simply the real world. I believe
that this interpretation does not work for the simple reason that it would
make it impossible for stories to be false. If we conceive of the real world
as a domain made of facts that exist independently of the mind and of
any attempt to narrate themas a domain, in other words, whose description is a collection of true propositionsthen associating the storyworld of a story with the real world makes this story automatically true.
Nonfictional stories are told as true of the real world, but they do not necessarily live up to this ideal. The storyteller can be lying, misinformed,
or playing loosely with the facts. It is therefore necessary to distinguish
the world as it is presented and shaped by a story from the world as it exists autonomously. The former is the storyworld, the latter the reference
world. Assessing the truth of a story means assessing to what extent the
storyworld corresponds to the reference world.
Now if we postulate that both fiction and nonfiction create a storyworld, how can we distinguish these two forms of storytelling? The conStory/Worlds/Media

33

ception of storyworld that I have just outlined goes against the popular
(and inaccurate) belief that nonfictional stories are true stories while fictional stories are false. On the contrary, nonfictional stories can be either true or false with respect to their reference world, but fictional ones
are automatically true in the world about which they are told. We can
account for this difference by invoking the triadic analysis of signs into
a material object (or signifier), a meaning (or signified), and a referent.
The text of the story is the material object, the storyworld is the meaning, and, in the case of nonfiction, the real world is the referent. Since
many different stories can take the real world as referent, there will be
mutually incompatible versions of reality, and the recipients must decide
for themselves whether the story is true. But in the case of fiction, there
is no external referent, because the story creates its own world and normally constitutes the only mode of access to it. (I say normally to leave
room for the phenomenon of transfictional storytelling, where a given
storyworld is represented through many different documents.) The reader (or spectator, player, and so on) of a narrative fiction has consequently no choice but to construct a world image in which the text is true.6
Turning to the question of the content of storyworlds, I propose that
they are composed of the following components.
t
Existents: the characters of the story and the objects that have
special significance for the plot
In the case of nonfiction, the extent of this inventory poses no problem;
every part of reality also belongs, at least implicitly, to the storyworld.
But the issue is trickier in the case of fictional storyworlds. According
to a radical textualist position (a position that proclaims the primacy
of the signifier), certain media create storyworlds, and they contain only
those entities and those features that are actually shown or referred to by
the representing medium. Since media can only show selected aspects of
a world, storyworlds would be fundamentally incomplete entities. The
alternative to the position of radical textualism is a cognitive and phenomenological approach that focuses on storyworlds as an imaginative
experience. In the case of fiction, this experience is a blend of objective
knowledge and make-believe; the user who is immersed in a storyworld
knows that it is created by the medium, but he or she pretends to believe
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that it exists autonomously or, in other words, that it is real. The imagination will consequently conceive fictional storyworlds on the model of
the real world, and it will import knowledge from the real world to fill
out incomplete descriptions. Relying on David Lewiss 1978 article Truth
in Fiction, I have called this idea the principle of minimal departure
(Ryan, Possible Worlds); Kendall Walton calls it the reality principle
(145). It means that when a text mentions an object that exists in reality,
all the real-world properties of this object can be imported into the storyworld unless explicitly contradicted by the text.7 For instance, when
a text refers to a location in the real world, all of the real geography is
implicitly part of the storyworld, and when it refers to a historical individual, this individual enters the storyworld with all of his or her biographical data except for those features that the text explicitly overrules.
t
Setting: a space within which the existents are located
While the vast majority of stories take place in particular locales, in some
rare cases the setting is left fully undetermined. For instance, the minimal story proposed by E. M. Forster, The king died, then the queen died
of grief, does not let the reader imagine a setting. But we must still assume that the world in which the events take place has spatial extension
since kings and queens have physical bodies.
t
Physical laws: principles that determine what kind of events can
and cannot happen in a given story
These laws are highly dependent on genre. For instance, animals can
talk in fairy tales, people can be transformed into animals in fantastic
tales, and time travel is possible in science fiction. In realist narratives,
physical laws are directly borrowed from the recipients life experience.
t
Social rules and values: principles that determine the obligations
of characters
This component may be optional (it is, for instance, absent in the Forster
plot quoted earlier), but it is a particularly powerful source of narrativity because social rules are opportunities for transgressions and, conseStory/Worlds/Media

35

quently, a source of conflict. The individual aspirations of characters, for

instance, may be incompatible with the laws of the group they belong to,
or characters may belong to different groups with competing values, and
they may be forced to make a choice between these values. If we define
plot as a transgression of boundaries (see Lotman), then a plot is made
possible by the rules that define boundaries.
t
Events: the causes of the changes of state that happen in the time
span framed by the narrative
This concept of time span framed by the narrative can be understood
both in a narrow and in a broad sense. In the narrow sense, it consists of
the events that form the focus of the story or the events directly brought
to life, so to speak, by the narrative medium. In films, plays, and games,
this component consists of the action shown on the screen or on the
stage as opposed to the events narrated by the characters, but in purely
verbal narratives, the two frames are harder to distinguish since there
is only one semiotic medium. In the wider sense, the time span framed
by the narrative may involve a backstory made of events that precede
the proper beginning of the story and an afterstory that follows the denouement. An example of a backstory is found in Virginia Woolfs Mrs
Dalloway. The novel takes place over a single day, but it references many
events that precede that day. The use of an afterstory is rarer, but it occurs when a first-person narrator looks at the past from the point of view
of the present, stressing the distinction between his or her past and present self: his or her past belongs to the narrow frame, and his present situation belongs to the wide frame.8
t
Mental events: the characters reactions to perceived or actual
states of affairs
Physical events cannot be properly understood without linking them to
mental events. In the case of actions, these mental events are the motivations of the agents, and in the case of both actions and accidental
events, such as earthquakes, they are the emotional reactions of the affected characters. Now if mental events are as much a part of a story as physical ones, then storyworlds are actually narrative universes
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made of a factual domainwhat I call the textual actual world

surrounded by a plurality of private worlds: the worlds of the beliefs,
wishes, fears, goals, plans, and obligations of the characters (see Ryan,
Possible Worlds).
Applications
For the concept of storyworld to deserve a place in the toolkit of mediaconscious narratology, it must present theoretical applications that lead
to a new perspective on narrative or that better bring to light the narrative resources of individual media. The following suggestions, which
are far from exhaustive, should give the reader an idea of some of these
applications.
1. Storyworld offers a basis for distinguishing two types of narrative elements: intradiegetic elements, which exist within the storyworld, and extradiegetic elements, which are not literally part
of the storyworld but play a crucial role in its presentation. Media
differ from each other not only in their ability to focus on certain
kinds of intradiegetic elements but, more important, in their repertory of extradiegetic elements. Here is a quick survey of the extradiegetic narrative resources of a number of media.
Greek drama offers a good example of the narrative use of extradiegetic elements. While the actors and their speech are located within the storyworld, the chorus comments on the events
from a perspective that ranges from fully external (when the chorus represents an idealized spectator) to marginal (when the chorus consists of distanced observers). In the latter case the chorus
belongs to the wider frame of the storyworld while the characters
belong to the narrow frame.
In language-based narrative fiction, a distinction must be
made between the speech of the characters and the discourse of
the narrator. The former always belongs to the storyworld while
the latter may or may not belong to it. When the narrator is an
embodied individual (that is, a first-person narrator) and when
the narrative discourse imitates a form of nonfictional communication, such as a letter, a diary, or a written autobiography,
then both the narrator and the text belong to the storyworld. In
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the case of epistolary novels, the text will belong to the narrow
temporal frame, because the letters are objects within the storyworld that other characters can read. When a first-person narrator recounts events of the past in a memoir or autobiography
or when his or her discourse has no distinct genre, however, the
narrating-I is situated in the broader temporal frame of the storyworld while the experiencing-I (the narrator as character) is
situated within the inner frame.9 But when a narrative does not
attribute individuating properties to the narrator, does not showcase the act of producing the text, and describes beyond reasonable speculation what no normal human being could know
with certaintynamely, what happens inside the minds of other peoplewe cannot really say that there is an embodied narrating agent who writes or speaks within the storyworld either in the broad or in the narrow frame.10 I would locate such
narrators at the edge of the outer storyworld: they belong to this
world logically because they situate themselves in this world by
presenting it as the real world, but they do not belong to it corporally because they are not individuated members of its population, and their discourse does not exist in either the narrow or
the wide frame.11
Just as the narration and the narrator may not exist in the
world of novels, the camera that records the action does not exist in the storyworld of fiction films unless they thematize the
process of their own production. Spectators do not imagine that
they are watching a camera recording of certain events; instead,
they pretend that they are watching unmediated events. (In a
documentary film, by contrast, the spectator remains aware that
a camera situated on the scene captured the images; this knowledge is what gives the film its documentary value.) Since the
camera does not exist in the storyworld of fiction film, neither
do all the effects of camera movement and editing. For instance,
in the opening scenes of Steven Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan,
the shaking of the camera that mimics the sensation of being exposed to relentless gunfire is clearly extradiegetic (the film is not
claiming that there was a cameraman on Omaha Beach on June
6, 1944). Meanwhile, the same effect in The Blair Witch Project is
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part of the storyworld because the film is (fictionally) presented

as the content of the handheld camera of three students who disappeared in the Maryland woods while producing a documentary about a witch. Another aspect of film that is best explained
by the concept of storyworld is the sound track (see Levinson,
Soundtrack). Film theorists have long been aware of the distinction between diegetic musicmusic that originates inside
the storyworld and that the characters can hearand extradiegetic music, which controls the expectations and emotions of
the spectator but does not exist in the storyworld.
Comics are full of elements that do not belong to the storyworld: for instance, the speech bubbles, the division of the narrative into individual frames, and the so-called gutter that separates them. The story is told through discrete frames, but the
reader assumes that the time and space of the storyworld are
continuous. The text within the bubbles stands for speech acts or
mental acts that take place within the storyworld, but the narrative discourse enclosed in a text box at the top or bottom of the
frames does not originate in the same time and space as the picture shown in the fame. It will be a fully extradiegetic element
when it belongs to an impersonal narrator, and it will be situated within the larger spatiotemporal frame (as opposed to the pictures, which show scenes located in the narrower frame) when
it belongs to a character (as in Marjane Satrapis Persepolis). The
same can be said of voice-over narration in film.
Finally, in computer games, the most notorious extradiegetic elements are the menus that offer the player a choice of actions and the statistics that report the players level of achievement. Playing the game involves a constant movement in and out
of the storyworld. This movement is particularly noticeable in
online worlds as players can communicate with each other either
in rolethat is, within the storyworldor out of role, by addressing real-world players rather than their avatars. Another example of action that takes place outside the storyworld of an online game is the activity of selling objects for real-world money,
an activity that designers and many players consider a transgression of the spirit of the game.
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2. The distinction between world-internal and world-external features can also be applied to the various semiotic channels of
multimodal texts. The distinction between intradiegetic and extradiegetic sound has a correlate in illustrated texts. In some cases illustrations correspond to objects that exist within the storyworld; for instance, the many maps and diagrams that illustrate
Reif Larsens 2009 novel The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet (analyzed in chapter 6 of this volume) are intradiegetic because they
are presented as drawings created by the narrator. Meanwhile,
the maps of Europe that appear in the Neolithic sagas of Jean
Auel are clearly extradiegetic because prehistoric man did not
have the means to produce maps of large territories.
A distinction can also be made between multimodal-born
narratives that use images and text as separate but ontologically equal modes of access to the storyworld and language-born
narratives that use illustrations as a kind of paratext. The first
case is represented by many childrens booksfor instance,
Maurice Sendaks Outside Over There and Lewis Carrolls Alice
in Wonderland illustrated by Sir John Tenniel. In these books the
illustrations relieve the language channel of the task of describing what the characters and setting look like. An example of illustrations functioning as a paratext comes from Salvador Dalis
Don Quixote illustrations. Miguel de Cervantess text offers a
self-sufficient representation of the storyworlds, and even when
Dalis illustrations are published together with the text, the reader remains aware that they are only one of many possible visual
interpretations of the novel.
And finally, multimodal texts can problematize the relationship between text and image by introducing pictures that do not
relate in obvious ways to the content of the text or that originate in a different world. I am thinking here of the work of W. G.
Sebald, who illustrates narratives about fictional characters with
(presumably) found photographs that represent unidentified
real-world persons. In this case a fictional storyworld integrates
real-world documents by redirecting their reference: there was
once a boy who posed for a photograph in the real world, and the
photograph referred to this boy, but once it is inserted in the nov40

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el Austerlitz, the image represents an ontologically distinct individual, the fictional Jacques Austerlitz.
3. Another practical application of the notion of storyworld is the
distinction between single-storyworld and many-storyworlds
texts. While classical narratives are single-storyworld, because
they are centered around a unique actual world made of solid facts, the case of multiple storyworlds is illustrated by texts
that present many different versions of a basic situation and do
not create an opposition among these versions between the actual and the counterfactual.12 This kind of ontological multiplicity occurs in Robert Coovers short story The Babysitter, in such
films as The Butterfly Effect and Run Lola Run, or in Michael
Joyces hypertext afternoon, a story. Computer games present another type of multi-world narrative. Insofar as they are based on
a simulation engine, they generate a different storyworld every
time they are played. These different sequences are mutually incompatible because a player who receives a choice of actions cannot take all the branches in the same world. Games should be
played several times for the user to experience the different storyworlds that the simulation is capable of generating and to appreciate the extent of the differences, but as most games are too
time consuming to be replayed, their potential for variation is often lost on the player.
While texts may project many different storyworlds, a given
storyworld may also unfold in many different texts. This situation
occurs mostly in oral cultures, when bards tell stories that are familiar to the audience. We also find it in a phenomenon that is
currently enjoying great popularitythe phenomenon of media
convergence or transmedial storytelling, which Henry Jenkins
defines as the distribution of narrative content across multiple
media platforms (2). As Christy Dena has shown, this phenomenon can be conceived of in two ways: as a spontaneous clustering of texts by various authors, both canonical and apocryphal,
that develop the world of a popular film or novel, such as The
Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Star Wars; and as the deliberate distribution of narrative content across different media, a process illustrated by the franchise planned by Andy and Larry (now
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Lana) Wachowski around The Matrix or by the German transmedial universe of Alpha 0.7 (simultaneously developed as tv series,
radio shows, and a variety of websites; see Ryan, Transmedial
Storytelling).13 The various elements of a transmedial system can
either expand a storyworld through processes that respect previous content or create logically distinct, though imaginatively related, storyworlds through modifications and transpositions that
alter existing content (see Ryan, Transmedial Storytelling). For
instance, within the Star Wars system, the six movies by George
Lucas clearly represent the same world (the later films were
planned from the beginning), while the various computer games,
online worlds, novels, and texts of fan fictions inspired by the
films alter this world in various ways. One of the tasks of mediaconscious narratology is to describe the relationships between the
worlds of transmedial systems and to provide criteria for deciding
in which cases they represent the same world and in which cases
they project related but distinct worlds.14
4. We may also want to ask how the mental construction of storyworlds is affected by the types of signs that a medium uses. This
process of mental construction is highly sensitive to the distinction between language-based and visual media. Language-based
narratives require an extensive filling-in work because language
speaks to the mind and not directly to the senses. This is why
we need a principle such as minimal departure to provide a basis for the import of information. Visual media, by contrast, saturate the senses and leave much less to the imagination. Take a
comic book hero like Tintin; the images represent him as flat,
and our mind pictures him exactly as he appears in the books.
It does not mean, however, that we imagine Tintin living in a
two-dimensional world similar to the world depicted in Edwin
Abbotts Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. On this
point I believe that we must make a distinction between how we
imagine the worlds of visual media and what we imagine about
them. Cognitive scientists distinguish two modes that we use to
store knowledgeas images and as propositions (see Esrock).
How we imagine Tintin consists of mental images that are determined by the medium, but what we imagine about him consists
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of internalized propositions, and what propositions hold true of

the storyworld is determined by both minimal departure and the
logic of the story. In other words we imagine that Tintin is three
dimensional (3-d) because he is a human being, but when we
run the story of Tintin similar to a film in our head, we visualize
him as two dimensional (2-d). This contrast between imagining how and imagining that holds for all media with a visual
channel. For instance, if we watch a film in black and white, we
remember the picture in black and white, but we assume that the
storyworld has colorunless, of course, this lack of color is thematized, as it is in the film Pleasantville.
What, in the end, does the concept of storyworld contribute to narratology? Its usefulness does not lie in adding yet one more technical
term to a discipline already overloaded with analytical tools nor in summing up the totality of these tools (for if this were the case, the study of
storyworlds would be indistinguishable from narratology as a whole);
rather, it resides in signaling a turn within narratology from the mostly formal approach of what Herman has called classical narratology
(Introduction, 1) to a phenomenological approach focused on the act
of imagination required of the reader, spectator, or player. The concept
of storyworld represents a departure from the idea cultivated in literary theory from New Criticism to deconstruction that the experience of
literature, whether narrative or not, is essentially an experience of language.15 By the same reasoning, the experience of film would be the experience of a flux of moving images, the experience of comics would be
an experience of pages organized into distinct frames holding image and
language combinations, and the experience of computer games would
be one of manipulating certain controls to produce transformations in
the information displayed on the screen. I am not saying that a focus on
storyworlds should make these expressive devices invisible, but if they
matter to us, it is because they are able to conjure a certain type of representation. What can be the object of this representation, if not a world
in which readers, spectators, and players make themselves imaginatively at home? As the title of Richard Gerrigs book Experiencing Narrative
Worlds tells us, without the concept of world, one cannot speak of narrative as a lived experience.
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Notes
1. [A]ll media are mixed media, combining different codes, discursive conventions, channels, sensory and cognitive modes (Mitchell 95).
2. By hypertext I mean not only the literary form exemplified by works such
as Michael Joyces afternoon, a story but also the principle of organization of
the web as a whole, as defined by html code (an organization created by Tim
Berners-Lee).
3. Lars Ellestrm developed a classification of media concepts that comes close
to the present proposal, though there is no exact fit between his categories and
mine or between our respective purposes. I start with categories that are generally considered media in our culture, and I ask on what criteria these categories
are based. Ellestrm is more interested in analytical than in folk categories, aspects that are present in all media. These aspects are (1) basic media (semiotic
categories such as auditory text, tactile text, still image, moving images,
iconic body performance, and organized nonverbal sound); (2) qualified
media (roughly my cultural category) defined in terms of such criteria as origin, delimitation, and use (film, dance, photography, painting, and, I assume,
computer games); and (3) technical media, which realize or display basic
and qualified media. These so-called technical media are more interfaces
for instance, the screen for a tv, a certain kind of paper for photography and
another kind for text, and the human body for dancethan technologies. Ellestrm also proposes to describe every medium in terms of four modalities (a
term he does not use in the same sense as Kress and van Leeuwen did) that correspond to classes of properties: material modality (human body, paper, clay,
silicon and electric pulses, etc.), sensorial modality (sight, hearing, taste, touch,
etc.), spatiotemporal modality (extending in space, in time, or in both), and
semiotic modality (convention, resemblance, contiguity). I would be inclined
to subsume all these modalities under the semiotic category because they all
concern the basic properties of signs. (Ellestrms semiotic mode could then be
renamed basic principle of signification.)
4. I am talking here about mental simulation, a well-known concept in cognitive
psychology, and not about simulation engines such as those we find in computer games.
5. This is the conception of fiction exposed in Lewis, Truth in Fiction. See also
Frank Zipfels contribution to this volume (chapter 4).
6. Here I am speaking of standard fiction. In some postmodern narratives, however, the text deconstructs itself so perversely that the reader is unable to imagine a world in which all of its assertions are true. See Jan Albers Impossible
Storyworlds for suggestions on how readers deal with such texts. Unreliable
narration presents another problem for the claim that the truth of fictional
44

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discourse cannot be called into question: in reconstructing the combined

storyworldreference world, the reader cannot take all of the narrators claims
into consideration, though the reader must accept the vast majority of them if
he or she is to construct a storyworld out of the text. This suggests that storyworlds as a whole correspond to the vision that (the reader assumes) the author
proposes to the reader and not to the interpretation of (fictional) reality intended by the narrator.
7. I am fully aware that minimal departure (md) has its critics. Proponents of the
incompleteness of fictional storyworlds claim that it makes these worlds ontologically complete, while in fact the text that creates them can only specify a
limited number of properties. This objection would be legitimate if texts literally
created worlds, as ontologically autonomous entities, by describing them. But
create in the case of fictional texts is a metaphor; instead, it would be more
appropriate to say that fiction brings a world to the imagination. My claim is
that in the users act of imagination, storyworlds are generally complete. For
instance, we dont imagine human characters as lacking some of the properties
essential to humans, even if the text does not mention them. (I say generally because I dont want to exclude the possibility of storyworlds lacking some dimensions or presenting logical gaps.)
Some scholars (Walsh; Wistrand) have objected that md takes the process
of inference too far and fills storyworlds with irrelevant clutter. For instance,
do we really need to imagine that Anna Karenina has kidneys? Walsh proposes
to replace md with a principle of relevance inspired by Sperber and Wilson,
but while md cannot assess the degree of relevance of an inference, it can tell
basically wrong ones from justifiable ones. Thus, no valid interpretation can be
based on the premise that Anna Karenina has no kidneys. Furthermore, md is
more a guide to the imagination than a recipe for producing interesting interpretations. md does not instruct the reader to imagine Annas kidneys but to
imagine that Anna is a normal human being; therefore, she has kidneys.
I believe that without md it would often be impossible to draw causal inferences. If a story is told about a character being bitten by a rattlesnake and dying shortly afterward (but without stating why), it is by assuming that fictional
rattlesnakes are poisonous, just as real-world ones are, that the reader can infer
the snake caused the characters death. No inference can be considered relevant
if it violates md.
The main problem with md is that it works best with realistic texts. In the
case of fantastic texts, science fiction, fables, or chivalric romances, we cannot
assume that everything that exists in the real world also exists in the fictional
world. In these cases md will be superseded by a generic landscape, or a landscape constructed on the basis of other texts rather than on the basis of life
experience.
Story/Worlds/Media

45

8. The distinction between a narrow and a wide frame can also be made in the
case of setting. The space of a storyworld is always assumed to be larger than
the particular locations that form the setting of the events.
9. Here I knowingly depart from Genettes account of extradiegetic narration.
Genette would regard first-person narrators telling about their past (such as
Humbert Humbert, the narrator of Lolita) as extradiegetic. Whereas Genettes
model conceives of narrators as either intra- or extradiegetic, my model recognizes three types: individuated narrators located within the narrow frame (for
Genette, intradiegetic), individuated narrators located within the wide frame
(for Genette, extradiegetic), and nonindividuated narrators located outside the
storyworld altogether (for Genette, also extradiegetic). Lets note that Genettes
intradiegetic narrators are typically characters, such as Odysseus recounting his
adventures in cantos 912 of the Odyssey. Since the discourse of intradiegetic
narrators is embedded within the tale of an extradiegetic narrator, the occurrence of this discourse automatically introduces a higher diegetic level. It should
also be noted that Genettes model does not make a distinction between narrators who are embodied individuals and narrators who are impersonal abstractions. Though his concept of homodiegetic narrators (narrators who tell about
themselves) presuppose individuation and embodiment, his model places in
the same extradiegetic category individuated narrators who tell about their life
retrospectively (Des Grieux in Abb Prevosts Manon Lescaut), individuated
narrators who chronicle the life of others (Dr. Zeitblom in Thomas Manns Doctor Faustus), and impersonal narrators. My three degrees of remoteness do not
specify whether narrators tell about themselves or about others, but the possibilities relating to each type are easy to infer: while narrators located within the
narrow or the wide frame of the storyworld must be involved to some degree in
the story, even if it is only as witnesses, the narrators (or should one call them
narrative instances?) external to the storyworld cannot tell about themselves
since they have neither a self nor a body.
10. Scholars who have denied the presence of a narrator in this case include Ann
Banfield, Richard Walsh, and Henrik Skov Nielsen. I personally favor a compromise that makes the impersonal extradiegetic narrator a purely logical
placeholder whose purpose is to relieve the author of the responsibility for the
textual speech acts. Since this logical placeholder is a disembodied entity, it can
look at the storyworld from any perspective.
11. According to David Lewis (Counterfactuals), the idea of a real or actual
world is indexical; it refers to the world in which I am situated (184). If impersonal narrators present the fictional world as real, they speak from the logical
point of view of members of this world.
12. For another sense in which textsmore precisely, dramatic textsproject
many different worlds, see chapter 4 of this volume.
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13. The world of Game of Thrones described by Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca
(see chapter 13 of this volume) is a hybrid of the two modes of development. It
originated in a self-standing literary text, but the second stage of development
(in which a game advertised the tv show) was deliberately multimedial.
14. In chapter 11 of this volume, Jason Mittell captures this distinction through the
terms What Is worlds (worlds that expand another) and What If? worlds
(worlds that branch out in time from another, outlining a different course of
events).
15. Typical of this stance is Roland Barthess claim that literature should turn its
readers into writers who gain access to the magic of the signifier (4), a claim
that ignores the contribution of the signifiedthat is, of contentto the pleasure of the text.

Works Cited
Alber, Jan. Impossible Storyworldsand What to Do with Them. Storyworlds 1
(2009): 7996. Print.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel. The
Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Ed. Michael Holquist, trans.
Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
84258. Print.
Banfield, Ann. Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the
Language of Fiction. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982. Print.
Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
1974. Print.
Bateson, Gregory. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine 1972. Print.
Borges, Jorge Luis. The Analytical Language of John Wilkins. Other Inquisitions,
19371952. By Borges. Trans. Ruth L. C. Simms. Austin: University of Texas Press,
1964. 1015. Print.
Dena, Christy. Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional
World across Distinct Media and Environments. Diss. University of Sidney, 2009.
pdf file. June 1, 2012.
Doleel, Lubomr. Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds. Baltimore md: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1998. Print.
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Print.
Ellestrm, Lars. The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial
Relations. Media Borders, Multimodality and Intermediality. Ed. Lars Ellestrm.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 1148. Print.
Esrock, Ellen. The Readers Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response. Baltimore md:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Print.
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Forster, E. M. Aspects of the Novel. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1927. Print.
Genette, Grard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. Trans. Jane E. Lewin.
Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press, 1980. Print.
Gerrig, Richard. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of
Reading. New Haven ct: Yale University Press, 1993. Print.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary
Technogenesis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. Print.
Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the
Age of the Internet. Jefferson nc: McFarland, 2006. Print.
Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden ma: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
Print.
. Introduction: Narratologies. Narratologies: New Perspectives on Narrative
Analysis. Ed. David Herman. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999. 130.
Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
New York University Press, 2006. Print.
Koten, Ji. Fictional Worlds and Storyworlds: Forms and Means of Classification.
Four Studies of Narrative. Ed. Bohumil Fot, Alice Jedliova, Ji Koten, and
Ondej Sldek. Prague: stav pro eskou literature, 2010. 4758. Print.
Kress, Gunther. Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media.
Expert Forum for Knowledge Presentation: Preparing for the Future of Knowledge
Presentation Conference. Institute of Design, Chicago, 2003. Web. November 6,
2012.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and
Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001. Print.
Levinson, Jerrold. Soundtrack. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Ed.
David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. London: Routledge, 2005.
55051. Print.
Lewis, David. Counterfactuals. The Possible and the Actual: Readings in the
Metaphysics of Modality. Ed. Michael Loux. Ithaca ny: Cornell University Press,
1979. 18289. Print.
. Truth in Fiction. American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978): 3746. Print.
Lotman, Jurij M. The Structure of the Artistic Text. Trans. G. Lenhoff and R. Vroon.
1970. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1977. Print.
Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Print.
Nielsen, Henrik Skov. Natural Authors, Unnatural Narration. Postclassical
Narratology. Ed. Jan Alber and Monika Fludernik. Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 2010. 275301. Print.
Ong, Walter. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London:
Methuen, 1982. Print.
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Page, Ruth. Gender and Genre Revisited: Storyworlds in Personal Blogs. Genre:
Forms of Discourse and Culture 41 (Fall/Winter 2008): 15177. Print.
Pavel, Thomas. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Print.
Rajewsky, Irina O. Border Talks: The Problematic Status of Media Borders in
the Current Debate about Intermediality. Media Borders, Multimodality and
Intermediality. Ed. Lars Ellestrm. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 5168.
Print.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Introduction. Narrative across Media: The Languages of
Storytelling. Ed. Marie-Laure Ryan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
140. Print.
. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1991. Print.
. Transfictionality across Media. Theorizing Narrativity. Ed. John Pier and
Jos Angel Garca Landa. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. 385417. Print.
. Transmedial Storytelling and Transfictionality. Poetics Today 34.3 (2013):
36288. Print.
Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. Relevance: Communication and Cognition.
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Thacker, Eugene. Biomedia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Print.
Thomas, Bronwen. What Is Fan Fiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice
Things about It? Storyworlds 3 (2011): 124. Print.
Walsh, Richard. The Rhetoric of Fictionality: Narrative Theory and the Idea of
Fiction. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007. Print.
Walton, Kendall. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the
Representational Arts. Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1990. Print.
Werth, Paul. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London:
Longman, 1999. Print.
Wistrand, Sten. Time for Departure? The Principle of Minimal Departure: A
Critical Examination. Disputable Core Concepts of Narrative Theory. Ed. Gran
Rossholm and Christer Johansson. Bern: Peter Lang, 2012. 1544. Print.
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49

Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

Selection, Time, and Construal in the Discourse of Hamlet
patrick colm hogan

There is a common view that drama is mimetic rather than diegetic,

or narrated (see Richardson, Drama 151). In the sense intended by Plato
and Aristotle, this is true. With limited exceptions, drama has no overt
narrator, no speaker of the entire piece. However, as several authors have
pointed out, given a more complex notion of narration, one may argue that
drama does have a narrator.1 More generally, drama involves not only a
storyworldthus what is representedbut also a discourse, or a means of
representing the storyworld and thus how that storyworld is represented.2
The point is perhaps more evident when exploring emplotment, one of the
two components of discourse (along with narration).
Emplotment comprises selection, organization, and construal.3
Selection is what storyworld information is presented in the narrative. For
example, in telling a story about being taken to a room for special security screening at the airport, I may or may not recount how many guards
were involved, what they said, and so on. Organization is the placement
of information: when it is presented (thus timing), what it is presented
with (thus collocation), the degree to which it is highlighted (thus foregrounding and backgrounding), and so on. To take an instance of timing, I may begin my airport security story with the phrase, Fortunately,
I got to the airport two hours early, because I needed nearly an hour for
security; or I may wait until the end of the narration, leaving you uncertain as to whether I made my flight. Construal is the precise verbal characterization or sensory depiction of the selected story information. For
example, roughly the same physical information is given in the following
sentences: Surrounding me, the three guards moved me to a security office, and The three guards walked with me to a private room. However,
the event is characterized, thus construed, differently in the two cases.
50

The following analyses examine some key discourse features of

Hamlet. Specifically, this chapter sets out to isolate recurring techniques
that transform the storyworld of Hamlet into the plot as we encounter
it in the play. These techniques are to a certain extent characteristic of
the play and of its author. Thus the chapter suggests an analysis of part
of Shakespeares narrative idiolect, one treating the set of principles that
generated emplotment in his works.4 At the same time, these principles
are presumably not confined to Shakespeare; hence they point to features
widely available to dramatists, thereby stressing the importance of discourse operations even in mimetic works. Finally, if successful, the following discussion should illustrate how a careful analysis of emplotment
may reveal significant but otherwise ignored aspects of a dramatic work,
aspects with both thematic and aesthetic significance, even when that
work has been the object of extensive critical scrutiny.5
The Emplotment of Hamlet: Some General Principles
The emplotment of Hamlet is marked by several recurring devices that
are characteristic of Shakespeares narrative idiolect, at least for this play.
Two of the most prominent are trajectory interruption and intensified
parallelism. Trajectory interruption occurs when one emotionally significant causal sequence remains incomplete because another such sequence
is initiated. Intensified parallelism involves the repetition of more or less
isomorphic sequences, or structurally similar complexes of characters,
actions, and/or situations.
Intensified parallelism is the more complicated of the two devices.
Plot parallels may be spread out across different points of the story (as in
the homologies relating Prince Hamlet and King Hamlet to Laertes and
Polonius, as well as Prince Fortinbras and King Fortinbras). However,
Shakespeare often develops parallels across scenes, which is to say across
sets of characters confined to a particular place and time in the storyworld
and presented in a single, continuous part of the narrative discourse.
(Note that a scene in this technical sense will not always correspond to
what is marked as a scene in a play.) This point extends from explicit to
implicit scenesthat is, scenes recounted by characters or even scenes
that the reader must reconstruct. In some cases, Shakespeare develops the
parallel with the same point of view; in other cases, he shifts the point of
view. These variables produce sometimes extremely complex cases.
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

51

For example, in act 1, scene 4, Hamlet and Horatio are outside the castle awaiting the appearance of the ghost.6 They hear trumpets and firing
of pieces (1.4.8). Hamlet explains that the king is drinking. Obviously,
we do not see this rouse (1.4.8), though we know it occurs by the
sounds. In the final scene of the play, Claudius announces that he will
drink and have the battlements their ordnance fire (5.2.271) if Hamlet
does well in his contest with Laertes. Here, we are inside the castle; thus
the perspective has changed. Moreover, there is a difference in modality. In the first instance, the rouse actually occurs, but in the second, it is
only a possibility. Nonetheless, there is a clear parallel between the two.
Parallelisms and interruptions in Hamlet are often guided by what
might be called a selection model. When selecting information for
emplotment, an author may draw on a particular model that orients his
or her attention to specific aspects of the simulated storyworld. In both
productive story generation and discourse selection, writers often rely
on models that are salient in the context of writing. These models include the role of an author, who plans out the actions and experiences of his or her characters. In this case, the writer takes authorship as a
source domain and uses the idea of authorial creative control as a model
for imagining some character. The resulting character is a schemer who
tries to script the actions and experiences of other characters, as if he or
she were, in effect, an author creating a story with those characters. In
the case of plays, the relevant models also include the audience members,
who are the unobserved observers of events. The audience-based model fosters spy characters and overhearers. Both recur cross-culturally.7
Shakespeare makes almost obsessive use of these models in both storyworld creation and emplotment. As such, these models have consequences for the works causal and emotional structures. But some of the
key consequences appear to be thematic and to derive from the fact that
the schemes and spying, which powerful figures in the government engage in, routinely fail and often with tragic consequences.8 These models also have important narrational consequences in that the author- and
audience-like characters become embedded narrators within the work.9
Shakespeare also makes use of complex techniques of construal. In
drama, without a general narrators voice, direct construalthus the explicit, verbal characterization of events, characters, or scenesis usually
confined to embedded narrators (e.g., a character recounting an event).
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However, an author may also use indirect or suggested construals. One

way of indirectly construing events, characters, or situations is through
genre categorization. For example, a young woman walking down a street
at night is implicitly construed one way in a romantic comedy and a different way in a horror film (a point stressed in Nol Carrolls idea of criterial prefocusing). Such genre categorization may occur overtly (e.g.,
when the genre is named in a works title) or implicitly (when it is suggested by the ongoing development of the work). In Hamlet, changing
indirect suggestions of genre may repeatedly shift the spectators genre
evaluations and expectations, thus providing variable indirect construals of events and so on.
More precisely, four genres are at issue in Hamlet. The main plot, which
involves Hamlet, Claudius, the ghost, and Gertrude, is ambiguous between the heroic and revenge genres. The secondary plot, which involves
Hamlet, Ophelia, and Polonius, is ambiguous between the romantic and
seduction genres. All four genres are cross-cultural, prototypical kinds
of story structure (see chapters 3 and 4 of Hogan, Affective Narratology).
Very briefly, the heroic prototype includes two story sequencesone
bearing on the usurpation of the rightful leader of a group and the other
concerning threats to the group from some external enemy, commonly
an invading army. The revenge genre prototypically concerns the heros
attempt to kill the murderer of a family member. As in Hamlet, this attempt often results in the death of innocents and even the death of the
revenger himself or herself. The heroic plot most often strongly favors the
usurped ruler, presenting his or her restoration as just and even utopian. In contrast, the revenge genre is often highly ambivalent, sympathizing with the heros grief and anger but condemning his or her violence.
The romantic plot features lovers being separated by some social representatives, such as parents, then being reunited in an idealized union.
The seduction plot incorporates deception and abandonment, often with
the woman pregnant. The seduction plot may lead to the deaths of those
involved; however, even when it leads to marriage, this genre tends to
be highly ambivalent.
Again, Hamlet is often ambiguous between being an instance of the
heroic or revenge genre (for one part of the play) and the romantic or
seduction genre (for another part of the play). At times, these ambiguities serve to intensify the emotional impact of the play. At other times,
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

53

they seem to have primarily thematic consequences. Note that, in both

cases, the genre shifts mean that the play ambiguously moves between
more and less ambivalent construals. This shifting greatly increases the
emotional and evaluative complexity of the work.
Finally, Shakespeare also takes up discourse features at the intersection of narration and emplotment. The discourse largely confines the
depiction of inner psychological states to the title character; however,
at certain points Shakespeare strategically violates this restriction, revealing the inner thoughts of other characters. He does this, first of all,
to produce an understanding of the main causal sequences. Also, he extends the thematic concerns and enhances the emotional impact of the
work, in part through intensifying our empathic response to characters.
In connection with the last point, it is worth briefly considering the
varieties of such emotional impacts. The most obvious variety comprises those feelings provoked by the story; however, other sorts of emotional effects occur with discourse manipulation. Somewhat reformulating
the valuable analysis of Ed Tan (see 65 and 82), we may distinguish three
sorts of affect in narrative: story emotion, plot interest, and artifact emotion. Story emotion concerns a response to the events and characters in
the storyworld. Plot interest is a function of the selection, organization,
and construal of the storyworld in emplotment. For example, it includes
our curiosity about past, unreported events and our suspense regarding
future events (to use Sternbergs terms). Artifact emotion bears on the
aesthetic features of the narrative as a human creation and includes matters such as style. Commonly, our artifact emotion results from one of
two factors. It may derive from our isolation of an unusual patterning,
or patterning that goes beyond accident (e.g., the rhythmic variations in
meter, which go beyond the patterning of ordinary speech). Alternatively,
it may be the result of an unusual prototype approximation. For example, in the case of facial beauty, the most beautiful face is, roughly, the
most average face (a prototype is, roughly, an average case, as Langlois
and Roggman note).
The Emplotment of Hamlet: Acts 1 and 2
Any reader unfamiliar with Hamlet may be surprised to find that despite its wealth of story concerns, the play begins with two minor, indeed
wholly insignificant charactersBarnardo and Francisco.10 The opening
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scene is quite revealing about the nature and function of emplotment.

Specifically, Francisco is on watch. Barnardo comes to replace him. He is
to be joined by Horatio and Marcellus. In terms of story understanding,
there is no clear reason to begin the play here rather than with Horatio,
Marcellus, and Barnardo waiting for a ghost to reappear. Note that this
point does not concern the story but the plot. In the storyworld, regular changes of the guard would occur; thus a guard would have been on
duty before Barnardo reported. The question is, why did Shakespeare select this part of the storyworld for presentation, since it appears irrelevant for understanding the main causal sequences of the play? The reasons seem primarily emotional. The opening presents us with Franciscos
isolation and establishes a degree of wariness with the question, Whos
there? (1.1.1). This setting is significant primarily owing to Hamlets subsequent isolation. But why connect Francisco with Hamlet? Before leaving, Francisco remarks that he is sick at heart (1.1.9). We are never told
the reasons for his anxiety, but Franciscos unease is echoed in the final
scene of the play when Hamlet remarks to Horatio on how ill alls here
about my heart (5.2.21314). The parallelism suggests the pervasiveness
of melancholy and foreboding in Denmark, making these feelings more
broadly social and less unique to Hamlet. The parallelism also serves to
tie the opening scenes more strongly with the end, thus enhancing the
pattern of circularity. This pattern is significant because circularity is
often an aesthetically consequential artifactual feature of a narrative.
After Francisco leaves, Marcellus introduces the topic of one main
story sequence, briefly recounting the appearance of the ghost on two
previous nights. The ghost then reappears. In this manipulation of organization we learn about the three appearances of the ghost in quick succession, with the first and second presented in abbreviated form. Clearly,
this manipulation serves the function of emotional intensification. In
contrast, imagine an emplotment that actually depicted the first watch
with the ghost on stage, then had the characters return for the second
watch with the ghost, and then reassembled them for the third watch
with the ghost. This choice would almost certainly dissipate the audiences response through habituation, perhaps even producing comic effects. At the same time, this tripling of the ghosts appearance (recounted, rather than directly represented) reinforces our sense of his reality
(in contrast with a single representation).
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

55

The dialogue of the watchers serves to introduce not only the identity of the ghost but also the story of his combat with Fortinbras. This selection of information has a story function in providing us background
for a separate story sequence (the conflict with Norway). It also provokes
interest (curiosity, in Sternbergs term) regarding the details of this story.
As already noted, a recurring emplotment technique in Hamlet is trajectory interruption. Just as a story sequence is moving toward some
point of intensity, Shakespeare breaks off and presents us with part of
another story sequence. This aspect of emplotment is clearly designed
to maintain interest in much the way that cliff-hangers sustain interest
in television serials. Often, Shakespeare does so by shifting scenes. (This
tack is a version of the meanwhile, back at the ranch technique.) Thus,
after the meeting with the ghost, the next scene takes us inside the castle,
where the relationships among Hamlet, Gertrude, and Claudius are revealed. Before this action, however, the opening scene itself is interrupted.
Specifically, after the ghost has appeared, we are not immediately given his purposes or the consequences of the appearance. Rather, once he
leaves, Marcellus speaks of preparations for war, and Horatio proceeds
to explain the nature and development of young Fortinbrass actions to
regain the lands lost by his father. Realistically speaking, the scene is
bizarre. The three men have just seen a ghost. Horatio tremble[s] and
look[s] pale at the sight (1.1.53). But then they shift to a leisurely conversation about contemporary politics. Evidently, however, audiences do not
question the transition, presumably because it so coheres with other aspects of the scene. First, the enhanced watch is due to preparations for
war. Second, Horatios speech elaborates on the story of King Hamlet and
Fortinbras that was briefly introduced a moment earlier. Finally, this political situation is used to explain the appearance of the ghost. In short,
the political dialogue develops plot interest even as it violates story plausibility. Apparently audiences accept this bizarre interruption because
the plot interest outweighs the storys implausibility. We in effect treat
this sequence as if it were narrated by someone outside the main action,
a narrator who recounts the ghosts appearance and who then unperturbedly shifts to political background.
In keeping with the recurring structure, the interruption is itself interrupted by the ghosts return. Horatio links and justifies the two interruptions by taking up the political theme in relation to the ghostly vis56

Hogan

itation. Specifically, he asks the ghost about the countrys fate (1.1.133).
But, before the ghost can answer, the cock crows, and he must return to
confinement. Here, again, we have an instance of the interruption technique serving to intensify the emotional response.
The crowing of the cock brings up an interesting aspect of the timing
of the scene. There is a common, if usually implicit expectation that mimetic works present actual occurrences in (roughly) their actual duration, except in unusual circumstances (e.g., when film speed is altered).
In other words, the idea is that plot duration and story duration must be
about the same if there is no deletion of story elements in the plot. But
this scene suggests something very different. Shortly after Barnardo arrives, he remarks on the time: Tis now struck twelve (1.1.7). A mere
thirty-two lines later, when the ghost enters, it is suggested that the time
is one oclock (1.1.3639). Only about a hundred lines later, it is dawn.
Clearly, Shakespeare has drastically reduced the story time in the narration time.11 This time line may be another reason why we are able to accept the quick transition to ordinary conversation after the ghosts appearance. Perhaps we, as audience members, implicitly sense that the timing
in the discoursethat is, what we see and hearis a radically condensed
version of the timing in the storyworld, or of the events themselves.
The scene ends with a plan: Horatio and Marcellus will discuss what
they have seen with Hamlet. This decision leads nicely to scene 2, where
Hamlet is introduced; however, it does not lead to the colloquy between
Hamlet and Horatio. That plan is interrupted, and we are introduced instead to Claudius. Just as Horatio provided the backstory to the appearance of the ghost, Claudius now provides some of the backstory on the
death of King Hamletthus the backstory to there being a ghost in the
first place. This exposition is connected with plot interest in that we are
first given the emotionally intense appearance of the ghost. It has led to
a range of questions, which Claudius, then, partially answers. But the answers are incomplete, as we still do not know the nature of King Hamlets
death. Nor do we understand the precise relationship between Claudius
and Gertrude that led to their quick marriage. Here, we might expect further treatment of the kings demise, but it, too, is interrupted by a reference to Fortinbraswith the movement from the dead King Hamlet to
Fortinbras precisely paralleling the sequence in the preceding scene. The
danger posed by Fortinbras is, of course, the danger of invasion. This elEmplotting a Storyworld in Drama

57

ement is, again, a definitive part of the cross-cultural heroic prototype.

It tends to give at least some viewers the sense that they are witnessing a
heroic plot and orients their expectations accordingly. This topic is then
deferred (in another interruption) until there is further communication
with the present king of Norway, Fortinbrass uncle.
At this point, one might expect a return to King Hamlet, but now
Laertes is introduced. He is given permission to return to France. The point
of this plot selection seems to lie merely in contrasting this decision with
Claudiuss wish that Hamlet not return to his studies at Wittenberg (thus
yielding an inverse parallel). Now Prince Hamlet finally enters the play.
He does so first in an aside, revealing the nonpersonified, encompassing
narrators internal access that will recur later in the play. Claudius says that
Hamlets departure is retrograde to our desire and he wishes Hamlet to
remain in our eye (1.2.114, 116). Claudiuss reasons are putatively a matter of affection; however, insofar as we have hints that this play is a heroic
narrative, it is not too difficult to infer that Claudius may worry about an
unobserved Hamlets possibly undertaking subversive actions. Again, it
is all a matter of emplotment, a selection from the storyworld. We know
from elsewhere in the play that the nonpersonified narrator is not strictly
limited to Hamlets thoughts; rather, Shakespeare is willing to give us access to Claudiuss thoughts when needed. He does not do so here, though
such access to the storyworld would confirm or disconfirm our suspicions.
Subsequently, we are presented with Hamlets first soliloquy, again
an indication of the narrators internal access. In this soliloquy, Hamlet
explains that Gertrude has married Claudius within a month of King
Hamlets death (1.2.145). Today, audience members have become so accustomed to the play that they may hardly even notice this revelation,
but it is, indeed, shocking. It strongly suggests a prior relationship between the two that went beyond that of sister-in-law and brother-in-law.
In the genre context of the revenge prototype, it may hint at a crime in
which the queen was complicit or even active. Put differently, the genre
categorization may suggest a particular construal of the relationship between Claudius and Gertrude, as well as their joint responsibility for
King Hamlets death.
At this juncture, with its hints of a revenge narrative, Horatio enters
and explains the ghosts appearance to Hamlet. Three points are important
for our purposes. First, Hamlet immediately swears Horatio, Marcellus,
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and Barnardo to silence on this topic. This move suggests his strong mistrust of the other royals and perhaps the beginnings of a strategic plan.
Second, this plan may hint at the use of an author model. Finally, Hamlet
would not need a plan if he did not already suspect a particular motive for
the ghosts appearance. Horatio describes the ghost as expressing sorrow
rather than anger (1.2.232). Nonetheless, Hamlet immediately infers that
there has been foul play (1.2.256). It seems very unlikely that someone
would jump to this conclusion (on the basis of a sorrowful ghost) if he or
she did not already have suspicionsa possibility that fosters plot interest. All this discourse information is carefully selected to suggest, but not
confirm, the existence of such suspicions. The point is even more striking
here than in the case of Claudius, since Shakespeare could easily have had
Hamlet spell out these suspicions in an aside or soliloquy.
The next scene again interrupts the development of the King Hamlet
story. It begins with Laertes, but the topic is the romantic involvement
of Hamlet and Ophelia. This topic introduces a further storyor, rather, two further stories. In the course of the play, Hamlet presents his
wooing of Ophelia as part of a romantic narrative; however, Laertes and
Polonius both construe it as a seduction narrative. Moreover, they do
so by explicitly projecting possibilities for the future loss of honor
(1.3.29) and pregnancy (1.3.109).
The use of plot parallelism is almost obtrusive here. In this scene,
Laertes advises Ophelia, then Polonius advises Laertes, then Polonius advises Ophelia. We may also recall that, in the preceding scene, Horatio
told Hamlet about the ghost as Barnardo earlier had told Marcellus,
Horatio, and usand as, even before that (we are informed), Marcellus
had told Horatio.
The intensified parallelism continues with the next two scenes in
which Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus wait for and encounter the ghost,
just as Horatio, Marcellus, and Barnardo did earlier. Indeed, these scenes
end act 1, giving the act a circular formal structure. The link between
Hamlet and Francisco is established here initially, for Hamlet introduces the scene by observing that it is very cold (1.4.1), echoing Franciscos
earlier observation, Tis bitter cold (1.1.8), right before explaining that
he is sick at heart (1.1.9).
We cannot go through all plot elements in these scenes; however, a
few additional points are worth noting. Hamlets initial worry about the
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

59

ghost is whether he is real or a demonic impersonator (1.4.40). His concern straightforwardly introduces a question into the minds of the audience, who now can envision two possible outcomes. These results have
great consequences for everything that follows, most obviously in suggesting that the ghost is an unreliable (embedded) narrator. The point is
elaborated by Horatio, who specifically worries that the ghost will lead
Hamlet to suicide (1.4.69). This passage prepares us for Hamlets subsequent thoughts of suicide. At the same time, it makes those thoughts ambiguous. Is his apparent death wish part of his scheme, a spontaneous
emotional tendency, or evidence that the ghost is indeed tempting him?
All of these possibilities result from the selection of information presented in the discourse and the construal of that information by the characters (here, Horatios worry over the ghosts intentions). The answers
should be readily available in the storyworld and even to the narrator,
who, again, has access to Hamlets thoughts. These elements of emplotment clearly have emotional consequences, but they also may have thematic resonances relating to questions of satanic temptation.
A scene change occurs when Hamlet follows the ghost to a place where
the others cannot observe them. Here, the ghost explains that he has been
killed by Claudius and calls for revenge (1.5.7). This scene clearly connects the play with the revenge genre, which, subsequently, is probably
more salient than the heroic genre is. The play, however, remains ambiguous between the two. No less important, when the ghost explains who
committed the murder, Hamlet exclaims, O my prophetic soul! (1.5.40),
indicating that he did suspect that his uncle had committed murder (or,
in terms of the heroic narrative, usurpation). Moreover, the phrasing of
the ghosts subsequent speech allows the possibility that Claudius seduced
Gertrude before the murder (hence the reference to adultery [1.5.42]).
Finally, Hamlet makes the surprising announcement that he may put
an antic disposition on (1.5.172). This declaration again suggests the author model, with Hamlet manipulating a story. As he has not had time
to formulate a scheme since speaking with the ghost, we must conclude
that he had this scheme in mind already. Again, our omniscient narrator could certainly have presented this information to us (e.g., in the
form of a soliloquy), but the selection of information is more likely to
provoke our interest by eliciting curiosity over what the purpose of the
antic disposition could be.12
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The second act begins as the first did, with somethingin this case, a
plan rather than a characterthat is largely irrelevant to the causal development of the story. It does, however, bear on the audiences attentional orientation and on some thematic concerns of the play. Again, the
first act ends with the hint of Hamlets schemes. The second begins by
extending the author model to Polonius. Drawing on the closely related audience model, Polonius has plotted out a scheme of espionage. As
a matter of fact, his espionage is not mere eavesdropping but playacting
to produce intelligence. Specifically, Polonius explains how Reynaldo
can take up a role in order to learn the truth about Laertess activities in
France. This scene calls out for an analysis in terms of emplotment because it is so clearly outside any significant causal sequence in the storyworld. It is entirely superfluous in terms of story information. We therefore infer that it has other functions. Among other things, it enhances
our sensitivity to acting and espionage.
This exchange is followed by Ophelias distressed account of Hamlets
madness. Polonius construes his behavior as the madness of love. Indeed,
elements of Hamlets behavior fit with this aspect of a romantic narrative. Of course, we may recall Hamlets statement that he will perform
the role of madman, especially since strategic playacting has been made
salient. At the same time, however, implications of the romantic genre
(with its frequently distracted lovers) may lead us to wonder about the
degree to which Hamlet is acting and the degree to which Polonius is
correct about Hamlets lovesickness.
Once one becomes aware of patterns in the works emplotment, the
second scene is almost shockingly predictable. In this scene, we learn that
the king has brought Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to spy on Hamlet in
order to discover the nature of his madness. In short, we have a third instance of playacting to produce intelligence through espionage (the others being the schemes of Hamlet and Polonius). However, it is not simply
aesthetic parallelism bearing on the work as an artifact. That Claudius
has engaged in this trickery suggests again that he finds Hamlets behavior worrisome and his intentions potentially dangerous, in the manner
of either a heroic or revenge narrative.
Hamlets idea of acting to produce intelligence is interrupted by
Poloniuss espionage scheme, which is not developed as we turn to the
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern scheme of espionage. This effort is in
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

61

turn interrupted by Poloniuss report that he has discovered the cause

of Hamlets madness. Before this line can be developed, however, yet
another interruption occurs, and we return specifically to the invasion
sequence of the heroic plot. Just as Fortinbrass threat had interrupted
Claudiuss speech in the second scene of the first act, it now interrupts
his speech in the second scene of the second act. The interest of the audience should be rather intense at this point, given the multiple layering
of uncertain futures for the actionall intensified not only by selection
and construal but also by the clear manipulation of timing as well. At
this point, the Fortinbras issue is supposedly resolved, but the resolution
is insane: Denmark is supposed to allow Fortinbrass army free passage
through the kingdom to go and fight against Poland. In effect, Norway
says, This army was put together to invade you. If you just let the army
enter your territory, however, it wont attack. This situation, too, is likely to provoke plot interest. Claudius does not actually make a decision at
this point, leaving that issue also unresolved when we return to Polonius.
As already indicated, Polonius has changed his view and believes
that Hamlets approach to Ophelia is part of a romantic narrative rather than a seduction narrative. (Of course, he would not phrase it this
way.) In connection with this changeand in keeping with the romantic
prototypehe presumably fears that Claudius and Gertrude will not only
reject the marriage to Ophelia as beneath Hamlet but also will be outraged by Poloniuss even suggesting the possibility. His apprehensiveness
accounts for his nervous attempts to delay introducing the topic. Once
he arrives at the point, however, Polonius proposes the one solution that
has become obvious in the development of these eventsespionage. This
spying, as with all other schemes in the play, fails. The thematic suggestion throughout is that intelligence gathering tends to be self-confirming.
Polonius, like other spies, finds only what he wants to find.
When Polonius approaches Hamlet, Hamlet indicates that he is
aware of Poloniuss purposes when he says that Polonius is not honest (2.2.176). In this scene, Hamlets antic disposition suggests equivocation, or the play with language that Jesuits used to conceal subversive schemes and actions. This exchange gives us some hintbut only a
hintas to the nature of Hamlets own scheme, perhaps relating it to the
heroic more than the revenge prototype (given the purposes of Jesuitical
equivocation). Once again, it is important to stress that it is not simply
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storyworld simulation but emplotment. Given that Shakespeare tacitly

simulated Hamlet as having plans, he could have presented us with those
plans. Moreover, he could have given us greater access to Hamlet away
from court observation so that we could have a more definitive sense
of his madness or sanity. These are all matters of selection and organization. Similarly, Shakespeare could have been less equivocal over the
plays genre. Again, it may be a usurpation and restoration plot, aimed
at enthroning Hamlet, the rightful heir and a popular leader (loved of
the distracted multitude [4.3.4]). Alternatively, it may be a revenge plot.
At least for the original audience, the former would be likely to provoke
less ambivalence, in keeping with the usual operation of these genres.
After Polonius leaves, Hamlet turns to the next set of spies. Here, the
suspicions of Claudius are indicated indirectly by Rosencrantzs suggestion that Hamlets distress is caused by ambition (2.2.256). Moreover,
ambition suggests the heroic usurpation sequence rather than revenge.
Hamlets own knowledge of the espionage comes out when he says, I
know the good King and Queen have sent for you (2.2.28889), evidently implying that he has his own spies.
After these multiple instances of acting and espionage, the play introduces real actors. Literalizing the model that has been so fruitful to this
point, Hamlet determines to use the real actors for intelligence gathering
and specifically to test the ghosts statements about Claudius. Before this
point, however, we have another parallel in which the actors recite the story of the murder of a king, a story taken from a heroic narrative. The connections here are so straightforward that they do not require explication.
Shakespeare has elaborated and particularized the emplotment of his story using idiolectal discourse strategies bearing on selection, organization,
and construal. By the end of act 2, these strategies are all well established.
In the remainder of the play, they are further elaborated and intertwined,
but they do not change fundamentally. These strategies include systematic trajectory interruption and intensified parallelism across represented
and recounted, actual and hypothetical scenes. They often involve selection models as well. They lead to author-like plotting, as well as espionage, understood in terms of playacting and audience observationall
of which give rise to embedded narration. Shakespeare also makes tacit use of shifting genre categories, with the different, indirect construals
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

63

they entail. These strategies serve to develop and complicate the understanding of the story; to sustain interest; to intensify emotional response,
both empathic and artifactual; and to elaborate thematic concerns. This
particular complex of operations may be characteristic of this play in
particular or of Shakespeares work more generally. Considered individually, however, the operations are undoubtedly found in a wide range of
dramas, pointing once again to the importance of discourse manipulation even in mimetic forms.13

Notes
1. See, for example, Richardson, Drama; Jahn. In Narrative Discourse, I argue
for conceptually distinguishing an encompassing, nonpersonified narrator as
the source of the selected, organized, and construed information defining the
plot. Moreover, I discuss the relation of the narrator to the implied author and
the relation of the implied author to the real author. Clearly, that discussion
cannot be recapitulated here, in an essay on another topic; however, I do not
believe anything in the following pages rests on that discussion. Readers who
agree with Bordwell in rejecting this idea of a narrator should feel free to follow
Bordwell and substitute narration for encompassing nonpersonified narrator. Readers who are simply uncomfortable with the term narrator may wish
to follow Chatman or Bareis. Given that narrational functions are verbal in
the case of prose fiction and partially nonverbal in the case of drama and film,
Chatman proposes using the more general term presenter, rather than narrator, to cover both cases (115); similarly, Bareis proposes using mediator.
2. A brief essay can hardly discuss all the discourse elements of drama. For influential discussions of important aspects of discourse and drama, see Fludernik;
Nnning and Sommer; Pfister.
3. As Hhn and Sommer write, using somewhat different subdivisions, drama
involves selection, segmentation, combination, and focus.
4. A narrative idiolect is a complex of cognitive and affective structures, processes,
and contents through which an author produces particular narratives. In an
earlier essay (Narrative Universals), I considered principles of narrative idiolect that served to generate Shakespearean storyworlds.
5. Hamlet has obviously generated a vast amount of criticism. (For a brave attempt to overview this criticism, see Wofford.) However, I have not located a
focus on the discourse structure of the play in any of this work.
6. Text references refer to act, scene, and line of the New American Librarys 1998
edition of Shakespeares The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
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7. Schemer characters include C akya in Vikhadattas Sanskrit Mudrrkasa and Wang Yn in the Chinese Yan drama A Stratagem of Interlocking
Rings. Sanskrit works such as Bhsas Svapnavsavadattam or Japanese works
such as Chikamatsus Drum of the Waves of Horikawa provide examples of the
unobserved observer.
8. As would be expected, the representation of espionage in the play points toward some historical considerations that we are not able to explore here. For a
discussion of relevant historical context, see Parker.
9. On embedded narration, see Nelles.
10. Ideally, we would go through the entire play, examining the full emplotment;
however, constraints of space dictate that we can only consider part of the
work. But the same techniques recur in acts 3 through 5. In that sense, a careful analysis of the first and second acts should be sufficient to give a sense of
Shakespeares emplotment of Hamlets storyworld.
11. This technique recurs elsewhere in Shakespeares plays and in other works, as
Brian Richardson has valuably discussed (Time).
12. In cases such as this one, we see an important, if somewhat obvious, emplotment device not only in Shakespeares works but almost everywhere else. This
selective withholding of information is crucial for understanding the storys
main causal sequences. Narratologists refer to a narrators provision or withholding of information as the narrators communicativeness. See, for example,
Bordwell 59.
13. I am grateful to Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Nol Thon for very helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.

Works Cited
Bareis, J. Alexander. Fiktionales Erzhlen: Zur Theorie der literarischen Fiktion als
Make-Believe. Gteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis, 2008.
Print.
Bordwell, David. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1985. Print.
Carroll, Nol. Film, Emotion, and Genre. Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and
Emotion. Ed. Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith. Baltimore md: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1999. 2147. Print.
Chatman, Seymour. Coming to Terms: The Rhetoric of Narrative and Film. Ithaca
ny: Cornell University Press, 1990. Print.
Fludernik, Monika. Narrative and Drama. Theorizing Narrativity. Ed. John Pier
and Jos Angel Garca Landa. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008. 35583. Print.
Hogan, Patrick Colm. Affective Narratology: The Emotional Structure of Stories.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011. Print.
Emplotting a Storyworld in Drama

65

. Narrative Discourse: Authors and Narrators in Literature, Film, and Art.

Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013. Print.
. Narrative Universals, Heroic Tragi-Comedy, and Shakespeares Political
Ambivalence. College Literature 33.1 (2006): 3466. Print.
Hhn, Peter, and Roy Sommer. Narration in Poetry and Drama. The Living
Handbook of Narratology. Ed. Peter Hhn et al. Hamburg: Hamburg University
Press, 2011. Web. June 1, 2011.
Jahn, Manfred. Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a Narratology of
Drama. New Literary History 32 (2001): 65979. Print.
Langlois, J. H., and L. A. Roggman. Attractive Faces Are Only Average.
Psychological Science 1 (1990): 11521. Print.
Nelles, William. Embedding. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Ed.
David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. New York: Routledge,
2005. 13435. Print.
Nnning, Ansgar, and Roy Sommer. Diagetic and Mimetic Narrative: Some
Further Steps towards a Transgeneric Narratology of Drama. Theorizing
Narrativity. Ed. John Pier and Jos ngel Garca Landa. Berlin: De Gruyter,
2008. 33154. Print.
Parker, Patricia. Othello and Hamlet: Dilation, Spying, and the Secret Place of
Woman. Representations 44 (1993): 6095. Print.
Pfister, Manfred. The Theory and Analysis of Drama. Trans. John Halliday. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Print.
Richardson, Brian. Drama and Narrative. The Cambridge Companion to Narrative.
Ed. David Herman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 14255.
Print.
. Time Is Out of Joint: Narrative Models and the Temporality of the
Drama. Poetics Today 8.2 (1987): 299309. Print.
Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Ed. Sylvan
Barnet. New York: New American Library, 1998. Print.
Sternberg, Meir. Expositional Modes and Temporal Ordering in Fiction. Baltimore
md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Print.
Tan, Ed. Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine.
Trans. Barbara Fasting. Mahwah nj: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996. Print.
Wofford, Susanne. A Critical History of Hamlet. Hamlet. Ed. Susanne Wofford.
Boston: Bedford Books, 1994. 181207. Print.

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Subjectivity across Media

On Transmedial Strategies of Subjective
Representation in Contemporary Feature Films,
Graphic Novels, and Computer Games
jan- nol thon

Prototypical narrative representations not only represent a storyworld

situated in space and time but also populate that storyworld with characters to whom some kind of mental life can be ascribed. Accordingly,
narrative representations across media may employ a number of different
strategies to represent the consciousness of characters. Providing some
kind of direct access may be the most obvious option, but it certainly is not the most common. Despite differences with regard to the mediality of conventionally distinct media and the idiosyncrasies of individual narrative representations, however, the subjective representation of
consciousness can be considered a genuinely transmedial phenomenon
in that it is realized across a wide range of media, each with its own specific limitations and affordances.1 Hence, transmedial strategies of subjective representation appear to be a particularly rewarding area of inquiry for a transmedial narratology that acknowledges both similarities
and differences in the ways narrative media narrate.2
Since the representation of subjectivity can be considered a salient prototypical feature of narrative, it comes as no surprise that the strategies
narratives may employ to represent subjectivity have been at the center
of narratological interest for at least the past five decades.3 Accordingly,
there is an impressive amount of research on the narratological problems occurring in the context of representations of subjectivity, but the
intense attention toward these problems in both classical and contemporary narratology has also lead to a multitude of competing and often
contradictory terms and concepts that does not necessarily further mutual understanding.4 The lack of consensus becomes particularly apparent in the seemingly endless debates surrounding the three most influ67

ential terms that have been proposed to describe the representation of

subjectivity in literary texts, feature films, and beyond: point of view,
perspective, and focalization.5 I will also refer to point of view and
perspective in a rather technical sense, but it generally seems preferable
to use less charged expressions such as the representation of subjectivity or subjective representation to describe the representation of
characters consciousness.
It should be noted, however, that representing subjectivity is understood here in a broader sense than subjective representation is. The former includes comparatively indirect modes of representation that allow
recipients to infer certain aspects of the represented characters minds
without providing anything amounting to what may roughly be described as direct access.6 It is precisely this kind of direct access to a
represented characters subjectivity that subjective representation provides. Moreover, while narratologists usually refer to the representation
of the mind or the consciousness of a character in this context, I will focus on the subjective representation not of a characters mind or consciousness in general but on what may be described as perceptual or
quasi-perceptual aspects of the latter. Thus I will be able to give particular emphasis to the representation of various kinds of mental imagery
that occur in the context of characters perceptions, hallucinations, memories, dreams, and fantasies.7
The primary aim of this chapter is to make plausible the notion that,
on the one hand, certain strategies of subjective representation of (quasi-)
perceptual aspects of characters consciousness may be treated as transmedial phenomena on a certain level of abstraction, but, on the other hand, a transmedial narratology that remains media conscious also
needs to focus on the medium-specific realization of these strategies
and on the medium-specific functions they fulfill. Before I take a closer
look at the realization of these strategies of subjective representation in
feature films such as Bryan Singers The Usual Suspects, Ron Howards
A Beautiful Mind, or David Finchers Fight Club; graphic novels such as
Alan Moore and Kevin ONeills The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
Frank Millers Sin City, or Neil Gaimans The Sandman; and computer games such as Infinity Wards Call of Duty, Rocksteadys Batman:
Arkham Asylum, or Double Fines Psychonauts, however, I would like
to sketch how what I consider to be transmedial strategies of subjective
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representation relate to transmedial strategies of intersubjective and objective representation, respectively.

Objective, Intersubjective, and Subjective Representation
Narrative representations across media are arguably best understood
as deploying certain global strategies of narration within which the local perturbation, seen in a specified fashion, can be made to fit (Wilson,
Narration 3). I would maintain, however, that a bottom-up approach
(such as Branigans in Narrative Comprehension) that analyzes local strategies of subjective representation in order to arrive at the global structure of a given narrative representation is methodologically preferable
to a top-down approach (such as Genettes in Narrative Discourse and
Narrative Discourse Revisited) that tends to postulate a global structure
before analyzing local perturbations from it. Against this background I
propose to distinguish between subjective, intersubjective, and objective
modes of representation as three particularly salient prototypical relations between a characters consciousness and its narrative representation. As Edward Branigans examination of what he calls focalization
makes clear, what is represented by narrative representations across media can often be understood as diegetically intersubjective, or objective,
in the sense that it is reported independently of a narrator, or else appears
seemingly without any mediation as a fact of some kind (Narrative
Comprehension 161). But, of course, this does not mean that the recipients are unable to infer, at least to a certain extent, how the characters
that are intersubjectively represented experience the situation, how they
perceive the represented storyworld elements, what is on their minds.
While much of classical narratological research focused on what Alan
Palmer calls the speech category approach (53) to the representation
of characters consciousness in literary texts, the past decade has seen
an increasing interest in these kinds of intersubjective representations
of subjectivity. What Lisa Zunshine describes as our mind-reading
skillsthat is, our ability to explain peoples behavior in terms of their
thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and desires (6)is no longer seen as being
limited to the actual world, but [c]onstructions of fictional minds appear to be inextricably bound up with presentations of action. Direct
access to inner speech and states of mind is only a small part of the
process of building up the sense of a mind in action (Palmer 21011).
Subjectivity across Media

69

Similarly, Per Persson examines the role of folk psychology for the construction of characters minds in feature film, emphasizing that mental attribution of fictional characters is not solely a question of face and
body-cue ability, since these cues are always placed within a context
of mental states (183).
Even if we leave the more philosophical implications of objectivity,
intersubjectivity, and subjectivity aside, however, it seems clear that narrative representations may not only represent storyworld elements, first,
as they are (subjectively) represented in the mind of a particular character and, second, as they are (intersubjectively) perceived by a group of
characters, but also, third, represent storyworld elements that are not
perceived by any character in the storyworld at all. If one keeps in mind
that some nonsubjective modes of representation contribute significantly
to the recipients construction not only of the characters consciousness
but also of the less conscious, or directly accessible, aspects of characters minds, a heuristic distinction between objective and intersubjective (as well as subjective) modes of representation becomes important
for any bottom-up attempt to analyze a narrative representations global structure of subjectivity as the specific combination of local strategies
of more or less subjective representation.8
Incidentally, my insistence on drawing such a distinction should not
be misunderstood as a claim that subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity are always clearly delineated. Just as our mental perspective on
something can be more or less subjective or objective (see Eder 578), so
can the intersubjective representation of storyworld elements, since objectivity and subjectivity interact in a narrative film [or other kinds of
narrative representationJNT] by being alternated, overlapped, or otherwise mixed, producing complex descriptions of space, time, and causality (Branigan, Narrative Comprehension 160). However, the observation
that we are confronted with a scalar distinction between subjectivity and
objectivity does not prevent us from identifying certain points on the
scale that appear to be particularly salient for narrative representation
across media. At least in contemporary feature films, graphic novels, and
computer games, intersubjective representation may be considered the
unmarked case while objective representation and subjective representation are both marked cases, albeit on opposing ends of a continuum
that measures the extent to which a given segment of a narrative rep70

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resentation represents the consciousnesses of characters. While objective representation implies that the storyworld elements in question are
not perceived or imagined by any characters at all, subjective representation implies that the storyworld elements in question are perceived or
imagined by only one character (and often in a way that is not compatible with an intersubjective version of the storyworld).9
Against this background, it becomes clear that the analysis of local
strategies of subjective representation needs to be augmented by the analysis of local strategies of intersubjective and objective representation in
order to arrive at an appropriate reconstruction of a given narrative representations global structure. Such an approach also includes distinguishing between different modes of intersubjective representation according to the characters or groups of characters that are represented as
being conscious about the represented events. Despite the importance
of intersubjective and objective modes of representation of characters
consciousnesses, however, the focus of this chapter remains on strategies of subjective representationthat is, on strategies of representation
that provide the recipient with more or less direct access to what is on a
characters mind at a given point in storyworld time, including not only
his or her perception of the storyworld in which the character is located but also the quasi-perceptual experience of his or her hallucinations,
memories, dreams, and fantasies.
Strategies of Subjective Representation in
Contemporary Feature Films
While this chapter does not propose an overly simple hierarchy between
conventionally distinct narrative media, such as feature films, graphic
novels, and computer games, with regard to their narrative affordances
and limitations, it still seems evident that audiovisual narrative in general and feature films in particular had an enormous impact on twentiethcentury media culture. Accordingly, the pictorial strategies of subjective
representation developed within the mediality of the feature film have
heavily influenced the pictorial strategies of subjective representation
employed by both graphic novels and computer games. Moreover, feature film is by far the most thoroughly researched medium beyond literary texts in contemporary narratology, and both film theory in general
and film narratology in particular have examined films pictorial stratSubjectivity across Media

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egies of subjective representation in considerable detail.10 Hence, I will

draw on Branigans Point of View in the Cinema and George Wilsons
Transparency and Twist in Narrative Fiction Film to sketch what I
consider the most salient pictorial strategies of subjective representation across media.
In his influential study of Point of View in the Cinema, Branigan not
only provides a description of the point-of-view [pov] shot that remains
a major benchmark for much of contemporary film studies but also locates it in the broader field of audiovisual strategies of subjective representation, distinguishing between six major forms of subjectivity: reflection, pov, perception, projection, flashback, and mental process (79).
While reflection refers to an intersubjective mode of representation and
flashback may refer not only to subjective but also to intersubjective
and objective modes of representation, the remaining four categories
pov, perception, projection, and mental processrefer to what
may be considered particularly salient audiovisual strategies of subjective
representation in the feature film. Moreover, Branigan not only discusses the narrative functions of these (as well as other) strategies in considerable detail but also examines a range of more or less strongly conventionalized and at least partially medium-specific markers of subjectivity,
such as superimpositions, titles, slow motion, spinning images, intercuts, lighting, or color (90).
Wilson, in building on Branigans groundbreaking work and on his
own Narration in Light, has recently elaborated on these four audiovisual strategies of subjective representation as well, describing them as
point-of-view shots, subjectively inflected point-of-view shots (which
roughly corresponds to Branigans perception shots), subjectively inflected impersonal shots (which roughly corresponds to Branigans projection), and subjectively saturated shots (which includes Branigans
flashback and mental process categories). In fact, Wilsons general
discussion of these four strategieswhich usually correspond to a reasonably clear marking of the fact that they are, in one of several different
ways, subjective even though the nature and functioning of the factors that contextually mark the epistemic status of a movie segment [...]
can be surprisingly elusive (Transparency 81)seems to capture an
emerging consensus in film studies.11 Against this background, I would
like to illustrate what I take to be the four most salient pictorial strate72

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gies of subjective representation across media by briefly examining examples of their realization in contemporary feature films.
First, an example of what is usually called a point-of-view shot in
film theory can be found in Bryan Singers The Usual Suspects when,
during the suspects attack on the supposed drug dealers ship, Michael
McManus counts the guards while looking through the aim of his sniper
rifle. This kind of sequence, where the audiovisual representation shows
a character, then shows what that character sees from his or her spatial position, and finally shows the character again, is probably the most
common and conventionalized example of subjective representation in
feature film. In the context of a transmedial narratology, it may be defined as referring to segments of a narrative representation where the
storyworld is pictorially represented from the spatial position of a particular character. While it is obvious that the spatial position of a character heavily influences his or her perception, this pictorial strategy of
subjective representation usually still represents an intersubjectively valid version of the storyworld, albeit from the specific spatial position and
resulting visual perspective of a particular character. Hence, what I
propose to call a spatial point-of-view sequence (in order to avoid the
overly medium-specific notion of shot12) may be considered the least
subjective of the pictorial strategies of subjective representation examined in this chapter.
The situation is different in the special case of what I propose to call
(quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence (and which corresponds to
Branigans perception shot and Wilsons subjectively inflected pointof-view shot). Here the pictorial representation approximates not only
the spatial position of a character but also represents more clearly subjective aspects of his or her perception and/or consciousness, resulting in
a representation of storyworld elements that can often not be considered
intersubjectively valid anymore. At the beginning of Ron Howards A
Beautiful Mind, for example, we find a brief (quasi-)perceptual point-ofview sequence (following an even briefer spatial point-of-view sequence)
in which the audiovisual representation simulates how the protagonist,
John Nash, perceives his colleagues tie in a rather unusual way, as he
compares its geometric pattern to that of slices of lemon and rays of light
(see figures 3.1 and 3.2). Incidentally this striking visualization of both
Nashs mathematical prowess and his social ineptitude already prepares
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Figs. 3.1 and 3.2. Perceptual point-of-view sequence from A Beautiful Mind.

the ground for the films unreliable narrative representation, which is

based on Nashs rather subjective (that is, schizophrenic) perception of
the storyworld in which he is located.13
While the spatial point-of-view sequence tends to be exclusively
marked contextually (through the highly conventionalized point-ofview structure that shows a character, then shows what that character
perceives from his or her spatial position, and finally shows the character again), the (quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence often uses
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additional representational markers such as filters, soft focus, or various (other) kinds of postproduction effects on the filmic image in order
to communicate the subjective quality of what is being shown (in addition to the point-of-view structure). Considering that (quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequences are usually treated as a special case of spatial
point-of-view sequences and that the markers of subjectivity that define the former can be rather subtle, however, it might be best to think
of these two strategies of subjective representation as opposed points on
a continuum of representation that always approximates the spatial position of particular characters but adds additional aspects of their subjective (quasi-)perceptual experience to varying degrees.
Strategies of subjective representation in contemporary feature films
do not have to simulate the spatial position of the character in question, though. Accordingly, I propose to call the third mode of subjective
representation, in which the pictorial representation simulates (quasi-)
perceptual aspects of a characters consciousness without also simulating his or her spatial position, (quasi-)perceptual overlay. In fact, this
mode of representation, which roughly corresponds to Branigans projection and Wilsons subjectively inflected impersonal shots, has become increasingly conventionalized in the last two decades and is often
used in the context of unreliable narrative representation in particular.
While A Beautiful Mind is itself a good example for a film that uses unmarked (quasi-)perceptual overlay to unreliable effect, David Finchers
Fight Club provides an even more striking example. When the unnamed
protagonist begins to realize that he has only imagined Tyler Durden,
this realization is further emphasized by the contrast between the subjective sequences using (quasi-)perceptual overlay to represent the latter
fighting with or talking to the former (see figure 3.3) and the intersubjective sequences that represent the unnamed protagonist beating himself up or talking to himself in a hotel room (see figure 3.4). Just as in the
(quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence, then, what is represented in
cases of (quasi-)perceptual overlay may seem closer to a characters private domain than to the factual domain of the storyworld in which he
or she is located, but at the same time it is marked as (at least partly) being that characters perception of the storyworlds factual domain (see
Ryan, Possible Worlds 10923).
This last criterion allows us to distinguish (quasi-)perceptual overlay
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Fig. 3.3. (top) (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Fight Club.

Fig. 3.4. (bottom) Intersubjective representation from Fight Club.

from, fourth, the full-fledged representation of internal worlds, where

what is represented is contextually and/or representationally marked as
being neither the factual domain of the storyworld nor a characters perception of it but rather as consisting exclusively of quasi-perceptions
such as hallucinations, memories, dreams, and fantasies. These kinds of
highly subjective representationcalled mental processes by Branigan
or subjectively saturated shots by Wilsonconsist, in other words, of
a change of diegetic level, or subworld. Thus if the character to whom
we can ascribe the represented private domain is located in the primary storyworld, what is represented in the case of a representation of internal worlds would be a secondary storyworld. A particularly interesting example can be found in Terry Gilliams Twelve Monkeys, where a
recurring sequence of a boy watching a man being shot at an airport is
initially marked as a dream both representationally (through overexpo76

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Fig. 3.5. (top) Representation of internal worlds from Twelve Monkeys.

Fig. 3.6. (bottom) Contextual marker of the representation of internal worlds
from Twelve Monkeys.

sure and slow motion, among other strategies; see figure 3.5) and contextually (through showing the dreamer when he awakes after the dream;
see figure 3.6). However, later the represented situation turns out to have
been the twisted memory of a time traveler, who then, owing to the causal loops typical for time travel stories, would be both the man being shot
and the boy watching the shooting.
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While, in contemporary feature films in general and so-called mindbenders in particular, (quasi-)perceptual overlay is increasingly used
without transparent representational or contextual markers and, therefore, can require relatively complex processes of inference based on what
one could call content markers in order to be recognized, the fullfledged representation of internal worlds seems somewhat more strongly conventionalized, or at least seems more often to use both the kind of
contextual markers typical for spatial point-of-view sequences and the
representational markers (that is, changes in the quality of the image or
other elements of the presentation) typical for (quasi-)perceptual pointof-view sequences. However, as the recurring dream/memory sequence
from Twelve Monkeys impressively illustrates, it may be difficult (if not
impossible) to distinguish between the representation of characters hallucinations, memories, dreams, fantasies, and flashbacksnot least so,
since, despite a certain amount of conventionalization, no stable 1:1 relations exists between the (partially medium-specific) representational,
contextual, and content markers and the ontological status of the represented storyworld elements.14
Strategies of Subjective Representation in
Contemporary Graphic Novels
Contemporary graphic novels may be considered a multimodal medium
with a strong visual emphasis.15 Comparable to both feature films and
computer games, however, they use not only pictorial but also various
verbal elements representing characters speech and thought in speech
or thought bubbles as part of the verbal-pictorial mode of representation that prototypically defines their mediality, as well as representing
narratorial voices or the inner voices of characters through the use of
narration boxes or thought boxes typically located above or below the
verbal-pictorial representation in the panel body. While distinguishing
between certain kinds of subjective perceptions of spoken language or
the inner voice of a character and the narratorial voice of a homodiegetic narrator is sometimes difficult, the distinction itself remains useful, since a narrator may subjectively represent aspects of both his or her
own consciousness and that of another character, but the representation
of a characters inner voice will be subjective by definition.16 Despite
the importance of verbal elements for subjective representation, however,
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once more I will focus primarily on how spatial point-of-view sequences,

(quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequences, (quasi-)perceptual overlay,
and the representation of internal worlds are realized in contemporary
graphic novels, leaving a discussion of most of the intricate relations between narratorial verbal and non-narratorial verbal-pictorial strategies
of subjective representation for another time.
My first example, a page of the first volume of Alan Moores The
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that shows the invisible Mr.
Griffin applying white makeup to his face in front of a mirror, already illustrates that subjective representations simulating a characters spatial position do not necessarily have to be marked contextually.
Alternatively they can also be marked as subjective by content markers located on the level of what is represented, requiring the reader to
draw inferences on the basis of what is being shown, which in this case
is mainly the painted face in the mirror and the pot of makeup hovering before it (see figure 3.7). Remarkably, the narration boxes used
in this sequence are not attributable to Mr. Griffin but to Ms. Murray,
who is located in another room, describing the leagues plan of attack
in what may be understood as a hypothetical form of anterior narration. Accordingly, Ms. Murray functions as a secondary homodiegetic
narrator who allows Moore to combine a narratorial strategy of intersubjective representation and a non-narratorial strategy of subjective
representation, with the narratorial voice telling one part of the story and the sequence of panels another. That the pictorial aspects of the
representation of the spatial point-of-view sequence to be found in this
example indeed simulate only an approximation of the spatial position
of the invisible Mr. Griffin and not other, more subjective aspects of his
perception or consciousness becomes particularly clear when he puts
on sunglasses, but the color and brightness of the supposedly subjective image remain the same.
This is different in my second example, yet another page from the first
volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, in which the reader
learns that Mr. Hyde has a rather peculiar way of perceiving the world:
he can literally see temperature (see figure 3.8). Knowledge about this
unusual ability is communicated using a fairly conventional form of
the (quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence, where the second panel shows the perceiving character, Mr. Hyde; the third panel represents
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Fig. 3.7. Spatial point-of-view sequence from The League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen.

Fig. 3.8. (Quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence from The League of

Extraordinary Gentlemen.

what he perceives; and the fourth panel shows Mr. Hyde again. In this
case, then, the narrative representation uses a combination of contextual
and representational markers to communicate that what is represented
in the third panel is not an intersubjective representation of the factual
domain of the storyworld but rather a representation of Mr. Hydes subjective perception of it. Once more, these observations only apply to the
pictorial aspects of the representation, as the speech of both Mr. Hyde
and Mr. Griffin is represented intersubjectively through the highly conventionalized form of speech bubbles. Incidentally, this (quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence helps to create an interesting knowledge hierarchy (see Branigan, Narrative Comprehension 6385) and a disparity in
epistemic perspectives between Mr. Griffin, Mr. Hyde, and the reader
(see Eder 565646). This difference will make an impact later in the second volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, when Mr. Hyde
brutally rapes and murders the supposedly invisible Mr. Griffin, whose
body heat Mr. Hyde can see perfectly well.
My third example, which comes from Frank Millers Hell and Back,
the seventh volume of his Sin City series, illustrates that, just like feature films, graphic novels are not forced to simulate the spatial position
of a character in order to represent (quasi-)perceptual aspects of his or her
consciousness. In a rather spectacular case of (quasi-)perceptual overlay
during the last third of the story, the former war hero Wallace is given
some kind of drugwhich serves as a contextual marker (see figure 3.9)
and the following pages are devoted to representing his drug-induced hallucinations. Miller, however, combines this contextual marker with various in-panel markers: not only do the represented events fail to follow the
rules of the previously established storyworld, but their representation is
uncharacteristically colorful as well. Moreover, Wallace comments on the
whole experience through thought boxes, providing a prototypical example of how a characters inner voice can (temporarily) function as a nonnarratorial verbal marker of subjectivity that also reinforces the subjective
status of the verbal-pictorial representation (see figure 3.10). It might bear
repeating, however, that this kind of (quasi-)perceptual overlay still represents the characters perception of the storyworld in which he is situated.
This becomes particularly evident once the drugs effectsas well as the
colors used in its representationfade and Wallace starts to recognize the
car he crashed in, even though he is still hallucinating heavily.
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Fig. 3.9. (top) Contextual marker of (quasi-)perceptual overlay from Sin City:
Hell and Back.
Fig. 3.10. (bottom) (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Sin City: Hell and Back.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is different in my fourth and final example of subjective representation in contemporary graphic novels, a case of
the representation of a characters internal world where what is represented can no longer be seen as that characters perception of the storyworld
in which he or she is located. The example comes from Season of Mists,
the fourth volume of Neil Gaimans The Sandman series, which is almost
entirely focused on dreams, dreamers, and the mysterious Dream (one of
the seven godlike entities referred to as The Endless). Once more the
dream sequence I have chosen is contextually marked, with the character in question, Hob Gadling, shown sleeping next to his lover before the
dream sequence (see figure 3.11) and then again when he awakes after the
dream sequence (see figure 3.12). Moreover, the sequence is marked by
what is representeda strange combination of elements from different
times in history, probably owing to Hobs being more or less immortal
and by the somewhat faded colors and diffuse lines used to represent it.
Interestingly, Gaiman uses the slightly fuzzy frame of the panel to representationally mark the different ontological status of its contents as
well. As in the memory sequence from Twelve Monkeys, then, the combination of contextual, representational, and content markers allows the
reader to distinguish the secondary storyworld of Hobs dream from the
primary storyworld in which Hob is dreaming.17
Strategies of Subjective Representation in
Contemporary Computer Games
Just like feature films and graphic novels, computer games may use the
four pictorial strategies of subjective representation sketched earlier, but
their specific mediality and their interactive nature provide an opportunity not only to emphasize the formal differences in how conventionally distinct narrative media realize these strategies but also to focus on their medium-specific functions. As is well-established within
game studies, contemporary computer games do not exclusively consist
of interactive gameplay but commonly incorporate more clearly narrative elements such as cut-scenes or scripted events. Since computers are
currently capable of emulating various kinds of semiotic systems, including cinematic sequences and graphic narrative, the semiotic range of cutscenes in particular is at least as broad as it is in feature films and graphic novels. In fact, while filmic cut-scenes are still the default case, various
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Figs. 3.11 and 3.12. Representation of internal worlds from The Sandman:
Season of Mist.

games such as Max Payne make use of graphic narrative (that is, verbalpictorial modes of representation) in their noninteractive elements (see
also Marco Caracciolos contribution in chapter 10 of this volume). As important as narrative elements are for the overall experience of playing certain kinds of computer games, however, I will primarily focus on how and
to what end contemporary computer games may realize transmedial strategies of subjective representation through their interactive gameplay.18
In fact, the strategy of subjective representation that I have described
as a spatial point-of-view sequence is realized in particularly mediumspecific ways in computer games, since the spatial position from which
the game spaces are represented is both more static and more flexible than
it is in feature films and graphic novels. It is more static because most
games use roughly the same kind of spatial perspective over long stretches of time, and it is more flexible because the virtual camera adapts to
the gameplay and players are often given the opportunity to change its angle and distance. Following Britta Neitzels discussion of point of view in
computer games, one can nevertheless draw some distinctions. Real-time
strategy games such as those in the Warcraft series typically use what can
be described as an objective point of view, where the position from which
the game space is represented is not determined by the position of a character in that space. Adventure games such as those in the Tomb Raider
series typically use what can be described as a semi-subjective point of
view, where the position from which the game space is represented is determined by the position of the player-controlled character but does not
coincide with that position. Finally, first-person shooter games such as
those in the Doom series typically use what can be described as a subjective point of view, where the position from which the game spaces are represented coincides with the position of the player-controlled character.19
Keeping in mind that the first-person shooter genre typically uses
a subjective point of view (that is, the medium-specific form of spatial
point-of-view sequences) for the most part of the game, it will come as
no surprise that my first example for a computer game that simulates
not only the spatial position of the player-controlled avatar but also his
or her perception is taken from this genre as well. In the first-person
shooter Call of Duty, the player controls various soldiers partaking in a
number of battles in World War II, and these battles are mainly represented from the spatial position of the players avatar. If the players av86

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atar is shot or hit by a grenade, however, the game simulates the avatars
perception by applying a red filter to the image. The ludic function of
this rather medium-specific kind of (quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequence is evident: since preventing the avatar from dying is the primary
game goal of Call of Duty (and most other first-person shooters), it is important for the player to know if the avatar gets hurt. Incidentally, while
Call of Duty still uses a health bar as part of the head-up display to allow the player to keep track of the avatars overall health, the second part
in the series, Call of Duty 2, not only employs more sophisticated effects
to simulate the avatars perception (particularly when he is affected by
a grenade) but also replaces the overly explicit health bar with a red filter and the sound effect of a heavily beating heart to signal to the player
that the avatar is badly hurt.
An examination of the ways in which contemporary computer games
beyond the genre of the first-person shooter use these kinds of by-now
highly conventionalized effects would also allow for the observation of a
certain continuity not only between spatial and (quasi-)perceptual pointof-view sequences but also between (quasi-)perceptual point-of-view sequences and (quasi-)perceptual overlay. However, I would like to focus on
a slightly different case of (quasi-)perceptual overlay that illuminates the
saliency of the ludic functions of strategies of subjective representation
in contemporary computer games just as clearly. Rocksteadys Batman:
Arkham Asylum, which usually represents the game spaces from what
can be described as a semi-subjective point of view, allows the player
to switch between an intersubjective mode of representation (see figure
3.13) and what is called the detective modea kind of (quasi-)perceptual overlay that activates a number of enhancements in Batmans cowl
in order to help the player solve the games various puzzles (see figure
3.14). In a game set in an asylum for the criminally insane that has been
taken over by Batmans archenemy The Joker, however, it will come as
no surprise that this kind of still fairly intersubjective (quasi-)perceptual overlay is not all there is to the game.
On the contrary, in several parts of the game Batman is affected by
a gaseous hallucinogen that is the trademark weapon of yet another
of his enemies, The Scarecrow, and that causes severe hallucinations.
Accordingly, several passages of the game simulate Batmans increasingly hallucinatory (quasi-)perceptual experience by sliding from intensifySubjectivity across Media

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Fig. 3.13. (top) Intersubjective representation from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Fig. 3.14. (bottom) (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Fig. 3.15. (Quasi-)perceptual overlay from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

ing forms of (quasi-)perceptual overlay (see figure 3.15) to the full-fledged

representation of internal worlds, where the man under the mask has to
face his various fears or relives the traumatic childhood experience of
witnessing his parents being murdered (see figure 3.16). Interestingly,
while the sequences that use (quasi-)perceptual overlay as a transition
between the intersubjective representation of the game worlds factual
domain and the representation of the internal world of Batmans hallucinations employ a fairly reduced and rather unchallenging mode of
gameplay, the hallucinations themselves occasionally fulfill more pronounced ludic functions when the game switches to a comparatively unusual mode of gameplay that focuses not so much on Batmans combat
abilities but rather on a kind of hide-and-seek against the unrelenting
and rather deadlygaze of a huge, albeit wholly imaginary, Scarecrow.
What the range of strategies of subjective representation employed
in Batman: Arkham Asylum also serves to emphasize, then, is that the
simulation of (quasi-)perceptual aspects of a characters consciousness
in computer games is necessarily connected to the players actions, foregrounding its ludic function. Accordingly, the representation of a charSubjectivity across Media

89

Fig. 3.16. Representation of internal worlds from Batman: Arkham Asylum.

acters internal world through interactive gameplay presupposes that the

playeror, rather, his or her avataris able, at least to a certain extent,
to act in the storyworld as it is perceived by a character, as well as in the
more clearly subjective worlds of a characters memories, dreams, or fantasies. A particularly striking example of how this can be realized not
only with regard to the avatars internal world (as it is the case in Batman:
Arkham Asylum) but also with regard to other characters internal worlds
is Double Fines adventure game Psychonauts. In this game, the player
controls an aspiring Psychonaut, the Psycadet Raz, on his quest to prevent Dr. Loboto from extracting the brains of the children taking part
in the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. To this end, Razwho
is usually represented using a semi-subjective point of viewlearns not
only to use a variety of psychic powers but also to enter the minds of the
camps other inhabitants. Again, the game employs contextual markers
Raz uses tiny doors on the forehead of his fellow camp mates to metaphorically enter their heads (see figure 3.17)as well as representational markers and content markers.20
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Fig. 3.17. Contextual marker of the representation of internal worlds from

Psychonauts.

The content markers in particular, however, fulfill primarily ludic

functions once again, since Raz is tasked with collecting figments of
imagination, tidying up emotional baggage, and opening mental
vaults that contain repressed memories and, somewhat ironically, can
be punched open by Raz (see figure 3.18). Hence, on the one hand,
Psychonauts illustrates quite clearly that the foregrounded ludic functionality of strategies of subjective representation in contemporary computer games does not prevent these games from using a full range of
transmedial strategies, including strategies that could not be discussed
in this chapter, such as metaphorical, metaleptic, and unreliable modes
of representation. On the other hand, however, the primarily ludic functions of strategies of subjective representation in contemporary computer games also serve to emphasize that transmedial narratology would do
well to focus not only on the transmediality and/or the medium specificity of representational (as well as other kinds of) markers but also on
these strategies medium-specific functions. While these functions may
be primarily narrative in feature films and graphic novels, this is not
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Fig. 3.18. Representation of internal worlds from Psychonauts.

necessarily the case in computer games, where ludic functions tend to

be foregrounded instead.
I would like to conclude, then, by once again stressing the dual perspective of a narratology that is transmedial in analytical scope but remains
media conscious in methodological orientation, allowing for the examination of strategies of subjective representation on a transmedial level while at the same time acknowledging their medium-specific realization. Despite the limited scope of this chapter, I moreover hope to
have at least hinted at the heuristic value and future potential of such a
media-conscious transmedial narratologya narratology that, among
other things, provides a theoretical frame within which medium-specific
models from literary and film narratology, from comics studies and game
studies, and from various other strands of narratological practice may
be critically reconsidered, systematically correlated, modified, and complemented to further illuminate the forms and functions of a variety of
transmedial strategies of narrative representation, including the transmedial strategies of subjective representation that I have focused on here.
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Notes
1. In this chapter, the term medium is used to refer to conventionally distinct
media sensu Rajewsky, emphasizing what Ryan calls a cultural point of view
(Avatars 23). I cannot discuss the complex relation between what may be abbreviated as medial and generic conventions in any detail here, but while
feature films, graphic novels, and the kind of highly narrative single-player
computer games that I focus on may be more appropriately described as prototypical media forms that are realized within the media of film, comics, and
computer games, respectively (and, moreover, span a range of different genres),
they still exemplify the specific semiotic, technological, and cultural mediality of these media rather well. See also the discussion in Thon, Mediality.
2. Current literary and media studies tend to use transmedial narratology as an
umbrella term for a variety of narratological practices concerned with media
other than literary texts. However, it could also be argued that a genuinely
transmedial narratology should not merely aspire to be a collection of mediumspecific narratological models but should, instead, examine a variety of transmedial phenomena and strategies of narrative representation across a range
of conventionally distinct narrative media while at the same time consciously
acknowledging the latters specific narrative limitations and affordances. See
Thon, Transmedial Narratology; Herman, Transmedial Narratology; Ryan,
Theoretical Foundations; Wolf, Narratology. The account of subjective representation across media presented here is part of a larger research project that
will be further developed in Thon, Transmedial Narratology.
3. On experientiality and qualia as prototypical features of narrative representations across media, see, for example, Fludernik 2043; Herman, Basic Elements 13760; Wolf, Narrative.
4. This complaint is common within literary narratology and beyond, even
though it seldom leads to an abandonment of the terms. See, for example,
Fludernik 34347; Palmer 4852; Schmid 8999, on literary texts; Chatman on
audiovisual narrative; Horstkotte and Pedri on graphic narrative; and Thon,
Perspective on computer games.
5. Genettes introduction of the (then) freshly minted term focalization in Narrative Discourse (and Narrative Discourse Revisited) was considered a major
breakthrough among literary narratologists. Bals critique of Genette and the
attempts by Branigan (in Narrative Comprehension), Deleyto, Horstkotte and
Pedri, Schwer, Neitzel, or Nitsche to transfer the concept to feature films,
graphic novels, or computer games are certainly illuminating, but focalization is at least as problematic a term as point of view or perspective are
by now. Readers interested in more extensive surveys of previous research on
point of view, perspective, and focalization in literary narratology may consult,
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6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

for example, Eder 565656; Herman and Vervaeck; Jahn; Lorente; Niederhoff,
Focalization; Niederhoff, Perspective; Schmid 8999; and the contributions
in Hhn, Schmid, and Schnert.
Speaking of direct access to the minds of characters in this context does not
call into question the mediated nature of narrative representation; rather, it
aims at distinguishing direct, or subjective, representations from indirect, or
intersubjective, representations of characters minds. See, for example, Cohn or
Palmer on direct access, as well as the following discussion of subjective, intersubjective, and objective modes of representation.
While there are examples, particularly narratorial or other verbal strategies of
subjective representation, that provide some kind of direct access to other aspects of a represented characters consciousness (or even to non-conscious aspects of a represented characters mind), the more salient prototypical cases of
subjective representationparticularly non-narratorial multimodal strategies
of subjective representationseem to be primarily concerned with providing
direct access to what may be described as a represented characters perceptual or quasi-perceptual experience (see, for example, Currie and Ravenscroft;
Richardson; Thomas). Hence, my discussion of transmedial strategies of subjective representation will focus on perceptual or quasi-perceptual aspects of a
characters consciousness, allowing me to include the representation of various
kinds of mental imagery that occur in the context of hallucinations, memories,
dreams, and fantasies but to exclude (or deemphasize) theusually less direct
or subjectiverepresentation of other aspects of characters minds, such as
knowledge, beliefs, wishes, motivations, or systems of norms and values.
I had the fortunate opportunity to test the applicability of this distinction in the
context of various undergraduate courses in media analysis that I taught at the
University of Hamburg, the University of Mainz, and the University of Tbingen. I
would like to express my gratitude to the participants for their intriguing questions,
which helped me to eventually draw the distinction the way it is presented here.
On this kind of objective representation in literary texts, see, for example, Banfield. The borders between modes of representation can, of course, be drawn differently, but Genettes distinctions between internal, external, and nonfocalization (Narrative Discourse 18994; Narrative Discourse Revisited 6471), as well as
Mitrys distinction between the subjective, semi-subjective, and objective image
(20619), remain common points of reference. Moreover, various approaches
that seem to adhere to a binary subjective/objective distinction at first glance
often allow for further subdivisions within at least one of the categories. See, for
example, Branigan, Narrative Comprehension 12591; Deleuze 7388; Deleyto.
Influential works on subjective (as well as intersubjective) representation in the
feature film include, for example, Branigan, Point of View; Branigan, Narrative
Comprehension; Kawin; Mitry.

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11. Even when different distinctions are drawn and different terms proposed, there
still seems to be a common consensus on what aspects of the phenomena in
question should be considered particularly salient. Eder (61013), for example,
draws an only slightly different distinction between pov shots, subjectivized
pov shots, partially imagined shots, and fully imagined shots, emphasizing
that the latter two are often combined with a subjectivized external view.
12. While coining entirely new terms would seem to be a textbook case of what
Ryan calls radical media relativism (Avatars 5), I will generally speak of spatial point-of-view sequences and perceptual point-of-view sequences when
discussing pictorial strategies that film theory usually describes as point-ofview shots or perception shots on a transmedial level, since referring to the
realization of these strategies in contemporary graphic novels and computer
games as shots would render any transmedial concept unnecessarily metaphorical. Then again, one might argue that speaking of shots with regard to
contemporary digital film (or even with regard to traditional analog film) is not
significantly less metaphorical than it is with regard to contemporary graphic
novels and computer games. See also Branigans Projecting a Camera for a
meta-theoretical discussion of the various notions of camera in film studies.
13. In the last few years, unreliable narration or, rather, unreliable narrative representation has gained increasing attention not only within literary narratology
but also within film narratology, and the label is currently attached to a large
number of loosely interrelated phenomena. However, strategies of unreliable
narrative representation are usually attributed to characters in some way
either to the unreliable narration of a narrator or to the unreliable perception
of a non-narrating character (see, for example, Hansen; Laass; Thon, MindBender; Thon, Transmedial Narratology).
14. The indeterminacy of markers of subjectivity is well established in film narratology and has, for example, been remarked on by Branigan, Point of View;
Eder; Reinerth. As important as the previously mentioned pictorial strategies
of subjective representation appear in the context of film theory and transmedial narratology alike, however, it needs to be emphasized that not only feature
films but also graphic novels and computer games are multimodal media that
cannot be reduced to visual or pictorial representation (see, for example, Kress
and Leeuwen; and Wolfgang Hallets contribution to this volume in chapter 6).
More specifically, just as the representation of storyworld space can be more or
less strongly subjectivized in the spatial point-of-view sequence or the (quasi-)
perceptual point-of-view sequence, so can the representation of storyworld
sound. Accordingly, one could follow Chion in (cautiously) speaking of a
point-of-audition from which storyworld sound is represented. As opposed
to the representation of storyworld space in the spatial point-of-view sequence,
though, representing storyworld sound roughly from the represented characSubjectivity across Media

95

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

ters spatial position is very much the default case not only in feature films but
also in graphic novels and computer games. Hence, spatial point-of-audition
sequence may be considered to be even less subjective than spatial point-ofview sequences are. See also Flckiger 362411, for a comprehensive discussion
of subjective sound in the feature film.
At least with regard to the multimodal configurations characteristic for contemporary feature films, graphic novels, and computer games, I would argue that
distinguishing between verbal and pictorial representation is more helpful than
distinguishing between verbal and visual representation since a substantial part
of verbal representation in multimodal media is presented visuallythat is, in
the form of written verbal representation. Further, feature films and computer
games may also use sound for forms of spoken verbal representation. For a discussion of subjective representation in contemporary graphic narrative, see, for
example, Horstkotte and Pedri; Kukkonen; Schwer 392404. For a more general discussion of the medium-specific combination of words and pictures in
graphic narrative, see Groensteen; Hatfield; McCloud. For a sample of current
research, see also the contributions in Gardner and Herman; or Stein and Thon.
Unfortunately, I cannot discuss the various intriguing problems connected
to narratorial strategies of subjective representation in this chapter. However,
see Cohn on literary-narratorial strategies of subjective representation; Thon,
Whos Telling the Tale?, for a discussion of authors and narrators in graphic
narrative; and Thon, Transmedial Narratology, for a more general discussion of
the interplay between narratorial and non-narratorial strategies of narrative representation in contemporary graphic novels, feature films, and computer games.
Of course, the whole setup is further complicated by the fact that a character
from the primary storyworld, Dream of the Endless, enters Hobs dream and
that his gift, a bottle of wine, sits on Hobs night table after he wakes, rendering
the sequence at least slightly metaleptic despite the fact that the otherworldly
nature and the supernatural abilities of Dream distinctly dissolve the apparent
paradox. Again, I cannot discuss the problem of metalepsis in any detail here.
On the concept of metalepsis, see, for example, Fehrle; Meister; Ryan, Avatars
20430; Thon, Zur Metalepse; Wolf, Metalepsis; as well as the contributions
in Kukkonen and Klimek.
For a discussion of the interplay between genuinely narrative elements and
simulated gameplay in contemporary computer games, see, for example, Frasca; Jenkins; Juul; Ryan, Avatars 181203; Thon, Computer Games; Thon,
Game Studies; Thon, Immersion; Thon, Unendliche Weiten?
It should be noted that semi-subjective point of view and objective point of
view are not to be conflated with intersubjective representation and objective
representation. The distinction between subjective, semi-subjective, and
objective point of view goes back to Neitzel, who mainly builds on Genettes

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Narrative Discourse and Mitry. See also the additional discussion in Thon,
Perspective.
20. Pictorial representations of characters consciousness cannot be verbatim reproductions, and contemporary feature films, graphic novels, and computer
games commonly use metaphorical representations in order to provide their
recipients with supposedly direct access to the characters consciousness. See,
for example, Fahlenbrach on audiovisual metaphors; Forceville on multimodal
metaphors; and the brief remarks in Horstkotte and Pedri on metaphorical representation in graphic novels.

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Fiction across Media

Toward a Transmedial Concept of Fictionality
frank zipfel

During the past forty years, the questions of the nature of fiction or fictionality and of the importance of this concept for the theory of art have
been hotly debated. A huge part of this discussion has been and still is focused on narrative literature. But by now fictionality has become an important notion not only in literary theory but also in other disciplines,
such as film studies, theater studies, computer games studies, and more
generally the philosophy of art. The theoretical question of whether and
how the concept of fictionality can be applied to nonliterary art forms and
to nonverbal or not exclusively verbal phenomena in different media has
become more and more pressing. Against this background, the essential
questions underlying this chapter could be phrased as follows: Is there a
transmedial concept of fiction or fictionality? And if so, to what end do
we try to establish such a concept?1 Since this chapter concerns the nature
of fiction, not of media, I will avoid the problem of defining media, and I
will take the word medium in a rather intuitive and broad sense, passing over such controversial questions as whether theater is an art form
or a medium and what it means to perceive theater as one or the other.2
It is rather obvious that we speak about fictionality with reference to
different art forms or media: literary narratives, film, comics, and theater
performances. Moreover, there have been investigations of the fictionality of painting, photography, computer games, or even music, though
the usefulness of some of these investigations has been questioned.3 We
nonetheless can say that fictionality is often used as a transmedial concept in the philosophy of art and in less theoretical contexts; however, attempts to investigate this transmedial understanding of fictionality have
been few up to this point.4
One of the most influential attempts to conceive of fiction or fictionality as a transmedial concept is the theory proposed by Kendall Walton
103

in his seminal Mimesis as Make-Believe. Walton investigates what works

of representational art are made of and how they work, the purpose they
serve and the means by which they do so, the various ways in which people understand and appreciate them (2). The list of items that Walton
regards as instances of representational art is more or less conventional:
novels, paintings, films, drama, opera, sculptures, photography, and so
on. Much less conventional is his conception of what makes a work representational, with the common feature of the types of works listed being
that they all function as what he calls props in games of make-believe
(69). Moreover, for Walton the fact that representations function as props
in games of make-believe means that they mandate imaginings according to certain principles of generation. These principles are to be understood as the conventions of the game of make-believe. Waltons definition of the characteristics of representational artsthat is, function[ing]
as a prop in a make-believe game or prescrib[ing] imaginings (see
3543)seems better suited to a definition of fictionality than to one of
representation. But this issue is not a problem for Walton, as he stipulates
that the concepts of fiction, mimesis, and representation are all but one:
works of representational arts are works of fiction, and only fiction will
qualify as representational (3). Walton is very consistent in excluding
works of nonfiction from representation. However, his stipulations entail the slightly odd consequence that nonfictional works such as biography, news reports, or historiography are explicitly banished from the
realm of representations, whereas painting and photography are fictional arts by definition. These far-from-obvious stipulations may indeed be
the reason why few theorists have followed Walton in his effort to locate and explain the phenomenon of fiction across all the representational arts (Gorman 165). Much more could be said about Waltons theory,
but most of it is beyond the scope of this chapter.5 I will, however, come
back to some of Waltons insights while presenting my own different approach to a transmedial concept of fictionality.
Elements of a Transmedial Concept of Fictionality:
Fictional Worlds, Make-Believe, and Institutional Practice
In the following section I argue that fiction or, rather, fictionality is a
concept that designates phenomena that in some way deal with fictional worlds, that the way these fictional worlds are dealt with involves a
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game of make-believe, and that this game is embedded in an institutional practice.6 The three components of this multilayered approach to
a transmedial concept of fictionalitynamely, fictional worlds, makebelieve games, and institutional practicecan benefit from further development; therefore, I elaborate briefly on each of them.
Fictional Worlds
In contrast to quite a large number of theoretical approaches, I would
say rather bluntly that in order to be fictional, a world must present some
degree of deviation when compared to the real world or, more precisely, when compared to what we usually regard as the real world.7 To put
it another way, for a world to be fictional it has to comprise invented
elementsthat is, elements that do not occur in the real world. I know
that theorists of fiction have a strong tendency to do away with invention or non-reality.8 But I can hardly conceive of a full-fledged theory of
fiction that omits the fact that calling a world fictional basically means
that it contains individuals who do not exist or events that did not occur
in the real world. As Jean-Marie Schaeffer writes, Invented entities and
actions are the common stuff of fiction, and for this reason the idea of
the non-referential status of the universe portrayed is part of our standard understanding of fiction (Fictional 1056).9 Hence I would like
to argue that as a general rule fictional worlds contain unreal, purely
imaginary elements. For most fictional works these imaginary elements
consist of invented characters, by which I mean either actually invented
characters or significantly altered versions of real persons.10 But for those
to whom the notion of invented characters or of fictional objects seems
too pedestrian or too prone to lead into a semantic, ontological, or metaphysical morass, I am willing to accept other ways of talking about fictional content, be it by calling fictional texts non-referential (see Cohn,
Distinction 915) or by saying that in fictional representations the rule of
reference is irrelevant (see Gibson).11
Of course, not everything in a fictional world is invented. Fictional
worlds are, as Umberto Eco puts it, parasitic upon the real world (83).
There would be a lot to say about the relationship between fictional
worlds and the actual world, for example, by elaborating on Marie-Laure
Ryans principle of minimal departure (Fiction, Non-Factuals) or on
Waltons mutual belief principle (Mimesis 15061), but the interesting
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problem of how fictional worlds are related to and relying on the real
world is beyond the scope of this chapter.12 I will therefore limit myself
to stressing that in order to talk about minimal departure there must
be some kind of difference between what is true in a fictional world and
what is true in the real world.
Games of Make-Believe
I have already mentioned that Walton introduced the concept of makebelieve into the theory of fiction. Make-believe for Walton is the attitude
an audience adopts toward fictional works. Walton actually gives two
different explanations of make-believe as a fictional stance. First, he
develops an analogy between childrens games and fiction. Just as children in a game of cowboys and Indians believe for the duration of the
game that some of them are cowboys while others are Indians, or that
a wooden stick is a rifle with which an enemy can be shot, the audience
of fictional works engage in a similar game of make-believe concerning
what they are reading, hearing, or seeing for the time of their engagement with the work. Fictional works can thus be conceived as props in
games of make-believe, to quote, once again, one of Waltons favorite
phrases. At this point it is important to notice that Walton introduces
not only the notion of make-believe but also the notion of games into the
theory of fiction. One characteristic feature of games that is especially
important for theories of fiction is a double attitude. On the one hand,
they require people to engage in the gamethat is, take the game world
seriously and behave according to its rulesand, on the other hand, the
people must retain an awareness that the world of the game is a game
world and not the actual or real world.13
Waltons second explanation of make-believe as characteristic of
the fictional stance is that fictions mandate imaginings. Unfortunately,
Walton refuses to give an explicit account of what he means by imaginings. We can get an idea of the kind of imagining he has in mind
when he claims that the imagining in question is an imagining de se,
or imagining about oneself, thus stressing the similarity with the pretense of childrens games. Walton believes that audiences enter the
world of a fictional work imaginatively, and he uses this view to explain emotional reactions to these works.
Here is how Thomas Pavel elaborates on Waltons argument:
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We are moved by the fate of fictional characters, since, as Kendall

Walton argues, when caught up in a story, we participate in fictional
happenings by projecting a fictional ego who attends the imaginary
events as a kind of nonvoting member. [...] We send our fictional
egos as scouts into the territory, with orders to report back; they are
moved, not us, they fear Godzilla and cry with Juliet, we only lend
our bodies and emotions for a while to these fictional egos, just as
in participatory rites the faithful lend their bodies to the possessing spirits. (85, original emphasis)
The question to which Pavel alludes in this passage is central to Waltons
interestthat is, to the question of how and why fictional works generate
emotions. Other theorists, however, have expressed doubts about whether audiences really engage in make-believe when they respond to fictional
works.14 It has been argued that explaining the fictional stance in terms of
make-believe overstates the attitude toward fictional works on the believe
side. John Gibson, for instance, contests the claim that we make-believe
these sentences and descriptions to be true, that we imagine they are descriptive of something real (165, original emphases). Most of the scholars who take a critical attitude toward the concept of make-believe stick to
the notion of imagination, but they give it a meaning that differs from the
one Walton implicitly favors. They rather revert to concepts of imagination inspired by the one that Roger Scruton or Nol Carroll have proposed
when they speak of suppositional imagination (Carroll, Fiction 184), or
a form of mental activity that they describe as holding something before
the mind, as entertaining the proposition that p unasserted (Scruton 88),
or as entertaining a thought non-assertively (Carroll, Philosophy 88).15
I think that both of the interpretations of the game we play with fictional worksthe stronger one relating to make-believe and the weaker one of contemplating propositional content as unassertedhave their
advantages and disadvantages; therefore, I will not try to argue in favor
of one or the other. To conclude the discussion of make-believe, I would
simply like to stress that both of Waltons interpretations of the attitude
toward fictional works imply that the world of the works is fictional in
the sense of not real because it would be preposterous to assume that
audiences make-believe or contemplate as unasserted what they actually
do believe and would therefore be willing to assert (see New 72).
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Institutional Practice
For an explanation of what institutional practice means in the context of
theories of fictionality I rely on the explication given by Peter Lamarque
and Stein Haugom Olsen in their seminal book Truth, Fiction, and
Literature: An institutional practice [...] is constituted by a set of conventions and concepts which both regulate and define the actions and
products involved in the practice. [...] An institution, in the relevant
sense, is a rule-governed practice which makes possible certain (institutional) actions which are defined by the rules of the practice and which
could not exist as such without those rules (256, original emphases).
Lamarque and Olsen also argue that any attempt to explain how fictive stories are told and enjoyed in a community, without deceit, without
mistaken inference, and without inappropriate response, seems inevitably to require reference to co-operative, mutually recognized, conventions (37). This institutional concept of fiction highlights the fact that
fictionality can be explained neither solely by means of the intention of
the author (as Searle would have it) nor exculsively in terms of reader response (as Walton advocates). For a fictional transaction to take place,
both authorial intent and reader response must come into play (Gorman
163). Dealing with fictional works thus involves some kind of mutual
agreement between producers and audiences. Or to put it more precisely, the specific attitude of audiences is triggered because they recognize
the intentions of the producers that the audience should adopt a fictionspecific attitude, that is, the attitude that has been outlined in what has
been said about games of make-believe.16 Moreover, the general makebelieve conventions that define the institutional practice of fiction in a
transmedial understanding can be considered as a frame that allows for
fiction-specific representational conventionsthat is, conventions that
regard the particular ways in which fictional worlds can be presented in
a specific art form or medium. These conventions, however, can differ
considerably from one art form or medium to another.17
I would like to conclude this brief survey of the three different components of my transmedial approach to fiction with a rather general remark about the basic concern of theories of fiction. In my opinion this
basic concern is to explain the relationship between fiction and reality or,
to put it differently, to explain how it is that fictions play such an impor108

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tant role in our lives. This explanation involves both of the two communicational aspects of fictional worksnamely, production and response.
I think that the principal aim of theories of fiction regarding production
is to distinguish the presentation of fictional worlds from other ways of
representing the unreal or invented, especially deceitful ones. More specifically, the purpose of these theories is to refute, in one way or another,
the old Platonian allegation that all poets (or artists or producers of fictional worlds) are liars. As far as response is concerned, theories of fiction mostly try to explain why audiences bother with the unreal. Why
is it that people spend time, energy, or emotions on fictions when they
could engage in activities that have a more practical impact on their lives
and a more direct influence on their survival? This question may be the
reason why explanations of fictionality based on make-believe and imaginative activity have become so important. They prepare the ground for a
deeper understanding of such topics as the value of imaginings, the nature of aesthetic illusion, the phenomenon of immersion, and more generally the cognitive benefits offered by fictional works.18
In the following sections I use the three elements of my multilayered
approach to a transmedial concept of fictionality to discuss the relevance
of the notion of fictionality in three artistic media. I hope to show not
only that these three elements can be used to capture the fictionality of
different kinds of works but also that for each art form specific qualifications are needed in order to describe their particular form of fictionality.
Fictionality and Literature
In a first approach I would like to concentrate on the most obvious genre
of literary fiction, the narrative. When we talk about fictionality with regard to literary texts we usually focus on novels, novellas, short stories,
and so forth. Applying the multilayered account of fictionality to textual narration does not raise any problems; the production of and the response to textual fictional narration can easily be explained in terms of
fictional worlds, make-believe, and institutional practice. A general explanation could run as follows: A text-based fictional narration is a narration that is produced and read according to the conventions of the institutional practice of literary fiction. These conventions stipulate that
the author has composed the text with the specific intent that readers
adopt the make-believe stance to the fictional story, and readers will acFiction across Media

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tually adopt this stance toward the narration because they recognize this
intent.19 That text-based fictional narration can be easily described by
means of the multilayered account should not come as a surprise, since
this account is largely inspired by the theoretical discussion of fictionality of the last fifty years, a discussion that was predominantly concerned
with literary narratives.20
In the discussion of narrative literary fiction, an additional interpretation of make-believe has been proposed. This interpretation can
be linked to the way the concept is used by Gregory Currie, a scholar
who has bridged the gap between analytic philosophy and narratology. In Curries opinion our make-believe regarding fictional narrations
is not merely that the events described in the text occurred, but that
we are being told about those events by someone with knowledge of
them (Nature 73). Thus Currie opens the path for a narratological understanding of fictionality as the audiences act of make-believe. Many
narratologistsespecially those who have become part of the classic canon, such as Grard Genette or Dorrit Cohnanchor their distinction between fictional and factual narrative on the distinction between the real
author and the fictional narrator, as well as the fictional narratee and the
real readers. This explanation of fiction by means of the introduction of
fictional entities in the communicative transaction has been questioned
by those scholars who reject the assumption that every fictional narration has a narrator.21 The question of whether it is correct to assume that
there is a fictional narrator in every fictional narration or whether there
are narratorless narrations is indeed an intriguing one, and there do not
seem to be any clear-cut answers to it. Maybe it all depends on how the
concept of narrator is understoodthat is, whether one adheres to a narrow definition of narrator as a personalized teller or to a wider definition
of narrator as a narratorial function, as a narrative instance, or simply
as a story-presentation device.22 In spite of this controversy, the dissociation between real author and some kind of substitute speaker has often
been consideredand not without good reasonsas a defining feature
of fictional narration. This definition is fully compatible with Curries
concept of make-believe.
As for the specific conventions the institution of fiction allows for regarding textual narrations, they are of course manifold. The most important of these conventions are without any doubt the special features
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of fictional narratives that (at least since Kte Hamburger) have been discussed as narratorial specificities of textual fictions (e.g., internal focalization or omniscient narration).23
Although literary narrative undoubtedly represents the most important manifestation of literary fiction, the multilayered account allows for
radically non-narrative forms of fictionalitya fictionality that cannot
be understood as narrative even under the broadest conception of narration as the presentation of a story.24 Not all fictional worlds are necessarily storyworlds, thus there can be fictional texts without a story. A
literary text can consist of a pure description of an invented or non-real
objectfor example, a description of a fictional character or of an invented place, be it some paradisiacal garden or a planet in a far-off galaxy.25
This kind of description can certainly be regarded as a text transmitted
with the intention that the reader shall adopt the attitude of make-believe
toward its content. If we accept descriptive texts as fiction, we should also
accept versified descriptions. This argument demonstrates the potential
applicability of the concept of fiction to poetry.26 Moreover, if there can
be fictionality without narrativity, this opens the door for a discussion
of fictionality within painting.
Fictionality and Theater
It has often been said that the art form of the theater is invested with a
double fictionalitydramatic fiction on the one hand and theatrical fiction
on the other (see Birkenhauer 107). The concept of dramatic fiction points
to the fictionality of the semantic content of the written play and highlights that the presented story or storyworld is fictional. It usually means
that the drama does not depict events that occurred in the real world or
if we want to emphasize the existence of genres such as chronicle play or
historical playthat the drama does not depict events as they occurred in
the real world. Moreover, the readers of a written play are invited to play
a game of make-believe with the text they are reading. The interpretation
of the kind of make-believe involved in this case depends on the general
illocutionary status that is assigned to written drama. It will depend on
whether we conceive dramatic texts as a set of instructions for how to
do something, namely, how to perform a play (Searle, Logical 329) or
whether we equate the stage directions with the utterances of a narrator
and thus treat the written drama as a kind of literary narrative.
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Let us now turn to the concept of theatrical fiction, or the fact that the
representation of a story on the stage produces a specific performance
world. For a closer investigation of the concepts meaning, I want to briefly elaborate on the particular conditions, possibilities, and conventions
of theater as an art form. My point of departure will be the minimal definition of theater proposed by Eric Bentley in his book The Life of Drama:
A impersonates B while C looks on (50).27 This short sentence expresses the two major defining features of theater: the co-presence of the producing agents (or part of the producing agents) and of the audience while
the work of art is presented and the fact that theater is based on an activity that can in general terms be called role-playing.28 Thus when David
Osipovich explores the sine qua non of theatrical performance in 2006,
he doesnt do much more than elaborate on the aspects already contained
in Bentleys short definition from 1964. Osipovich lists three necessary
conditions for theatrical performance: 1) at least one performer and at
least one observer in the same space and at the same time, 2) a pretense
on the part of the performer that the interaction between performer and
observer is somehow other than it actually is, and 3) an awareness on the
part of the observer that the pretense is occurring (465). I will briefly
elaborate on the second aspect of Osipovichs definition, because the performers pretense can easily be related to concepts of fictionality.
While of course much can be said about the performers pretense or
about what an actors impersonation of a character on stage means, I
concentrate on the conceptual relations between acting and fictionality.
In Osipovichs definition, an actors playing a character involves some
kind of pretense. Nicholas Wolterstorff argues that an actor does not pretend to be a character but rather plays a character by pretending to be
an example of that character (251). He thereby wants to highlight that although different productions of the same play present the fictional world
of the written drama, every single production presents its own production world. The various choices that have to be made in order to stage a
playthat is, determining the cast, costumes, setting, lighting, and so
oncharacterize its production world.29 Moreover, in the aftermath of
Searles influential article on the logical status of fictional discourse in
which he defends the thesis that authors of narrative fiction do not perform illocutionary acts but only pretend to perform these acts, theorists
of theatrical performancefor example, Carroll, David Saltz, and James
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Hamiltonhave had great discussions about whether actors on stage also

pretend to perform illocutionary acts and more generally about whether
acting is related to some kind of pretense. It is beyond the scope of this
chapter, however, to retrace this rather complex discussion.30
As a matter of fact what actors do in a performance can be explained
not only in terms of pretense but also in terms of make-believe. As children do, actors engage in a game of make-believe in which they pretend
to be somebody else, but there are obvious differences between childrens
games and acting in a play. While children invent their games and characters as they go along, actors usually enact scripted stories. Moreover, children usually impersonate character types (an Indian, a cowboy, a gangster,
a chief, a sheriff, a crime boss), and actors usually impersonate individuals.
(Even characters such as Alceste in Molires Le Misanthrope are individuals, although they are meant to represent a type.) Despite these differences, the fact that actors engage in a game of make-believe is certainly a major component of the institutional practice known as theater.
However, when the performance of actors is described as makebelieve, the term means something slightly different than when it is applied to the description of the institutional practice of fiction. To impersonate a character it is essential that the actor perform certain actions,
such as uttering the lines and pretending to make the assertions that the
character is supposed to make with these utterances. In contrast to the
make-believe that explains the fictional stance, this kind of make-believe
cannot be described as simply imagining. While imagining may be an
important component of acting, actors also have to perform actual actions (see Meskin 5556). Moreover, the make-believe of actors involves
not only themselves but also the other members of the cast and the audience. As Jorge Luis Borges puts it in his short story Everything and
Nothing: [The actor] on a stage plays at being another before a gathering of people who play at taking him for that other person (76).
At this point we can ask about the audience in the theater. Following
Borges, one can say that a theater audience is invited to make-believe
what is represented on stage. Moreover, the different ways of understanding make-believe as constitutive of the fictional stance that have been discussed so far can easily be applied to theater audiences. Walton would say
that the make-believe of the theatrical audience is also an imagining de
se. Currie, by contrast, argues rather convincingly that there is no imagFiction across Media

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ining de se, because we do not pretend that we see Othello; rather, we see
an actor on stage and are invited to pretend that he is Othello (Visual
Fictions 13839). Moreover the audiences attitude in theater can be described in terms of suppositional imagination. Of course, the difference
between theater and literary narrative lies in the fact that when reading
texts, audiences engage imaginatively with what they read, whereas in
theater audiences engage imaginatively with what is enacted and thus is
presented to them visually and acoustically. In spite of this difference,
the explanation of imagination as holding something before the mind
unasserted can also be applied to theater audiences. They imaginatively
take what is shown on the stage for what it is supposed to show, usually
the enactment of a specific story. Through an act of imagination the audience engages with the performed story or with the performance world
of the production. Furthermore, the concept of a theatrical narrator has
been defended, although much more rarely than the concept of a cinematic narrator. If a theater performance can be taken as a theatrical discourse (similar to a literary or filmic discourse), then it is possible to assume a theatrical narrator or a theatrical composition device, and this
narrator or device is understood as the fictional authority of story presentation in theater (see Alber and Fludernik 185).31
To summarize, one can say that in the theater the active make-believe
of the actors induces a passive make-believe by the audience, with the audience pretending that they are told a story as known fact by means of the
conventions of the medium. Saltz captures the essence of theatrical fictionality when he writes that in theater performances the object the audience uses as a prop in its game of make-believe is itself a game of makebelieve (Infiction 212, original emphases). Theatrical fiction can thus
be explained by means of a specific realization of the three components
of our multilayered approach to fictionality: it displays non-real worlds,
it is an institutional practice, and the conventions of this practice involve
games of make-believe on both the production and the reception sides.
The specific representational conventions that the institution of theatrical fiction allows for are again manifold. Moreover, they can vary from one
production to another. As Hamilton points out, it depends upon the style
of a production as to what counts as a salient feature of the theatrical representation. Depending on the style of production, for example, not all of an
actors features may count as features of the character he enacts (see ch. 6).
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Fictionality and Film

As a last example of an art form for which fictionality is a relevant category, I now turn to film. It is interesting to note that in contrast to the
theater but in agreement with literature, an established distinction exists between a fictional and a nonfictional, or factual, genre of filmmaking. This distinction is corroborated by the fact that film schools, film
festivals, and film awards usually have different classes and categories
for feature film and documentary film. This division raises the question
of what it means to call feature film fictional and, although this issue
is not central to the topic of this chapter, of whether documentary is the
factual other of feature film.
For a start I briefly look at the factual side in order to clarify the
medium-specific background of my investigation. Carroll calls attention to the fact that in film history the term documentary is not tantamount to nonfictional film but has acquired a specific meaning that
goes beyond the denial of fictionality. He asserts that documentary, in
the tradition established by such filmmakers as Robert J. Flaherty or
John Grierson, represented creative treatment of actuality (Fiction
173). This understanding of documentary film highlights the artistic dimension of nonfictional filmmaking and makes the term documentary equivocal when used to designate nonfiction film as such or to distinguish nonfictional from fictional film. Carroll therefore proposes the
label film of presumptive assertion or even film of putative fact (175)
for nonfictional film. Factual film as film of presumptive assertion is defined by the fact that the filmmaker intends the audience to believe or
to entertain as asserted truth the propositional content conveyed by the
film. With the label film of presumptive assertion, Carroll wants to
highlight that the concept of nonfictional film is not linked to a specific form of filmic representation. Films of presumptive assertions do not
have to include any kind of documentary footage; they can be made entirely of computer animations or even of enacted scenes.
Documentary film corresponds to a subclass of Carrolls films of
presumptive assertionthat is, the film of the presumptive trace.
This subclass is defined by the fact that the relevant structure of sensebearing signs is such that the film-maker intends that the audience regards the images in the films as historic traces (188). The concept of
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trace alludes to the idea that photographic images are mechanically caused representations. As such they are to some extent independent
of the photographers intentions or beliefs. According to Currie, being
a trace is what differentiates photographic images from painted images, which he describes as testimonies, or representations that express
the makers beliefs or intentions (Visual Fictions 6566). Walton similarly holds the view that in contrast to drawings and paintings, photographic images are to a certain extent transparent with respect to what
they represent (Transparent Pictures).32 That photographic images are
traces leads to the view that one can distinguish between representation by origin and representation by use with regard to filmic representation (Currie, Narratives 19). Traditional documentary presumes a
harmony between the two (20), whereas in fictional film there is an obvious distinction between what is represented by origin (an actor like
Cary Grant, for example) and what is represented by use (Grants character, Roger Thornhill, in North by Northwest).
As a result of these rather sketchy remarks about factual film as the
other of fiction film, I want to emphasize two aspects of the discussion.
First, nonfictional film can be seen as an institutional practice that is not
limited to the representational conventions of films of presumptive trace;
rather, it is defined by the agreement between the makers and the audience that the film is meant to convey in some way a truthful representation of a given reality. Second, one of the specificities of filmmaking is
that it involves the photographic medium, which in turn can be characterized by the concept of representational traces.
We can now explicate the fictionality of feature films with the help of
our multilayered account of fictionality. Feature films share some characteristics with theater performances, especially in that the presentation of the fictional world relies in large part on role-playing by actors,
so most of what has been said about role-playing and fictional worlds
in theater applies to film as well.33 But there are also major mediumspecific differences. For one, the filmic production process consists of recording scenes and leads to a fixed work, whereas a theater production
is a non-recorded work that needs to be performed anew every night.
Consequently, there is no distinction between the performance world
and the production world for film fiction. Moreover, when feature films
are not adaptations of literary works, there is no difference between the
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production world and the fictional world of the work because the film
script is usually not published; and even if it is published, it is normally
not regarded as an authoritative text that defines a fictional world independently of the actual film.
Turning to the question of make-believe, most of what has been said
about theatrical fiction again applies also to filmic fiction. One of the major medium-specific differencesthat is, the co-presence of actors and
viewershas vanished, but the fact that the audience does not perceive
real persons on a stage but images on a screen is of no importance here.
Significantly, however, in both film and theater, make-believe is involved
not only on the audiences side but also on the production side. Moreover,
the make-believe that the audiences of films are invited to witness can
be interpreted in the ways already outlined in our general definition and
applied in the sections on literature and theater. One last remark about
the interpretation of make-believe as suppositional imagination may be
appropriate at this point. When the term imagination is used to explain the fictional stance, it does not necessarily entail mental visualization; this point is important since it precludes the argument that imagination cannot be part of a definition of fictionality of film because one
cannot imagine what one already sees.34
The narratological (i.e., narrator-based) interpretation of make-believe
encounters the same difficulties with film as with literature and theater.
The question of whether the concept of a cinematographic narrator or
filmic composition device is essential for an understanding of filmic communication has been the object of rather acrimonious discussions in film
studies. On the one hand, the fact that what is shown in a film is always
presented from a specific point of view or perspective, or that a film establishes a specific relationship between story time and discourse time,
has led semiotically oriented critics such as Seymour Chatman, Andr
Gaudreault, Franois Jost, or Tom Gunning to claim that every film has
a cinematic narrator.35 On the other hand, Currie (Image 26570), David
Bordwell, and other critics who adopt a more cognitivist approach argue
that filmic communication should be understood as a direct unmediated presentation of a story that makes the postulation of a narrator superfluous and misleading.36 Further discussion, however, is beyond the
scope of this chapter and irrelevant to its main thesis, since the multilayered account of fictionality works equally well with or without a narrator.
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Looking more closely at the institutional aspect of filmic fiction, one

can say that the institutional practice of fictional film is to a certain extent similar to the one established for narration or the theater. With fictional film the audience is invited to adopt the attitude of make-believe
toward the represented story by imagining what is represented by origin as showing what it is intended to be represented by use. The makebelieve attitude can be seen as a passive play, which again is partly based
on the actors active game of make-believe. Moreover, there are filmspecific conventions of representation that establish what a specific film
sequence is supposed to represent.
Again, the specific representational conventions of fictional film are
manifold, especially because all the different means of filmic representation come into play. The fictional world of a film is constituted by aspects of mise-en-scne such as setting, costumes, makeup, lighting, or
music. Further, the spectators apprehension of the fictional world is dependent on features that are specific to film art, especially framing and
editing.37 To give only one example, a shot showing a person from behind and from a diagonal angle with an object obstructing the visual
field of the camera is conventionally interpreted as meaning that another person is observing the character. The film may also give clues (e.g.,
via acoustic signals) as to whether the observer has good or bad intentions. Going more deeply into the conventions specific to fictional films
is beyond the scope of this chapter, and it suffices to note the existence of
conventions regarding how fictional worlds are to be conceived or how
audiences indulge in make-believe in relation to films.
To summarize the preceding discussion, we can say that the usefulness
of the multilayered account of fictionality presented in this chapter lies
in its power to explain how fictionality can be seen as a common feature of phenomena belonging to different art forms or media. Moreover,
this account makes it possible to spell out the medium-specific differences of these various kinds of fictional artworks. Future investigations
will have to show whether and how the present analysis of fictionality
can be applied to art forms or mediafor example, paintings, computer games, photography, and musicthat are not discussed in this chapter. An important part of these future investigations will be to determine what makes the concept of fictionality useful for a given medium.
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Notes
1. The second question highlights the fact that investigations into more or less
philosophical concepts such as fictionality do not actually answer questions
about what there is; rather they answer questions about how we can understand
and/or regroup specific cultural phenomena. Therefore, I understand concepts
of fictionality, be they transmedial or not, as heuristic devices that help us to
grasp complex cultural interactions and provide us with tools to analyze these
cultural interactions in their complexity.
2. See Ryan, Introduction 1520; Ryan, Theoretical Foundations 1421.
3. See, for example, Walton, Mimesis; Walton, Listening; Rabinowitz; Ryan,
Avatars.
4. See Ryan, Avatars 3158; Ryan, Fiction, Cognition.
5. For a clear distinction between fictionality and representation, see, for example,
Schaeffer, Fictional 10318. For arguments against Waltons terminology, see,
for example, Zipfel, Fiktion 2324.
6. In this chapter I use the term fictionality rather than fiction. The notion of fiction in English is very much associated with literary narration, whereas fictionality can be used to designate works of art in different art forms or media.
7. What counts as real or what is considered as fact may be relative to a specific
truth program (Schaeffer, Fictional 99).
8. Again, one of the most ardent proponents of a theory of fiction that omits
reference to fictional content is Kendall Walton, who alleges that there is no
reason why a work of fiction could not be exclusively about people and things
(particulars) that actually exist (Mimesis 74). Similar assertions can be found
in many other theoretical approaches: for example, Bareis 5563; Bunia 138;
Davies 4448; Gertken and Kppe 23436; Gibson 160.
9. For a similar approach, see New, for whom the notion of invention is part of
the notion of fiction (48); Lamarque and Olsen 51; Schmid 27.
10. For a more detailed account, see Zipfel, Fiktion 76106. I have to pass over the
long-standing debate about the status of fictional characters. For a brief survey,
see, for example, Jannidis.
11. Maybe one of the most elegant ways to talk about fictional content as differing
from reality is to say that content is fictional just in case what is true of those objects, events etc. is dependent on the fictive descriptions which characterize them
in the first place (Lamarque and Olsen 51). See also Kppe 51.
12. See Zipfel, Fictional Truth.
13. See Duflo 23946; Zipfel, Zeichen. For a critical view regarding the explanatory force of game or play in theories of fiction, see Gibson 165; and for a
more positive view see Kppe.
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14. Here, I especially refer to the ongoing debate about the so-called paradox of fiction. Compare, for example, Yanal; Zipfel, Emotion.
15. For similar explanations, see Lamarque; Yanal. For the complex question of the
meaning of imagination, see Stevenson; Sutrop.
16. See Currie, Nature, ch. 1; Lamarque and Olsen ch. 2. Evidentially an institutional concept of fictionality does not preclude misunderstandings or misreadings. There is always the possibility that an audience will disregard the
intention of the producer or, for example, read a fictional text as if it were
factual, but that is not an argument against a conception of fiction as institutional practice. As for Waltons examples of authorless texts, such as the ones
that are generated by cracks in rocks, yes, we can read those authorless texts
as fiction, but to discuss this kind of authorless texts is to engage in a rather
spurious and not very enlightening thought experiment. To put it differently,
if somebody will at some time stumble upon such a text and read it as fiction,
the right explanation would be that the crack-in-rock text is then treated as if
it was produced with the fiction intention.
17. The distinction between the defining conventions of the institutional practice
and the representational conventions of fiction in a specific art form can roughly be mapped on the distinction between constitutive and regulative rules in
Searles theory of institutions (Construction 2729, 4348). For an application to
a theory of fiction, see Sutrop 8387.
18. For a similar understanding of theories of fiction, see Ryans claim: A truly
meaningful theory of fiction should be more than an instrument by which to
sort out all texts into fiction and non-fiction: it should also tell us something
about how we experience these texts, what we do with them, why we consume
them, and why it is important to make a distinction between fiction and nonfiction. It should, in other words, have a phenomenological and a cognitive
dimension (Fiction, Cognition 8).
19. For a more elaborate version of this kind of explanation of textual fictional narration, see, for example, Lamarque and Olsen; Zipfel, Fiktion.
20. Disagreeing with Walton and following Ryan, I do not think it is a bad idea to draw
upon results stemming from the discussion about verbal fiction when we try to
elaborate on a transmedial concept of fictionality (see Ryan, Fiction, Cognition).
21. See, for example, Banfield; Brooke-Rose; Weber; Weimar; or more recently
Kppe and Sthring; Walsh.
22. See, for example, Thon; Wilson.
23. See, for example, Martnez and Scheffel.
24. I distinguish between narration in a broad sense of story presentation and narration in a narrow sense of the presentation of a story that is mediated by a narrator or narrative function. For a differentiated account of the different meanings of narration, see, for example, Ryan, Theoretical Foundations.
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25. Some short stories by J. L. Borges come to mindfor example, Tln, Uqbar,
Orbis Tertius or Pierre Menard, Author of Quixote.
26. Note, however, that while multilayered analysis of fiction allows for fictional
poetry, it does not answer the question whether all poetry is fictional (see Zipfel, Lyrik).
27. See also Fischer-Lichte 16.
28. A theater production is an artwork that is created by producing agents with
differing functions who all take part in the creation process but who are not
all present during the performance (e.g., director and stage and costume
designers).
29. It could also be argued that every single performance creates its own performance world.
30. See Alward for a detailed account.
31. See also Patrick Colm Hogans chapter 2 in this volume.
32. See also Ryan, Fiction, Cognition 1618.
33. I leave aside cartoon film, which would need an investigation of its own.
34. This remark could, of course, have been made already in the discussion of theatrical fiction. But although the remark is equally true when made about theater as it is when made about film, it is perhaps more pertinent for the realm of
cinematographic images, as the latter are traditionally more closely linked to
visual representational realism than is the case with theatrical performances.
35. For a recent version of this approach, see Kuhn 72103.
36. See also Branigan; Ryan, Fiction, Cognition 18; Stam, Burgoyne, and
Flitterman-Lewis 10318; Thomson-Jones; Thon.
37. See, for example, part 4 in Bordwell and Thompson.

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Framings of Narrative in Literature

and the Pictorial Arts
werner wolf

It is well-known that we humans are story-telling animals and that our

stories can be transmitted by more media than verbal texts. Therefore,
further belabouring these and similar facts is no longer necessary in narratology. Yet what has not been researched sufficiently, if at all, is this
question: how do we know in the first place that a text, an artifact, or,
more precisely, a particular represented world (be it of a verbal, visual,
or acoustic nature) is a storyworld?
In an essay titled Toward a Definition of Narrative, Marie-Laure
Ryan claimed with reference to verbal or visual information that
[a]ssessing the narrative status of a text is not a cognitive question that
we must consciously answer for proper understanding (3233). This assertion is true enough from the perspective of the general user of narratives. Yet from a narratological perspective finding out which mechanisms and clues actually encourage us to perceive a given artifact within
a narrative framework rather than, for example, a descriptive one is a
cognitive question that merits further attention.
My ensuing reflections aim at finding answers to this question on the
basis of the frame-theoretical idea that narrative is a major cognitive
frame whose application is elicited by certain clues, keys, or framings, typically and preferably at the outset of a reception process. As
for the media involved in this process, we must remember, following
Ryan, that media are not neutral conduits without any impact on what
is transmitted by them; rather, they make [...] a difference as to what
kind of [...] content can be evoked (Media and Narrative 290). If so,
it should also apply to their different potentials to trigger certain cognitive frames, including the frame narrative. This is what I intend to
discuss in the following. More precisely, I inquire into the framings of
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narrative that operate at the beginning of reception processes and elicit narrative readings. In doing so, my aim is not to present an exhaustive survey of all possible devices and conditions triggering the frame
narrative in individual arts and media. Rather, my focus is on the main
means of framing narratives from a media-comparative, transmedial
perspective with reference to only two fieldsnamely, verbal art (literature) and the pictorial arts.
Preliminary Theoretical Reflections: Types of
Cognitive Framings and of Narrativity
Before engaging in a discussion of framings of narrative, some remarks
on framings in general and on different types of framings (see Wolf,
Introduction), as well as on basic qualities of narrative, may not be
amiss. In my 2006 book on Framing Borders I distinguished between
cognitive frames and cognitive framings as codings or keyings (see
Goffman) of such frames and thus as triggers of certain expectations.
In art, which loves to play with expectations, such codings or framings
can assume a playful, defamiliarized, or even deceptive form (see Wolf,
Defamiliarized). We therefore should reformulate our main question
concerning the framing of narratives. Rather than asking whether a given represented world is a storyworld, we should perhaps say, how are we
induced to think that a represented world is a storyworld?
Framings come in many typological forms and may be combined
with each other (in the following I will draw on Wolf, Introduction).
A first typological distinction refers to the constituents of communicative processes and thus to different framing agencies; that is, they may
be sender, message, context, or recipient based (1517). The recipient as
the subject of narrativization is a particularly important factor in producing a narrative reception, all the more so as narrative is a favorite
frame for humans to make sense of experience, time, change, and identity. However, the narrative-friendly predispositions of individuals and
perhaps most recipients notwithstanding, we may safely say that not
all artifacts elicit narrativization or, if they do, not to the same degree.
Obviously, the work or message in question also plays a crucial role in
triggering the frame narrative, and this factor is therefore privileged
in the following discussion. My focus is thus on textual, or messagebased, framings with occasional glances at contextual (extracomposiFramings of Narrative

127

tional) framings, including generic framings, since, generally speaking,

framing results first and foremost from a combination of what we know
and what we perceive.
With the message-based variant, framings can be located on the level of the paratexts or on the (intra)textual level, and both sub-forms can
include formal and content aspects. All of these intracompositional facets are relevant to the following inquiry, provided we accept a wide definition of text that also includes nonverbal signs and thus avoids terminological complications (1921).
The second major typological distinction refers to the extension of
framings. Although given artifacts can require the activation of more
than one frame simultaneously or in individual parts, for simplicitys
sake I concentrate on total rather than partial framingsthat is, on
framings that refer to the entire artifact in question and provide a dominant frame for its understanding (1819).
The third distinction concerns the possibility that framings can use
the same medium as the framed message or, alternatively, other media. In other words, framings can be homomedial or heteromedial (18).
A fourth distinction refers to the location of framings in the process
of reception. In principle, given artifacts can locate framings at any moment in a prescribed or suggested reception process. However, as already
noted, the initial position is cognitively of particular relevance, since it is
at the beginning of a reading, viewing, or listening process that expectations are created and then are applied to the entire artifact under scrutiny, at least as a default option. Obviously, one could object to the temporal
terms initial, internal, or terminal framings (21) if used for the visual arts as nontemporal media. Thus I would like to reaccentuate initial
framings for our transmedial inquiry and use this category to refer to the
first few moments of the first reception of both verbal and visual artifacts.
As a fifth typological differentiation, one may distinguish between
framings that refer directly to the framed artifact and those that do so
indirectly. Again, both forms are relevant to our purpose. Direct framings are most clearly seen in overtly metareferential mentions (e.g., this
is a narrative), while indirect framings address the cognitive frames in
question via a detour.1 Thus, when we read that a given title of a television (tv) program is a horror film, it is first and foremost a direct and
overtly metareferential framing of a filmic genre. However, according to
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our cultural expertise, we also know that this genre denotes films that are
typically narrative; therefore, this direct generic framing is at the same
time also an indirect framing indicating narrativity.
As for the functions of framings, they always include metareferential
ones, since, semiotically speaking, framings are signs controlling the
use and meaning of other signs and are thus located on a logically higher level than are the framed signs. In our case, the framings in question
amount to the aforementioned metareferential statement: The artifact
referred to is a narrative. However, clearly not all framings contain only
metareferential messages, nor do all of them convey such messages in
an overt or explicit way. Rather, as far as the saliency of framingsthe
sixth differentiationis concerned, there is a whole range of gradations
between overt and covert framings that at first glance may even seem
to be no framings at all but simply parts of the artifact in question (19).
Concerning the framing of narrative, all the prototypical features of
narratives, or narratemes (see Prince 46; Wolf, Narrative 183), may
function as such covert framings. Most notably, this refers to the representation of settings, characters, and events, implying a chronological, causal, and teleological order. Yet such covert framing may also extend to one feature of typical narratives that has hardly found attention
in researchthat is, our assumption that stories, including their ending, have happened (in reality or imagination) before they are told, performed, or otherwise represented and that they elicit the sense of the
precedence of event[s] or of a pastness of the story in question (see
Abbott 535; Wolf, Sense). Thus, in verbal artifacts, the past tense can
also function as one key to narrativity. However, assessing a complex
phenomenon such as the frame narrative according to prototypical features may take some time; therefore, not all narratemes may be equally
relevant for initial framing.
Finally, a crucial distinction concerning the narrative quality of given works must be introduced. Besides the well-known fact that narrative is a prototypical phenomenon and thus gradable, many representations do appear to possess genuine narrativity to a considerable extent in
themselves, whereas other representations, while not actually narrative
as such, may yet encourage a narrativization based on intertextual or intermedial references to clearly narrative representations. In literature, the
distinction between such genuinely or directly narrative works and texts
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with borrowed or indirect narrativity may be illustrated by the obvious

difference between the actual narrativity of Homers Iliad and the predominant descriptivity rather than narrativity of Edgar Allan Poes poem
To Helen, which only refers to a narrative character in Homers epic:

To Helen
Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nican barks of yore,
That gently, oer a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
On desperate seas, long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.
Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!
(quoted from Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy 97576)

In the pictorial arts, the same difference may be seen at work when
comparing the descriptive, portrait-like painting Helen of Troy by PreRaphaelite painter Frederick Sandys (18291904) (figure 5.1) and the
painting The Abduction of Helen of Troy by the Italian Baroque painter Cesare Dandini (15961657) (figure 5.2). Over and above its reference
to Homers epic, Dandinis painting contains strong narrative clues in
its suggestion of a chronology and causality of events. They are revealed
when reading the pictures three scenes: Pariss abduction of Helen in the
center, causing the persecutors to rush in from the left side and toward
the ship on the right-hand side that is waiting to take the couple to Troy.
In the following discussion, I focus on genuinely narrative artifacts
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Fig. 5.1. Frederick Sandys (18291904), Helen of Troy.

as illustrated by Dandini. Before analyzing pictorial clues of narrative,

however, I start with initial framings of narrativity in literature.
Initial Framings of Narrative in Literature
Literature, as we understand the term today, comprises mostly fictional texts, which are relatively independent of pragmatic contexts. In all of
its typical traditional variants, such as epic, drama, and lyric, literature
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Fig. 5.2. Cesare Dandini (15961657), The Abduction of Helen of Troy.

can be realized in two waysas performance and as printed text. For

simplicitys sake and since the printed form is arguably most important,
at least today, I concentrate on the latter variant.
Literature as printed textas a rule and in spite of the growing importance of e-books and discounting special cases, such as loose manuscripts found in odd places or photocopies for educational purposes
still comes in traditional book form. Usually, readers do not simply
happen to come across books but purposely borrow them from libraries
or buy them in traditional or online bookshops before reading them. In
all of these cases, contextual framings of individual books in the form
of more or less consistent text type and generic classifications will occur;
that is, contextual framings in conjunction with the readers knowledge
of cultural conventions will furnish indirect information on the applicability of the frame narrative to the item in question. Thus, Amazons
fiction section or the fiction and drama departments in a large bookshop or library will inform a potential recipient with some reliability
right from the start that the books found there will in all probability be
narratives.
If such contextual, extracompositional framings are unavailable for
some reason, intracompositional framings directly connected with the
book in question may be used as a supplement to yield clues of narrativity as well. First in the reception process among the intracompositional
framings are the paratexts, which have become a regular feature of print132

Wolf

ed texts at least since the Renaissance. These more or less elaborate paratexts render the identification of literature as such relatively easy and
may also function as initial framings of narrative. Such framing may occur in the indirect variantfor example, through macro-generic subtitles that refer to genres known to be narrative (A Tragedy)or even
in a direct way by titles and subtitles denoting narrativity, such as The
History of Tom Jones.
In addition, in printed literature, the general textual form as a variant of form-based intratextual framingalways in conjunction with
the necessary cultural knowledge on the part of the recipientmay also
immediately indicate narrativity: books containing fiction, drama, and
poetry are characteristically different in the layout of the main texts pages, and this layout may thus contribute to framing the narrative. For instance, while fiction is usually printed with both left- and right-justified
margins, poetry typically is set with left-justified margins only, is often
divided into stanzas, and is usually printed with more margin space surrounding the individual text than texts of novels or short stories. Finally,
drama is also easily recognizable by its layout, which distinguishes between speech tags, stage directions, and text spoken by characters.
Where contextual and paratextual framings indicate the text type literature and, in addition or in conjunction with general textual form, also
bespeak fiction or drama, the informed recipients default setting will
certainly be narrative even before he or she has read the first line of
the respective main texts. Poetry, in this context, is a more difficult case,
since the markers of lyricalness do not necessarily also function as reliable indirect framings of narrativity. On the contrary, and in spite of recent attempts on the part of scholars such as Peter Hhn to extend narrativity to poetry in a general way, poetry is not typically narrative (see
Wolf, The Lyric 30) or at least prototypically contains only low degrees
of narrativity. Genuinely narrative poetic genres such as the ballad are an
exception here. In order to direct readers expectations toward narrativity, paratexts that inform the reader about the ballad genre may be helpful, yet Samuel Taylor Coleridges The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,
one of the most famous ballads in English literature, does not give this
clue. It is true that this poem is part of a collection generally known as
Lyrical Ballads, yet as the assembled texts are a mixture of narrative and
non-narrative poems (as the 1798 edition covertly indicates in the full tiFramings of Narrative

133

tle Lyrical Ballads with a Few Other Poems), the paratextual framing of
the title is inconclusive with respect to narrativity.
It is thus with reference to poetry in particular that intratextual framings become necessary for triggering the frame narrative. In The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner, such intratextual framing functions quickly,
owing to the general text form of the ballad stanza. Yet for anyone unable to make the connection between this metrical form and a probable
narrative content, the opening frame with the lyrical persona meeting
the eponymous mariner is as yet ambiguous. It starts:
It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
Yet with line 10, and still relatively early in the reception process, we read:
There was a ship, quoth he.
(quoted from Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy 812)

In this past-tense beginning of the embedded text, a first strong, formbased narrative framing is given. This is confirmed shortly afterward
when the tense of the diegetic embedding text changes to past tense, too,
and the mariner starts with his hypodiegetic story of a sea voyage, initiating a potentially eventful and therefore eminently narrative script:
The wedding guest sate on a stone:
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man.
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The Ship was cheered, the harbor cleared,
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the light-house top.
(quoted from Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy 813)

As noted earlier, the past tense as the typical narrative tense may contribute to the signaling of narrativity and thus function as a form-based
intratextual framing in poetry and in fiction. Yet fiction in particular
has other form-based initial framings at its disposal. Among them, the
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opening formula Once upon a time there was... combines the introduction of the narrative past tense with an indirect framing of narrative
by means of the generic marking of the fairy tale.
However, such formulaic framings can also be deceptive, as the opening of James Joyces A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man shows: Once
upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming
down along the road and this moocow that was coming down on the road
met a nicens little boy named baby tuckooo.... His father told him that
story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face (3).
Owing to the device of the missing opening frame (see Wolf,
Defamiliarized 315) used here in the form of missing quotation marks,
the opening formula Once upon a time may at first be misread (by
an uninformed reader) as a total framing of the text as a whole and is
only belatedly revealed as possessing a restricted relevance. Yet even if
its function as the direct generic framing of a fairy tale is restricted to a
few lines, the function of this phrase as an indirect framing of narrative
holds true for the entire novel.
The narrative past tense, which is used in both the hypodiegetic and
the diegetic opening sentences of Joyces novel, may be absent in other
narrative texts, including their openings. The narrativity of the text in
question, however, may become clear even when one disregards contextual and paratextual framings. The opening paragraph of Only Joking
(2010), a recent novel of contemporary author Gabriel Josipovici, is a
case in point: When the Baron, as he likes to be called, wants to talk,
he always sits in the front. Felix, at the wheel, knows better than to initiate a conversation. He busies himself manoeuvring the large silent car
through the congested streets of Henley (1). Here, we find typical literary devices such as the introduction of proper names without apposition or other explanation and the in medias res beginning of the action
after only two sentences outlining habitual states of affairs. These devices function as direct framings of literature but not necessarily of narrative. Yet, in combination with the layout, which is typical of fiction, an
indirect framing of narrative also emerges right at the outset of the text.
All of the initial framings of narrative discussed here trigger a trialand-error process of unconscious categorization and require confirmation so that the default option of narrative elicited at the beginning is
corroborated. It is, however, a curious fact emerging from the discusFramings of Narrative

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sion that in literature, a first framing of narrative does not require much
time, and even occasionally no time at all, spent in reading the text proper. Indeed, in most cases the contextual and paratextual framings in
combination with formal intratextual markers, which can all be quickly taken in and unconsciously assessed, suffice to elicit the frame narrative as a default option and to maintain it as long as the text does not
give contrary signals. It is also remarkable that among these framings
of narrative, directly metareferential framings that mark a story quality are not necessary and that much framing functions through an interaction of covert signals with a corresponding cultural knowledge on
the part of the recipient.
In our examples, this cultural knowledge is, of course, the knowledge
of contemporary, twenty-first-century readers. Clearly, framing also has
a historical dimension and was realized differently in former timesas
can be seen in the intratextual incipit formulas of medieval textsbut
that discussion would be the matter of a further inquiry. At present we
should look at the ways in which the pictorial arts can produce framings of narrative.
Initial Framings of Narrative in the Pictorial Arts
Like books, pictures are rarely perceived without contextual, including
generic, framings, and frequently such framings are perceptible right at
the beginning of the reception process. However, in the case of the pictorial arts, these framings often prove to be far less helpful than in literature when it comes to signaling narrativity.
From the Middle Ages until well into the Renaissance, the pictorial arts, such as painting, tapestry, mosaic, or stained glass, used to be
firmly linked to religious and aristocratic spheres and were restricted
to a limited number of genres, in particular to religious, mythological,
or history pictures and portraits. Among these genres, portraits were
and are the least narrative, whereas history painting contains a narrative element in that it refers to more or less well-known historical events,
which in turn tend to be known in forms of narratives. A relatively recent case in point, which happens to combine action-loaded historicity
with a portrait, is Jacques-Louis Davids Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard
Pass (figure 5.3), recalling Napoleons memorable crossing of the Alps in
1800 in order to reconquer Italian territory that the Austrians had pre136

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Fig. 5.3. Jacques-Louis David (17481825), Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass.

viously occupied. If one focuses on the historical component, the painting is at least indirectly narrative (by referring to historiography, which
in turnpace Fludernikmay be conceived of as a variant of narrative);
but if one concentrates on the portrait component, its non-narrative, descriptive quality becomes apparent.
In contrast to portraits and history paintings, religious images, which
for a long time formed the most important pictorial genre, are ambivalent when it comes to their generic power of signaling narrativity. On the
one hand, many religious pictures and picture series (for instance, in the
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Fig. 5.4. Christ in the Mandorla with Saints from Ratisbone (ca. 1100).

form of stained glass), in particular those illustrations serving as a biblia

pauperum in ecclesiastic contexts, acquire a certain degree of narrativity indirectlythat is, from intermedial references to biblical stories. On
the other hand, religious pictures could also be mere descriptions or at
any rate non-narrative (iconographic) re-presentations of religious persons and phenomena such as the Holy Trinity, Mary as nursing mother, or Christ Pantocrator in the Mandorla, as depicted in the apsis of the
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Fig. 5.5. Jan Steen (162679), The Merry Family.

cathedrals of Grado or Monreale (Sicily) and in book illuminations (figure 5.4). So, at least in religious images, a clear indirect framing of narrative through the connotations of contextual framings (churches and
other religious spaces) and generic framings (as in the case of the rubrics
of libraries and bookshops) is impossible.
From the seventeenth century onward, pictorial artifacts steadily liberated themselves from the framings of religious and aristocratic architectures; however, their gradual invasion of middle-class homes and curiosity cabinets (Kunstkammern) was again not always helpful in terms of
keying narrativity. At the same time painterly genres multiplied or rose to
a degree of respectability that they had not previously possessed, as was
the case with Dutch landscape and genre painting, as well as with still
lifes. With some of these new genres, an indirect, genre-basedpositive
or negativerelevance for the framing of narrative may be assumed.
Thus, still lifes and landscape painting tend to be non-narrative, whereas genre painting, like religious painting, is per se ambiguous. It can be
predominantly descriptive and narrative, as a comparison between Jan
Steens mostly descriptive The Merry Family and his much more narraFramings of Narrative

139

Fig. 5.6. Jan Steen, The Saint Nicholas Feast.

tive The Saint Nicholas Feast may show (compare figure 5.5 and figure
5.6). (For more on the narrativity of the latter painting see the discussion in Wolf, Narrative 19092).
In many cases of the pictorial arts, contextual, including generic,
framings of narrative thus prove to be less reliable than they are in literature. Interestingly, painterly paratexts, in particular heteromedial picture
titles and captions, do not appear to be more helpful either. For much of
pictorial history, however, such paratexts, at least in written form, were
absent to a large extent. While religious pictures in ecclesiastic contexts
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sometimes (yet not always) had written captions or inserted texts for the
learned, viewers of many other pictures who required explanations, titles,
and generic indications could at best hope for oral comments. This also
remained true for the curiosity cabinets of the Renaissance and Baroque
age, and even middle-class picture collectors often displayed their treasures untitled.2 Even from the eighteenth century on when public art
galleries were established and paratexts that accompanied the pictures
on exhibition appeared more frequently, the titles were often in small
print or not easily attributable to individual paintings (which were often hung in several rows).
As a result, within our context one can say that in the face of the unreliability of many pictorial contextual and paratextual framings, intratextual, or rather intrapictorial, clues obtain an increased importance in the
pictorial arts. William Hogarths dyptich of engravings entitled Before
and After (1736) is a case in point (figure 5.7 and figure 5.8). Without viewing the pictures in question, the titles are obscure and thus hardly indicative of narrativity. At best they are indicative of two points in time and
somethingmissingin between. That we have a rudimentary picture
series is, of course, per se a strong formal incentive for a narrative reception, since juxtaposition is frequently read as a temporal sequence, and a
temporal sequence is in turn often viewed as a causal relationship.
Yet even if by some mischance only the first of the two engravings (or
the first corresponding painting in oil) had survived, some intrapictorial framings of narrativeall of which are content rather than form
basedwould nevertheless be discernible. Let us take a first quick look
at Before. It becomes immediately clear that this picture follows a wellknown script, namely that of a quasi-rape: a young lady tries forcefully
to disentangle herself from the grip of a man, who powerfully wants to
draw her onto a bed; indeed, his desire is so impetuous that his wig has
become dislocated (as a sign of the violence of his passion). This representation of a disruptive event conforms in many respects to a typically narrative and at the same time eminently tellable event (compare
with Pratt 136).3 Moreover, the action forms a Lessingian pregnant moment par excellence (in more than one respect), capturing the split second in which the dressing table tilts before crashing to the floor. It is a
moment that temporally points to, and makes us infer, a preceding state
in which the lady was as yet unmolested, as well as a potentially disasFramings of Narrative

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Fig. 5.7. William Hogarth (16971764), Before.

trous sexual event in the future. Intrapictorial elements triggering a narrative script thus clue us to consider what we see as implicated in a temporal and causal flow, thereby providing crucial narratemes and, hence,
a covert framing of narrative.
Taking a closer look, details of this narrative script come to the fore.
The mans passion is mirrored in the lower animal realm in a leaping
dog, as well as in a picture mise en abyme showing a cupid lighting the
fuse of a rocket (Hallett and Riding 79). In addition, the tension between
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Fig. 5.8. William Hogarth, After.

two texts displayed in the picture emphasize what, after all, is represented as a moral problem: the gaping drawer of the ladys tilting and falling dressing table contains a book whose spine shows the generic framing novel and another one partly displaying the title of a pious treatise
The Practice of Piety: Directing a Christian How to Walk, that He May
Please God (1602) (Hallett and Riding 79). This detail alone shows both
the past religious commitment of the lady and her inclination to what in
the eighteenth century was still widely held as a dangerous and moralFramings of Narrative

143

ly corrupting pastimenamely, reading novels. On top of the dressing

table, an even more dubious text is implicated in the falla book displaying the name of the notorious Restoration rake and poet of explicit sexual texts, the Earl of Rochester. The pursuer presumably used the
book as a means of seduction and corruption.
As we could see, as opposed to my previous discussion of literary
framings of narrative, in order to reveal triggers of the frame narrative
in the visual arts, I had to dwell much more on intratextual and contentbased clues, some of which were so covert as not to be discernible at first
glance. To what extent the narrative reading of these triggers is nevertheless justified in our example becomes clear once we include the second engraving, After, into our interpretation. It represents the emotional consequences of what Hogarth did not actually show, thus creating a
classic Leerstelle sensu Iser (that is, a gap in a meaningful sequence)
namely, the sexual intercourse and its circumstances. (Was it really rape,
as may be surmised from various allusions to violence in Before, or, at
least to a certain extent, sex by mutual consent?) At any rate, the consequences are sad, and overtly so, for the young man, who thus exemplifies what is also hinted at on a sheet of paper lying on the floor that reads,
Omne animal post coitum triste. Sad consequences are also suggested
concerning the lady, for she has lost her honor, as is indirectly suggested by the symbolically broken mirror and immediately discernible by
her gaze. This look may only be ambiguous from a very modern point of
view, for in this perspective she may be asking for more sex, as Hallett
and Riding indicate as one possible interpretation; orand that is historically more probable in the moralizing context of the two pictures
it may well be that she, by this means, implores the young man to make
good her broken honor through marriage. The rest of the story is silence,
thus illustrating the limits and the lack of precision of pictorial narratives without the sustained help of words. After all, we are dealing with
a medium that materially presents static, spatial depictions rather than
moving temporal representations and is therefore able to represent time
only by way of hints for readerly inferences.
As was to be expected, we have seen that framings of narrative are possible in both literature and in the pictorial arts, since both media are capable of narrativity. However, it appears that in literature, the frame narra144

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tive can be elicited more quickly and more reliably than it is in pictures.
The reason for this difference is arguably that narrativity in the pictorial arts, to the extent that it relies on temporality and causality as narratemes, can only be inferred. Because it cannot be represented directly, as in the temporal medium of literature, the pictorial arts narrativity
thus takes longer to understand.
A second difference should also be noted: in literature, contextual, paratextual, and intratextual form-based frames are frequently sufficient to
trigger narrativity, perhaps because narrativity is more intimately linked
to verbal than to pictorial representations. In the pictorial arts, when it
comes to frames of narrative, considerable weight is shifted to intrapictorial clues and content-based ones in particular (notably scripts with culturally acquired narrative connotations). In many cases these intrapictorial keyings take a much longer time to decipher than the extratextual
and formal framings of narrative in literature and thus could be classified
as initial framings only with difficulty. Indeed, the pictorial arts have
no form-based framing of narrative that may be compared with the simple literary formula Once upon a time... in its immediate efficiency.
Our foregoing reflections have shown that Ryan is indeed right with
her evaluation of media not as harmless conduits but as agencies that
shape what they transmit (see Media and Narrative). This observation
is true not only of individual storyworld contents (the Iliad as a verbal
text will differ from an Iliad as a picture series or comic) but also of semiotic macro-frames such as narrative and the descriptive (see Wolf and
Bernhart, Description), as well as of such referential forms as factuality, fictionality, and metareferentiality. Further, as the foregoing discussion also
demonstrated, this at least partial media specificity equally applies to what
is important at the outset of the process of perceiving representations
namely, the framings, including the framings of narrative.
The transmedial approach, which was used here and is best for highlighting such media specificities, could be applied to other media, of
course. It seems to me that, for the question of how storyworlds are
marked as such, a particularly fruitful area is tv and the various filmic genres that this technical medium transmits. Owing to the technical
device of the remote control and the zapping activity it encourages, we
seem to have been trained to make sometimes remarkably quick, if unconscious, assessments and classifications of programs we like or dislike.
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Narrative classifications are arguably part of this framing process. Yet investigating tv along the lines of what I just have adumbrated with reference to literature and the pictorial arts is the subject of another inquiry.

Notes
1. I did not discuss this typological differentiation between direct and indirect
framing in Wolf, Introduction. For metareference as an umbrella term for medial meta-phenomena, see Wolf, Metareference across Media.
2. See, for instance, the picture cabinet of Johann Wolfgang von Goethes father as
preserved in the Frankfurt Goethe Haus.
3. Interestingly, Herman classifies tellable disruptions of the canonical or expected order of events as forming per se a signal of narrativity (135).

Works Cited
Abbott, H. Porter. The Future of All Narrative Futures. A Companion to Narrative
Theory. Ed. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Blackwell Companions to
Literature and Culture. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2005. 52941. Print.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere. 1798. Lyrical
Ballads, 1798. By William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Ed. W. J. B.
Owen. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1969. 732. Print.
Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy, eds. The Norton Anthology
of Poetry. 5th ed. New York: Norton, 2005. Print.
Fludernik, Monika. Towards a Natural Narratology. London: Routledge, 1996.
Print.
Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
Cambridge ma: Cambridge University Press, 1974. Print.
Hallett, Mark, and Christine Riding. Hogarth. London: Tate Publishing, 2006. Print.
Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2009. Print.
Hhn, Peter. Plotting the Lyric: Forms of Narration in Poetry. Theory into Poetry:
New Approaches to the Lyric. Ed. Eva Mller-Zettelmann and Margarete Rubik.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 14272. Print.
Josipovici, Gabriel. Only Joking. London: cb editions, 2010. Print.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 1916. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler
with Walter Hettche. New York: Vintage, 1993. Print.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laocon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry.
Trans. Edward Allen McCormick. Baltimore md: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1984. Print.
Poe, E. A. To Helen. 1845. Ferguson, Salter, and Stallworthy 1975. Print.
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Pratt, Mary Louise. Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1977. Print.
Prince, Gerald. Revisiting Narrativity. Grenzberschreitungen: Narratologie im Kontext/
Transcending Boundaries: Narratology in Context. Ed. Walter Grnzweig and Andreas
Solbach. Tbingen, Germany: Narr, 1999. 4351. Print.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Media and Narrative. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative
Theory. Ed. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. London:
Routledge, 2005. 28892. Print.
. Toward a Definition of Narrative. The Cambridge Companion to
Narrative. Ed. David Herman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2007. 2235. Print.
Wolf, Werner. Defamiliarized Initial Framings in Fiction. Description in Literature
and Other Media. Ed. Wolf and Bernhart 295328. Print.
. Introduction: Frames, Framings and Framing Borders in Literature and
Other Media. Description in Literature and Other Media. Ed. Wolf and Bernhart
140. Print.
. The Lyric: Problems of Definition and a Proposal for Reconceptualization.
Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric. Ed. Eva Mller-Zettelmann and
Margarete Rubik. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 2156. Print.
, ed. Metareference across Media: Theory and Case StudiesDedicated to
Walter Bernhart on the Occasion of his Retirement. With Katharina Bantleon and
Jeff Thoss. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009. Print.
.Narrative and Narrativity: A Narratological Reconceptualization and Its
Applicability to the Visual Arts. Word & Image 19.3 (2003): 18097. Print.
. The Sense of the Precedence of [...] Event[s]a Defining Condition of
Narrative across Media? Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 63 (2013): 245
59. Print.
Wolf, Werner, and Walter Bernhart, eds. Description in Literature and Other Media.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. Print.
. Framing Borders in Literature and Other Media. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006.
Print.

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Part 2

Multimodality and Intermediality

The Rise of the Multimodal Novel

Generic Change and Its Narratological Implications
wolfgang hallet

Since the 1990s an ever-growing number of novels have not merely consisted of verbal text but have also incorporated a wide range of visual
representations and modes such as (the reproduction of) photographs,
hand-drawn sketches, maps and diagrams, and all sorts of other graphic and symbolic elements in the narrative discourse. Apart from such
conspicuous visual elements, other generic and mostly typographically distinct modes such as typed, handwritten, or electronic letters; film
scripts; websites; pieces of academic writing; and many other generic
forms can be identified in an increasing number of novels. This chapter
argues that this multiplication of semiotic modes changes the notion of
narrative discourse in the traditionally word-based genre of the novel
and turns reading into a multiliterate act.
The Integration of Nonverbal Semiotic Modes
in the Novel
Multimodality is an obvious and conspicuous feature of the type of novel
addressed in this chapter, visible at a glance and represented in the layout of the book page that is totally different from the traditional printed
page. Some of the most popular and much acclaimed exemplars of this
type of novelsuch as Mark Z. Danielewskis House of Leaves, Mark
Haddons The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Jonathan
Safran Foers Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, or W. G. Sebalds
Austerlitz (see Hallet, Fictions; Hallet, Visual Images)do not just
occasionally insert a photograph or some other graphic element; rather, they combine a wide range of different semiotic modes and integrate
large numbers of all these other, nonverbal elements into the otherwise
language-based novelistic narrative.
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At this stage, before examples from different novels are introduced

to characterize the range of semiotic modes displayed in these narratives and the kind of composition of the novel with which this chapter is concerned, it is advisable to briefly outline the concepts of mode
and multimodality as developed in recent theories of social semiotics (Kress; Kress and van Leeuwen; van Leeuwen). In these theoretical
frameworks of contemporary signifying practices and communication,
modes are regarded as semiotic resourcesthat is, as signifiers, observable actions and objects that have been drawn into the domain of social
communication and that have a theoretical semiotic potential constituted by all their past uses and all their potential uses and an actual semiotic potential constituted by those past uses that are known to and considered relevant by the users of the resource, and by such potential uses
as might be uncovered by the users on the basis of their specific needs
and interests (van Leeuwen 4, original emphasis).
Thus, family photographs and snapshots, maps and hand-drawn
sketches, typography and layout, and even color, graphic frames and
margins are semiotic resources as much as written language and speech
are, since all of these modes can be drawn into processes of meaning
making and communication.1 As opposed to the multiplicity of semiotic modes in various communicative contexts, the traditional novel exclusively relies on the written word in printed form, with black letters
on the white page in a paper-bound book. In light of all the other potential modes of communication and signification, this limitation to solely
linguistic communication and the medium of the printed book comes
into view as a cultural (and historical) mode of communication that is
closely connected with the historical emergence of reading as a particular type of social (individualized) practice, with the constitution of markets and practices of distribution, and, of course, with traditional book
production, whose print and media technologies are currently substantially challenged by all kinds of digital media and electronic communication technologies. Therefore, in terms of the multimodality concept in
social semiotics, the traditional novel is basically monomodal (although,
strictly speaking, layout, black letters, paper, and margins on the page
are also different modes and meaningful semiotic resources).
A few examples from multimodal novels may demonstrate the substantial changes caused when other semiotic modes are introduced in the
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genre of the novel. In Haddons novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-Time, Christopher, the autodiegetic narrator, employs a whole
range of different semiotic modes. He regularly inserts artifacts in his
narration that he has mostly created by himself. Among them are astronomic diagrams to represent the Milky Way that he observes or to illustrate the speed of light (10, 15); street plans of his neighborhood or ground
plans and all sorts of maps (35, 87, 92, 18889); drawings of all sorts of
objects, even of cow patterns or seat patterns that looked like this (a
phrase that he often uses to introduce his drawings; 13); lists of all sorts,
including a list of some of my Behavioral Problems and timetables (46,
15556); mathematical problems, such as The Monty Hall Problem and
his own algorithm to solve it (6465); a historical photograph (88); a population growth graph and formula (101); long handwritten letters, set off
typographically in italics from Christophers own narration (10412); individual constructions of star constellations (125); and many other symbolic forms of representation.
Since the narrator is characterized by deviant forms of world apprehension and shows signs of autism, it is obvious that all of these nonverbal forms of representation not only serve to communicate his experiences and actions to the reader or to replace further detailed descriptions
but also to show Christophers individual, possibly solipsistic ways of
understanding and constructing the world. In this way, these different
semiotic formsevery single one of them and all of them combined in
the act of multimodal novelistic narrationnot only are a constitutive
part of the fictional world of the novel but also represent Christophers
thoughts, cognitive strategies, and consciousness, or his ways of worldmaking (see Goodman). This point is important to note here since it
emphasizes that the introduction of nonverbal symbolic forms in the
novel changes the ways in which the novel communicates the fictional
world to the readerfor example, by adding a few illustrative elements
and offers the reader access to dimensions of the fictional world that cannot be rendered in verbal form. Christophers often-repeated formula of
It looked like this is, therefore, also an indication of the specific affordances of nonverbal semiotic forms, a semantic, cognitive, or epistemological surplus that multiplies aspects and dimensions of the storyworld that are accessible to the reader. Therefore, the multimodality of
the novel also raises a number of narratological questions that are relatRise of the Multimodal Novel

153

ed to the narrative status, functions, and affordances of these other semiotic modes.
Another novel that has attracted a great deal of academic interest because of its conspicuous multimodality is Foers 9/11 novel, Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close.2 A closer examination of this novel emphasizes how the integration of nonverbal modes of signification and communication is intrinsically connected with the constitution of the narrative and the construction of its storyworld in terms of the individual
and social symbolic practices that are displayed. Paradigmatically, the
novel incorporates four different functions of visual images and graphic forms. The first one concerns the narration of motion. The quest for
traces of his father, who died in the 9/11 attack, and of the lock to a key
that he has inherited takes Oskar, the young autodiegetic narrator,
right across New York. However, his routes and itineraries are not exclusively narrated in verbal form. Imitating mimetically Oskars habit of collecting in his scrapbook all the important evidence and litter
(Foer 87) that he finds along the waymaps and drawings, pictures
from magazines and newspapers and the Internet, pictures Id taken
with Grandpas camera (325)the visual images in the novel are a representation not only of artifacts but also of the narrators perceptions,
memory practice, and archive. This way, the novel itself takes on the
character of the scrapbook, which is, simultaneously, a part of the storyworld that it sets up narratively.
The second function is an epistemological one. Since he suspects that
his father is one of the men that jumped from the collapsing towers,
Oskar is obsessed with the fall of objects and creatures (birds, cats, human beings) and develops a scientific interest in gravity. Thus the book
is crowded with photographs of a flock of birds [...] by the window, extremely fast and incredibly close (265), or cats that can fall from great
heights without hurting themselves, and with reflections on how falling actually feels when it is physically experienced. On the occasion of
a roller coaster ride, Oskar wonders, If what I was feeling was at all like
falling. In my head, I tried to calculate all of the forces that kept the car
on the tracks and me in the car. There was gravity, obviously. And centrifugal force. And momentum. And the friction between the wheels
and the tracks. And wind resistance, I think, or something. Dad used
to teach me physics with crayons on paper tablecloths while we waited
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for our pancakes. He would have been able to explain everything (147).
Therefore, visualizations, like the photograph of the roller coaster (89,
148), are also epistemological tools and serve as one of the narrators ways
of apprehending and reflecting upon the natural laws and physical constitution of the world, his own actual world.
The third function refers to the creation of a textual possible world,
a visionary sequence of images that transforms the cultural icon of the
falling man into a moving image of a rising man. Oskar rearranges a series of stills of the falling man in reverse order, so when one flips
through them, it looked like the falling man was floating up through
the sky. And if Id had more pictures, he wouldve flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke wouldve poured into the hole
that the plane was about to come out of. Dad wouldve left his messages
backward, until the machine was empty, and the plane wouldve flown
backward away from him, all the way to Boston (325). This visual symbolization and vision of his fathers resurrection, as well as the specific visual technique of the flipbook, are also psychological tools that help
Oskar come to terms with the 9/11 attacks and overcome the trauma of
his fathers death (see Gibbons, Multimodality 15765). In the novel, this
imaginary rise of a man is, at least to a large extent, image based, whereas the verbal text tells the story of the making of this part of the book. In
the narrative discourse, the verbal and the visual modes are employed
each according to their specific affordance; but they are also directly interrelated and complemented by the readers haptic activities of traditional page turning (verbal narration) and page flipping (visual narration) so
that the multimodality of the novel even comprises the physical mode
and the motor senses that are involved in using the book (see Gibbons,
Narrative Worlds 30311).
The fourth function concerns exactly this performative role of the
reader and the act of reading itself. As in the case of the flipbook and
other instances of evoking readers physical activities, the introduction
of other modes of representation and narration in the novel has a performative side to it, since the multimodal novel directs the readers to explore the book page and interrelate its different semiotic elements. It urges them to engage in the physical activities of moving on the page and
between pages (see Gibbons, Narrative Worlds 293303; Hallet, Visual
Images 23334) and even of flipping the pages. The flipbook is an inviRise of the Multimodal Novel

155

tation to the readers, making a call to them for traumatic cowitness and
coparticipation to which reader-response is constituted in physical engagement with the flipbook. Finally, the flipbook works to direct readers to perform curative procedures for post-traumatic stress, enabling
them to deal with the unforgettable image of the falling man so central
to the trauma of 9/11 (Gibbons, Multimodality 157). Thus, not only does
the multimodality of this novel represent the narrators symbolical reappropriation of the control over the visual images (Grolig n. pag.) that
circulate in the media and evoke the readers active role in overcoming
the 9/11 trauma, but also, at the level of genre, the readers physical act of
flipping the pages transforms the novel into a flipbook and thus constitutes a complete shift of the generic form (and mode). This convergence
of linguistic narration and the filmic mode of storytelling indicates that
extreme cultural and individual experiences such as the 9/11 attack, or
traumatic experiences of death and complete loss, cannot be rendered
and overcome adequately and solely in verbal form.
At this point, and before entering into a more detailed case study in
the next section, it can already be stated that the status of nonverbal elements in the multimodal novel is substantially different from that of additional illustrations or other paratexts. Nonverbal elements are part of
the narrative discourse since they are at the narrators disposal and displayed as the narrative unfolds, and they are artifacts that are produced
and located in the fictional world of the novel. Therefore, it is appropriate to categorize this type of multisemiotic narrative as a literary subgenre and designate it as the multimodal novel.3 Multimodality, as a literary practice of producing and reading novels and as a social semiotic
theory, seems to challenge the historical predominant role of language
in literature and in literary studies and of the written word in printed
form in particular.
The Functions of Semiotic Modes in Reif Larsens Novel
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet
In Reif Larsens novel, titled after the twelve-year-old main character,
Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet, the narrator develops an almost incredible,
ingenious skill in and obsession with drawing almost everything that he
comes across in the immediate surroundings of his home in Montana.
One day, after mistaking Spivet for an adult artist, the Smithsonian
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Institution awards the gifted protagonist a major scientific prize and invites him to Washington DC. The novel is the fictional autobiography
of this young artists life on his parents Coppertop Ranch in Montana
(chapter 1, The West), the story of his adventurous passage (chapter 2,
This Crossing) to The East (chapter 3), and his initiation into the scientific community of the Smithsonian (an experiment that finally fails).
Although the main corpus of the novel is narrated in traditional verbal
form, even a brief glance at the novel reveals that visualization is an integral dimension of the novels narrative discourse. The verbal text and a
whole range of different types of visual representationsmostly Spivets
hand-drawn maps and itineraries; scientific biological, geological, or topographical drawings; charts and statistical diagrams of all sorts; and the
reproduction of diary pages or other documentsare directly and closely interwoven (see fig. 6.1). Often, dotted arrows direct the reader from
written discourse to visual elements in the margins of the page and urge
them to interrelate the different semiotic elements, thus breaking up the
linear continuity of the verbal text and transforming the act of reading
into a hypertextual activity. Since visual representations of the world,
and cartography in particular, are also major themes of the novel and
constant objects of the narrators reflections, it soon becomes clear that
the visual mode is an important part of the narrators way of apprehending the world and an everyday practice of expressing himself and of presenting his storya whole way of life, as it were.
In the following sections, I demonstrate the ways in which this specific texture of the novel affects different levels of the narration and constitutes the true multimodality of this narrative, as being distinct from the
traditional monomodality of the novel. The examination of the multimodal quality of this narrative is bound to question the general assumption that signification in literary narratives exclusively relies on linguistic signs (symbols in Charles S. Peirces terminology). For instance, in
an essay on the relation between cartography and literature in the twentieth century, Robert Stockhammer contends that literary texts do not
directly participate in the cartographic power of localization but instead
reflect it in narrative form (323). However, this purely philological approach to literary texts and novels is at stake as soon as indexical signs,
as used in maps (see Stockhammer 32025), come into play in a traditionally word-based genre. A merely philological reading of Larsens book, as
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157

Fig. 6.1. A typical multimodal page from Reif Larsens The Selected Works
of T. S. Spivet, displaying verbal discourse, a map of the narrators hometown
Divide, a plan of his bedroom, a marginal note on his bedroom, and the sketch
of a sparrow skeleton, alluding to the narrators second name Sparrow
(Larsen 3).

much as of other multimodal novels, is not suited to grasp the different

types of signification in photographs, drawings, diagrams, ground plans,
or maps and their substantial contribution to the narrative discourse.
Plot Development and Narrative Structure
As the title of the second chapter and the topological chapter structure
of the novel suggest, spaces, distances, and boundaries are major concerns of the novel and the narrator. The book cover and the two-page
spread that precedes the first chapter show Spivets map of Montana as
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Rivers in which the Continental Divide is the only prominent feature.

It is complemented by other maps and drawings showing that his familys hometown and his parents Coppertop Ranch are situated precisely
on that geological demarcation and borderline. This is the reason why
the divide is an existential experience; why, in a sense, it can be equated with the narrators whole life; and why exploring this mysterious, invisible boundary of paramount historical and cultural importance is
a driving force in the young mans mind: The divide, oh, the divide. I
had grown up with this great border at my back, and its quiet, unerring
existence had penetrated deep into my bones and brain. The divide was
a massive, sprawling boundary not determined by politics, religion, or
war but by tectonics, granite, and gravity. How remarkable that no U.S.
president had signed this border into law, and yet its delineation had affected the expansion and formation of Americas frontier in a million
untold ways. This jagged sentinel sliced the nations watersheds into east
and west, the Atlantic and the Pacific (Larsen 6).
This divide is a paradigmatic experience and concept in many ways.
The child grows up with an awareness of being indissolubly articulated with the history and shape of the nation to which he belongs. It incorporates the historical frontier notion and westward movement, the
nations almost notorious east-west (or Atlantic-Pacific) division, and
even the gold rush as a founding myth, since the narrator goes on to explain that out west, water was gold, and where the water went, people
followed (6). Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the middle chapter
of the novel, The Crossing, is the story of the narrators reenactment
both of the American westward movement and of his familys migration but in reverse direction. Spivet thus appropriates and experiences
the collective historical route subjectively, and the cross-continental journey is also a trip into history. Thus, throughout the book, cartography is
not only a spatial but also always a temporal-historical way of structuring and ordering observations and perceptions, and events in this novel
consistently take on a topological form. Therefore, although a novel is
a tricky thing to map (36), it is clear from the first chapter that the map
as a semiotic mode is also a narrative tool, representing and structuring
events in time as much as in spaces. The narrators blue notebook contains maps covering nearly every action that had been performed on
this farm over the last four years, from diverting the irrigation ditchRise of the Multimodal Novel

159

es and mending the fences to picking and shucking the sweet corn,
mowing, sweeping, cleaning the tack to punching the goats heads out
of the fences to keep em from the coyotes. Spivet notes, I had been meticulously mapping all of these activities since I was eight (32). In the
same vein, the map of the North American continent and the events that
constitute the plot are one, a hobos journey on freight trains from east
to west (and back again). The adventurous crossing of space that is represented as a continents topography is thus transformed into a narrative (subjective) topology.
That such a journey is always also a rite de passage is emphasized by
the incident that triggers the plot: the phone call (the first three words of
the novel) from the Smithsonian Institution and the decision whether to
accept the award and travel to Washington or to be honest, admit that he
is a child, and stay in Montana. This alternative is perceived as a great
divide in the young narrators life, and he describes and maps it in the
form of a T-junction: I saw myself coming to a great T-junction. To the
left lay the plains. [...] To the right, the mountains (27, italics original).
Spivets subsequent decision to accept the invitation to Washington results in the twelve-year-olds initiation into the scientific-academic realm
so distinct from the rural, restricted world of his ranch in Montana.
Hence, the territorial crossing is simultaneously the crossing of social
and cultural borderlines through the introduction to an adult and academic world that is normally off-limits to a boy of Spivets age and origin.
Last but not least, cartographic thinking is also plot constitutive regarding an important detail that finally leads to the boys deep epistemological skepticism in terms of a sudden questioning and absence of
familiar geographical categories. During the train ride, Spivet experiences an estranging, deeply disturbing experience in a dissociation of
the trains physical movement from the universal categories of time and
space and the experience of an absolute temporal-spatial vacuum (called
the Lorentzian wormholes) in which there was no Middle. No West.
No East. No nothing (229). After his arrival in Washington, this subplot is further developed after Spivet learns that an entire secret society
is concerned with this physical mystery that shakes the fundamentum of
all laws of nature and the validity of the claims that the sciences make.
The importance of cartographic representation in terms of narration
in this novel, as a way of structuring events, and the prominent role of
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boundaries can be regarded as a convincing instance of Jurij M. Lotmans

theory of the literary text (Lotman; see Frank 6568). In his theory, the
crossing of simultaneously geographical, cultural, and epistemological borderlines by fictional agents is crucial to the constitution of the
literarinessthe aesthetic quality and tellabilityof a story. The transgression of fundamental topological boundaries in the spatial structure
of a text constitutes its sjuzhet since the crossing of a semantic borderline causes the unfolding of an event (Lotman 338, 339).4 The underlying assumption is that something is perceived as an event only if a
move of some sort is displayed that is either impossible or exceptional in
a given (nontextual) culture (see Hhn 3541). According to Lotman, cultural conditions define whether something constitutes an event or a nonevent: Within one and the same cultural schema, the same episode may
become an event or not, depending on the structural level on which it is
located (Lotman 333). It seems obvious that this fundamental role of the
crossing of boundaries applies particularly to an epic genre like the novel. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that a novel such as Larsens, whose
major concern is of a topographical naturewith the protagonists breaking away from familiar, restricted (closed) grounds into unknown (open)
territories and to distant placesmapping is not only a plot-constitutive
and narrative activity but also the dominant mode of representation and
thinking. After all, according to the narrators own words, this reasoning is the deeper psychological (and, in Lotmans terms, cultural) rationale behind mapping: I firmly believed that drafting maps erased
many of the unwarranted beliefs of a child. Something about measuring
the distance between here and there cast off the mystery of what lay between, and since I was a child with limited empirical evidence, the unknown of what might just lie between here and there could be terrifying. I, like most children, had never been there. I had barely even been
here (Larsen 32, original emphasis). Hence, in part 2 of the novel, the
maps and geographical vertical lines in the margins with the names of
towns and geographical places on them do not only visualize the young
protagonists train ride that is narrated on that page. In Lotmans sense,
they are much more: the fictional topology represents a cultural topography, fictional itineraries are also cultural routes, and the narrators individual acts of mapping are deeply rooted in cultural cartographic and
semiotic practices (also see Bhme xviiixx).
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161

Character and Identity Constitution

As has meanwhile become evident, mapping is the narrators nearly allencompassing, everyday way of looking at the world and expressing himself to such an extent that he defines himself through the art of mapping
and develops the self-image and identity of a cartographer. As is always
the case with the use of signs, the functions of the cartographic practice of signifying are manifold. First, drawing and mapping allow the
child access to a world, or to some of its aspects, that would otherwise
remain hidden: geological formations, the structure of railway hubs, patterns of actions and behaviour, insects interior organs, seismographic
representations of tremors, body and facial languages, and many more.
In the beginning, the boy is deeply fascinated with and, like his mother and great-great-grandmother, completely devoted to the sciences. He
considers them a life force that bound my mother to unsquirreling the
natural world, the discipline that housed her unexhaustible searching,
and the method of inquiry that put all of my longing and curiosity to
use crafting my little maps instead of mailing bombs to prominent capitalists (Larsen 4950). This fascination with symbolic representation
as a tool of scientific analysis and apprehension is the beginning of the
boys deeper epistemological reflections on the human minds ability to
understand and describe the world.
Second, there is a very individual, self-reflexive side to Spivets occupation (and obsession) with cartography, since he does not simply apply
culturally and scientifically standardized ways and tools of mapping but
also individualizes and subjectivizes them. Such maps as the Location
of eight North American boys, age twelve, pinching Honey Nut Cheerios
at the same exact moment in time (203) or a map of personal interest
levels based on A Log of the Secretarys Very Boring Speech (305) are
idiosyncratic and of a rather limited cultural significance. Instead, this
personalized type of mapping serves to explore and demarcate Spivets
own immediate surroundings and experiences and to determine his own
place and position in the world: There was a deep impulse ingrained in
us to take these directions, coordinates, declarations out of the mush of
our heads and actualize them in the real world. Since making my first
maps of how to shake hands with God, I had learned that the representation was not the real thing, but in a way this dissonance was what made
162

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it so good: the distance between the map and the territory allowed us
breathing room to figure out where we stood (5657). Therefore, Spivets
mapping of his own small world and the world at large is also a metaphor for the need to navigate through ones own life and seek orientation.
Spivets desire and ambition to map the world cognitively is comprehensive, is universal in the literal sense since ultimately all of his cartographic work is determined by the question of whether there was some
invisible map of the land buried inside my head (201), and is driven by
a longing for this hidden map to be true, for all of us have the atlas of
the universe preloaded into our synapses, because somehow this would
confirm the feeling I had had my entire mapping life, since I first charted how one could walk up the side of Mr. Humbug and shake hands
with God (2012). In a sense, this more or less genetic cartographic
disposition as part of the narrators identity is emphasized when Spivet
discovers that his own scientific interest and way of thinking is preceded by a long genealogical line that can be traced back to his great-greatgrandmother, one of the first female geologists in the country (143),
and to his mothers work as a coleopterist. This way, Spivet is able to localize himself in The Spivet Genealogy, a history that he, once again,
has mapped on a placemat for his father (175).
Third, by representing and symbolizing important events and experiences in his life in visual form, the narrator is able to express himself and to communicate with the reader in a manner that is most adequate to his ways of thinking and feeling. Since the reader is able to
study a whole range of artifacts produced or collected by a character
from the fictional world, the narrator is thus naturalized as a cultural agent who, like the reader, engages in a large variety of modes of signification and communication (and not just in the linguistic mode of
verbal storytelling, as in the traditional novel). Thus, multimodal narration is also a way of approximating the readers nontextual experiences with a persons expression and communication and the same processes in the fictional world: There are inevitable losses entailed by
telling nonverbal resources in words rather than showing them directly (Page 9) because multimodality is an everyday reality. It is the
experience of living; we experience everyday life in multimodal terms
through sight, sound, movement (Gibbons, Multimodality 8; also
Hallet, Multimodality).
Rise of the Multimodal Novel

163

The Epistemological and Meta-Cultural Dimension

As previously adumbrated, the boys journey from the West to the East
also represents the crossing of an epistemological borderline. At the beginning of the novel, while in Montana, Spivet is completely convinced of
the universal epistemological potential of maps. This confidence is shattered when, during the train ride, he experiences a physical and orientational vacuum (the Lorentzian wormholes), the absence of all physical
laws and geographical direction in which he used to believe. His scientific confidence subsides completely when, visiting the Smithsonian
in Washington, he is invited into the secret society of scientists called
the Megatherium Club, which resembles a religious sect (Larsen 354
74). Thus, the novel questions the core axioms of the sciencesthe belief that time and space can be calculated in physical and mathematical formulaeand skeptically regards the epistemological power that
the sciences claim to possess. Since Spivet is also familiar with historical mapping practices, such as those of George Washington, whom he
accuses of imagining all sorts of false geographies (33), Spivets skepticism also applies to his own art of mapping and questions the representational power of maps. What has been said about the representational inadequacy of language must be generalized and finally results
in a general skepticism that applies to all semiotic modes that are used
to represent, make meaning, and create reliable knowledge. Ironically
enough, the boys scientific and cartographic enthusiasm is shattered by
those who appeared to be committed to the rigorous standards of modern science and [...] advancing the collective knowledge of the human
project (236), as Spivets great-great-grandmother Emma once put it in
her address to the National Academy of Sciences.
Apart from and in addition to this epistemological critique, the novel
also reflects on the political and economic role of cartography. Spivets
own practices of mapping give evidence to the fact that maps can virtually produce realities and make the world they claim to represent
that is, produce physical and perceptual world-versions [...] with words,
numerals, pictures, sounds, or other symbols of any kind, as Nelson
Goodman puts it (9394). Thus, historically, cartographers have opened
up blank spaces to economic and political exploitation, and cartography has participated in the conquest of the land that it mapped. As Spivet
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contends: [T]hese early cartographers of the Corps of Topographical

Engineers [...] were conquerors in the most basic sense of the word, for
over the course of the nineteenth century, they slowly transferred the
vast unknown continent piece by piece into the great machine of the
known, of the mapped, of the witnessedout of the mythological realm
of empirical science. For me, this transfer was the Old West: the inevitable growth of knowledge, the resolute gridding of the great TransMississippi territory into a chart that could be placed alongside others
(16, original emphasis).
In such passages, the novel also narrates the history of cartography as
a discipline and critiques its political alliances and strategies. This way,
the cartographic mode not only is displayed as an individual and cultural
epistemological tool and signifying practice but also is reflected on and
critiqued in the verbal mode. As with so many other multimodal novels, The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet is also a meta-semiotic and metacultural narrative that reflects on the semiotic practices in which it engages and employs semiotic modes according to their specific affordances.
It displays maps and plans that are culturally and scientifically valued as
best suited to represent and create spaces and topographies; simultaneously, language and verbal discourse in the novel are used to name, reflect on, and critique the semiotic and epistemological potential and limits of the cartographic and other nonverbal signifying modes. Therefore,
in this novel and in others briefly introduced earlier in the chapter, multimodality is a method not only of representation and storytelling but also
of epistemological and meta-semiotic reflection and critique.
The Multimodal Constitution of the Fictional World,
Generic Change, and the Role of the Reader
Larsens novel is particularly suited to demonstrate and illustrate, in the
literal sense, the specific capacities and affordances of different modes
and their interplay since both its story and narrative discourse rely heavily on perceptions and experiences that are not primarily linguistically
shaped. Fictions of space, which focus on the individual and cultural perception, signification, and construction of spaces and motion (see Hallet,
Fictions), make us particularly aware of the fact that literary texts, to a
large extent, render basically physical bodily and sensory experiences.5
In the traditional novel, for more than two hundred years, all of these
Rise of the Multimodal Novel

165

sensations and ways of meaning making were translated into and (re-)
presented in linguistic form, privileging written language over all other modes of signification and communication. The construction of the
fictional world was based on words and a linear sequence of signs, or a
linguistic realm, made of names, definite descriptions, sentences, and
propositions.6 Thus, in the traditional novel, the only material manifestations and artifacts from the fictional world that were accessible to
the reader were words, sentences, and verbal discourse. In dialogues exchanged between fictional characters, letters or e-mail written by them,
and the story told by the narrator, a whole world was made from words
and diegesis as a linguistic act.
The multimodal novel is about to revise and rework this fictional way
of world making. Its narrative discourse breaks up the discursive linearity and textual coherence of the novel and transforms it into a hypertextual ensemble of different types of symbolic representations that the reader must interrelate (see Hallet, Medialisierung). It relativizes the role of
language in the processes of meaning making and communication; it destroys the (philological) illusion and simplification that stories, knowledge, and epistemologies exist in verbal form only. Reading the multimodal novel, the reader does not have to rely on the written word alone.
Rather readers are now able to access the fictional world via other sensory
channels and symbolic pathways, to study artifacts produced in the textual world by fictional characters, and to recognize a multitude of semiotic
practices with which they are familiar from their own lifeworlds (see fig.
6.2). Some of these artifacts do not even have to be explicitly contextualized or addressed in the narrative discourse; they can be presented in unmediated and uncommented form. As in the readers experiential world,
they can simply existthat is, be existents in the fictional world and
simply be theresimilar to objects in the readers world, contributing to
a more holistic construction of the storyworld, or being related or relevant
to one of the characters in the story in ways to be construed by the reader.
The multimodal novel also reminds the reader that the same phenomenona room, a journey, a bodily movement, and, as Spivet demonstrates, even a sequence of actions or eventscan be conceptualized
and represented in different ways (world versions in Goodmans terminology). For example, Spivets bedroom as represented in a floor plan
is different from a (more subjective and selective) verbal description or
166

Hallet

FWLRQDOZRUOG

reader,
reading as a multiliterate act

verbal
discourse

photograph
(reproduction)

diagram
(reproduction)

KDQGZULWWHQOHWWHU
(reproduction)

...

Fig. 6.2. The multimodal (multisemiotic) constitution of the fictional world.

from a certain graphic (or photographic) frame and perspective. The

multiplicity of semiotic modes that the multimodal novel deploys is obviously better suited than the linguistic mode to express and communicate different world versions, or ways of experiencing and looking at the
world, including very individual versus very intersubjective and scientific
ones. In the multimodal novel, it is even possible to present the specific
capacity that cartographic and other visualizations supposedly have to
represent and express the physicality and sensuality of space and motion
and simultaneously to question and critique it on a meta-semiotic level.
When, as readers, we feel that other types of representation and signification are better suited, this insight, of course, stems from the fact
that in everyday life we always engage in multiple ways of making sense
of perceptions and making meaning, and when in the mental act of creating the fictional world, we rely on familiar ways of apprehending and
making sense of the world. For instance, in order to orient themselves
on the map of the fictional world and to picture in imagination the
changing landscape along the routes followed by the characters (Ryan,
Narrative 123), readers have to construct mental models of the spaces
represented in a novel and in fictions of space in particular (see Hallet,
Fictions).
However, it is evident that the multimodal novel offers the reader a
broader range of modes as a basis for their construction of the fictional world. Since these textual worlds are of a more or less holistic nature,
comprising a connected set of objects and individuals; habitable enviRise of the Multimodal Novel

167

ronment; reasonably intelligible totality for external observers, [and] field

of activity for its members (Ryan, Narrative 91), readers will intuitively draw upon their real-world experiences, including the use of various
sensory channels; different types of signs (e.g., in Peirces terminology,
indexical, iconic, and symbolic) to understand and make meaning; and different symbolic languages to express themselves and communicate. Regarding the multimodality of cognition and of all meaning
making, the readers construction of the fictional world therefore imitates the multiplicity of modes that are involved in everyday cognitive
processes and is therefore becomes part of the experientiality of reading
narrative texts (for details, see Hallet, Multimodality).
Since the reader of the multimodal novel must be able to understand
all of the languages of which the narrative discourse consists, to integrate them in the construction of the storyworld, and to synthesize them
into a coherent novelistic meaning, reading becomes a multi-literate act.
In this act of multisemiotic reading, on the one hand, the reader must
decode and comprehend each of the semiotic modes utilized and displayed in the novel in its own right. A map or a photograph or a diagram
each employs its own codes and grammars and unfolds a meaning of its
own. On the other hand, the reader must be able to understand the semiotic interplay of all these modes and often of visual modes and verbal discourse in particular, so that reading becomes a multi-literate act
based on the capacity to integrate a range of single literacies (e.g., linguistic, visual, topographical, mathematical, and so forth) in an act of
making meaning out of the narration.
All of this effort also applies to the professional reader who approaches
the multimodal novel more systematically from the perspective of literary studies and narratology. Against the backdrop of the philological approach of the past that is so closely connected with the monomodal, linguistic form of the traditional novel, the multimodal novel makes them
aware that meaning is never produced in a single mode, not even in the
case of the monomodal literary text. Since the construction of the storyworld is an experiential act, the reader, when assigning meaning to the
words on a page, will always also draw upon other sensory perceptions,
other forms of knowledge, and other symbolic languages they have acquired (see Hallet, Multimodality). Thus even theories of a single semiotic modefor example, picture theorymust be conceptualized as mul168

Hallet

timodal, as W. J. T. Mitchell explains in an early multimodal approach

avant la lettre: The image/text problem is not just something constructed between the arts, the media, or different forms of representation, but
an unavoidable issue within the individual arts and media. In short, all
arts are composite arts (both text and image); all media are mixed media, combining different codes, discursive conventions, channels, sensory and cognitive modes (9495, original emphasis). The multimodality of reader cognition is only one of the aspects that a new, multimodal
narratology needs to consider and theorize. The multisemiotic composition of the narrative discourse is another, with discourse no longer
being defined as word based and merely linguistic but as a complex interplay of modes that needs to be analyzed and synthesized at the same
time. Drawing on the expertise in various related disciplinesfor example, picture theory, film studies, art history, geographya multimodal
narratology needs to develop a methodology that is able to analyze and
theorize the dynamic interplay of semiotic resources as they contribute
to narrative meaning (Page 8).
From a more general disciplinary point of view, the study of the multimodal novel and, in Mitchells sense, possibly of literature in general
requires the self-critical reassessment of the role of language and its relationship to other types of semiosis or other symbolic languages (see
Herman and Page 218; Ryan, Fiction). The philologies need to reflect on
their own practices of privileging the written word and of neglecting the
other forms of signification and communication that have been copresent
in the production of literary texts at any given historical time (see, e.g.,
Dnne). Therefore, the introduction of the concepts of mode and multimodality produces a challenge to hitherto settled notions of language
(Kress 79, original emphases) in more than one respect. As Kress points
out, If all modes are used to make meaning [...], then language has to
be seen in a different light: no longer as central and dominant, fully capable of expressing all meanings, but as one means among others for meaning making, each of them specific (79). In this case, in order to fully
comprehend the meaning of any literary text, be it multimodal or monomodal, its interplay with other modes of signification and communication has to be analyzed. The full meaning of the written word can never
be grasped by studying its linguistic form alone; rather, it must be studied
in connection with other semiotic modes that co-determine its meaning.
Rise of the Multimodal Novel

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Note
1. See Kress 7988; Kress and van Leeuwen 4956; Nrgaard, Multimodality 11619.
2. See, for example, Gibbons, Multimodality 12766; Grolig; Hallet, Multimodal
Novel; Hallet, Visual Images; Hoth; Nrgaard, Multimodality; Nrgaard,
Modality 7078.
3. See Hallet, Multimodal Novel; Hallet, Visual Images; Hallet, Medialisierung; Gibbons, I Contain 99; Gibbons, Narrative Worlds 287.
4. Translations from German sources by the author.
5. See Bhme xv; Hallet, Multimodality; Gibbons, I Contain Multitudes; Gibbons, Multimodality 3945.
6. See Ryan, Narrative, 91. Also see Grabes; Hallet, Multimodality; Gibbons,
Multimodality 3439.

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Literatur: Deutsche Literatur im transnationalen Kontext. Ed. Hartmut Bhme.
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Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. New York: Pantheon Books, 2000. Print.
Dnne, Jrg. Die Karte als imaginierter Ursprung: Zur frhneuzeitlichen
Konkurrenz von textueller und kartographischer Raumkonstitution in den
Amerika-Reisen Theodor de Brys. Topographien der Literatur: Deutsche
Literatur im transnationalen Kontext. Ed. Hartmut Bhme. Weimar, Germany:
Metzler, 2005. 7399. Print.
Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. London: Penguin, 2005.
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Frank, Michael C. Die Literaturwissenschaften und der spatial turn: Anstze bei
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Gibbons, Alison. I Contain Multitudes: Narrative Multimodality and the Book
that Bleeds. New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. Ed. Ruth Page.
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. Multimodality, Cognition, and Experimental Literature. London: Routledge,
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. The Narrative Worlds and Multimodal Figures of House of Leaves: find your
own words; I have no more. Intermediality and Storytelling. Ed. Marina Grishakova
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Goodman, Nelson. Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis in: Hackett, 1978. Print.
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Foers Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Komparatistik Online 2 (2007): n. pag.
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Haddon, Mark. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. London: Vintage,
2004. Print.
Hallet, Wolfgang. Fictions of Space: Zeitgenssische Romane als fiktionale Modelle
semiotischer Raumkonstitution. Raum und Bewegung in der Literatur: Die
Literaturwissenschaften und der Spatial Turn. Ed. Wolfgang Hallet and Birgit
Neumann. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2009. 81113. Print.
. Medialisierung von Genres am Beispiel des Blogs und des multimodalen
Romans: Von der Schrift-Kunst zum multimodalen Design. Medialisierung
des Erzhlens im englischsprachigen Roman der Gegenwart: Theoretischer
Bezugsrahmen, Genres und Modellinterpretationen. Ed. Ansgar Nnning and Jan
Rupp. Trier, Germany: wvt, 2011. 85116. Print.
. The Multimodal Novel: The Integration of Modes and Media in Novelistic
Narration. Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research. Ed.
Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. 12953. Print.
. The Multimodality of Cultural Experience and Mental Model
Constructions of Textual Worlds. Yearbook of Research in English and American
Literature. Vol. 24, The Literary Mind. Ed. Jrgen Schlaeger. Tbingen, Germany:
Narr, 2008. 23350. Print.
. Visual Images of Space, Movement and Mobility in the Multimodal
Novel. Moving ImagesMobile Viewers: 20th Century Visuality. Ed. Renate
Brosch. Berlin: lit Verlag, 2011. 22748. Print.
Herman, David, and Ruth Page. Coda/Prelude: Eighteen Questions for the
Study of Narrative and Multimodality. New Perspectives on Narrative and
Multimodality. Ed. Ruth Page. 21720. Print.
Hoth, Stefanie. From Individual Experience to Historical Event and Back
Again: 9/11 in Jonathan Safran Foers Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
Kulturelles Wissen und Intertextualitt: Theoriekonzeptionen und Fallstudien zu
Kontextualisierung von Literatur. Ed. Marion Gymnich, Birgit Neumann, and
Ansgar Nnning. Trier, Germany: wvt, 2006. 283300. Print.
Hhn, Peter. Event and Eventfulness. The Living Handbook of Narratology. Ed.
Peter Hhn et al. Hamburg: Hamburg University Press, 2011. Web. March 18,
2012.
Kress, Gunther. Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary
Communication. London: Routledge, 2010. Print.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and
Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001. Print.
Larsen, Reif. The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet. London: Harvill Secker, 2009. Print.
Lotman, Jurij M. Die Struktur literarischer Texte. Munich: Fink, 1972. Print.
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Mitchell, W. J. T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. Print.
Nrgaard, Nina. Multimodality and the Literary Text: Making Sense of Safran
Foers Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. New Perspectives on Narrative and
Multimodality. Ed. Ruth Page. 11526. Print.
. Modality: Commitment, Truth Value and Reality Claims across Modes in
Multimodal Novels. Journal for Literary Theory 4.1 (2010): 6380. Print.
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Ruth Page. London: Routledge, 2010. 113. Print.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Cognitive Maps and the Construction of Narrative Space.
Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences. Ed. David Herman. Stanford ca:
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172

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On Absent Carrot Sticks

The Level of Abstraction in Video Games
jesper juul

Here is a nave question: why am I not allowed to cut a carrot into sticks?
Figure 7.1 shows the action of chopping carrots in Cooking Mama (Office
Create). In this game, the player is tasked with preparing, heating, and
arranging ingredients according to the recipes that the game provides.
While we expect to perform all of these actions in a kitchen, we can also
list an infinite number of other actions that are possible in a regular
kitchen but not here. Cooking Mama lets us slice the carrots, for instance,
but not make them into sticks. In a regular kitchen, moreover, we can
decide that we do not want to cook after all and order takeout instead.
At first, these may seem like mere technological limitations, but I argue
that they derive from the fact that we are dealing with a game. Finally,
Cooking Mama offers us something that we do not regularly experience
namely, an infinite supply of replacement ingredients whenever the player burns or otherwise spoils the food (see figure 7.2).
Fiction plays a different role in different video games. Some games
are abstract (e.g., Tetris [Pajitnov and Gerasimov]), others have a thin
veneer of fiction (e.g., Angry Birds [Roviio Entertainment]), and others
feature elaborate fictional worlds with character development and plotlines (e.g., Mass Effect 2 [BioWare]). Given that games by definition allow
players to influence the course of events, thus contradicting many definitions of narratives, I find that it is preferable to discuss video games
using the broader concept of fictional worlds. Since a fictional world
may or may not contain a fixed sequence of events, the concept of fiction is a more precise tool for examining video games than is narrative.
This concept also lets us see that video games are half real, meaning that
they are an intersection of two quite different thingsreal rule-based
activities that we perform in the actual world and fictional worlds that
173

Fig. 7.1. Slicing carrots in Cooking Mama (Office Create 2006).

Fig. 7.2. Burning all the cutlets but receiving infinite replacement ingredients in
Cooking Mama (Office Create 2006).

we imagine when playing (Juul). All content in a representational game

will therefore fall into one of three categories.
1. Fiction implemented in rules: The most straightforward situation,
where the game rules are motivated by the games fiction. We expect to be able to chop a carrot, and the game lets us do it. Other
examples would include cars that can drive, birds that can fly,
and so on.
2. Fiction not implemented in game rules: When fiction suggests a
possibility that is not accessible to players. We generally expect to
be able to leave a kitchen and to cut a carrot in any way we like,
but the game Cooking Mama prevents us from doing so.
3. Rules not explained by fiction: When rules are difficult to explain
by referring to the games fictionfor example, the way Cooking
Mama gives the player unlimited replacement ingredients or the
multiple lives characters experience in arcade games.1
Figure 7.3 illustrates these categories in a Venn diagram, with some
game elements only represented in the game rules, some only represented in the fiction, and some being represented as both rules and fiction.
The left side of the diagram covers amusing examples of video game rules
that are not explained by fiction, such as Cooking Mamas infinite supply
of ingredients, the three lives of Mario in the traditional arcade game,
On Absent Carrot Sticks

175

Rules

Rules not
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Fiction

Fiction
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Cars that never run

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Three lives of Mario

$200 past go in
Monopoly
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Fiction not
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Cars that drive

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carrot sticks

Level of abstraction
Fig. 7.3. Three variations on rules and fiction in video games.

or even the source of the money given to players when they pass Go in
Monopoly. I have discussed such examples elsewhere (Juul 5).
In the following discussion I focus on the game elements on the
rightthat is, on the level of abstraction that distinguishes between the
aspects of the game fiction that are implemented in the game rules (middle overlapping section of the diagram) and the aspects that are not (right
side of the diagram). Like all nonabstract games, Cooking Mama has such
a level of abstraction. The game presents a fictional world, but the game
rules only give players access to certain parts of this world and only allow players to act on a certain level.
Game design abstraction can be illustrated through a language metaphor, since language can describe actions with different levels of detail. Going to work can be described as exactly that, going to work,
or it can be listed as a number of individual stepssuch as open front
door, walk to subway, take subway, leave subway, walk to workand it
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can be as detailed as offering a description of the concrete path to walk

or even of the individual muscles to activate. In a way, a level of abstraction is a general trait of how we perceive actions, since any action that we
take will always entail muscle movements or other biological processes
to which we have no conscious access.
The question of abstraction is parallel to (but different from) a general issue in representational art: descriptions of fictional worlds are always incomplete (Pavel 50). Since a description of a fictional world is of
finite size, while any world contains an infinite number of facts, it will
also omit an infinite number of facts that we cannot determine simply by
looking at the artwork itself. As an example, it is impossible to determine
how many children Lady Macbeth had (see Ryan, Possible Worlds).
Any representational art will describe its subject matter in smaller or
greater detail, and especially in verbal narrative, we find that this level
of detail has changed over time and between genres. For example, the
rise of the realist novel shifted the level of description compared to earlier literary forms by recounting mundane actions and objects that had
otherwise been absent in narration. The level of abstraction that I discuss
here rather refers to whether game rules implement the imagined fictional world of a game (regardless of the detail by which it was presented).
To illustrate the difference between the level of abstraction as it concerns
game rules and the level of detail in a description, consider this passage from
the 1983 text adventure game Witness (Infocom). The lines preceded by > are
actions taken by the player; the remaining lines are responses by the game.
>wait
The rain is falling heavily now.
>drink rain
(Sorry, but the program doesnt recognize the word rain.)

As can be seen, on the one hand, the description of the game world
is sufficiently detailed to include notes about the weather (and the particular quality of the rain). On the other hand, the game rules do not
grant the player access to the same weather elements. An element of
the fictional world of a game (such as rain in Witness or the tablecloth
in Cooking Mama) may or may not be implemented in the programming and rules of a video game. However, the relationship between the
On Absent Carrot Sticks

177

Fig. 7.4. Diner Dash: Flo on the Go (PlayFirst 2006).

worlds description and the level of abstraction is rather subtle: given

that users fill in the blanks about any fictional world using real-world
or fictional expectations (see Ryan, Possible Worlds), a player can make
as detailed assumptions about a cursorily described world as about one
described in excruciating detail. The gap of abstraction between what
appears to be possible in the fictional game world and what is actually possible in the game rules is therefore logically the same regardless
of how the world is presented to a player. Yet, in actuality, a player approaching a new game does not go through the process of identifying
the games level of abstraction from scratch but builds on the fact that
each game genre has its own particular level of abstraction. For example, a racing game always lets players control the steering wheel of a car,
but a city simulation generally keeps the act of driving a car beyond the
players control.
Abstraction as Design
In the cooking example, any level of detail from selecting the dish to
controlling the muscles of the hand holding the knife can be imagined;
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however, changing the level of abstraction would make Cooking Mama a

different game. For example, PlayFirsts game Diner Dash: Flo on the Go
(see figure 7.4) is about running a restaurant. Plausibly, the chef in the
game is cooking food, as is the players character in Cooking Mama, but
that action is not available to the player. Though the two games could be
conceived as being part of the same fictional world, they are completely
different games due to their differing levels of abstraction.
In effect, a game genre is a level of abstraction; a game genre is a way
of distilling a fictional world into a set of actions that the player can perform. Thus larger franchises, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter, can lead
to the creation of numerous different video games, each in their own
genre and each selecting a particular set of actions from their respective fictional universes.
Decoding Abstraction
This discussion of abstraction in Cooking Mama and Diner Dash: Flo
on the Go is a view of the two games in retrospect, from the vantage
point of having played these games for a while. But playing games is actually a process of exploring abstraction. As players, we come to new
games and especially new game genres not knowing their level of abstraction. Consider two classic real-time strategy gamesStarCraft (Blizzard
Entertainment) and Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (Ensemble
Studios) (see figure 7.5). The initial impression of these two games is
very different depending on the players experience with real-time strategy games.
The novice game player will try to make assumptions about the game
based on the games fiction. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings has units
and a setting that the player can recognize from other media: the knights
presumably have some sort of battle function, the catapult is probably
used for attacking castles, and the people on the fields probably gather
food in some way. From the setting, the player has the possibility of making assumptions about the games rule structure. But to a player unfamiliar with real-time strategy games, StarCraft (and especially the Zergs
pictured here) yields little information about the rules of the game. What
are the blue crystals? What do the critters do? Thus because they can use
the fiction to make inferences about the rules, new players will generally
find Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings more accessible.
On Absent Carrot Sticks

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Fig. 7.5. StarCraft (Blizzard Entertainment 1998) and Age of Empires II

(Ensemble Studios 1999).

The experienced game player, meanwhile, can identify the genre of

the previously mentioned games on the basis of the number of units, the
placement of resources, the birds-eye view, and the general interface layout. That is, the experienced player identifies the game as belonging to
the real-time strategy genre and uses this genre identification to make
assumptions about the rule structure of the game and the general limits within which the interaction takes place: for example, telling units
where to go but not directly controlling the path finding of the individual
unit, dealing with battles but not with making food, and accepting that
human units can be built in a few minutes. However, even the experienced game player does not know precisely where the level of abstraction lies in this specific game. Perhaps this game adds political or social
structure as a new component to the real-time strategy genre. Or perhaps, in this game, resource-gathering units become fatigued.
Abstraction of What?
In the example of Cooking Mama, I discussed to what extent its kitchen
setting is reflected in the game rules. Discussing this aspect relies on being able to compare a set of assumptions about the represented world (a
kitchen) with the possibilities that the game offers. In other words, the
experience that a game is an abstraction depends on the players identification of the particular setting of which the game is an abstraction.
Consider the game shown in figure 7.6, which features a number of
geometrical objects in different colors. Rod Humbles experimental game
The Marriage is meant to illustrate the tensions and developments in a
marriage, with the two squares representing the partners and the circles
representing the external influences upon the relationship. As Humble
notes, this portrayal is not something that players can generally intuit from seeing the game: This is a game that requires explanation. That
statement is already an admission of failure. But when working with
new art forms one has to start somewhere and its unfair to an audience
to leave a piece of work (even if its not successful) without some justification. Its probably some kind of record to have such a small game give
hundreds of words of explanation (n. pag.).
The Marriage can only be perceived as a radical abstraction of the
workings of a relationship if the player understands that the game represents a marriage at all. An element of communication is integral to repOn Absent Carrot Sticks

181

Fig. 7.6. The Marriage (Humble 2006).

resentational games; that is, the player must in some way be convinced to
see the game as a representation of something. The player can then consider the difference between his or her assumptions about the fictional
world and the actions that the game actually allows.
Virtual Reality: The Dream of Removing the Level of Abstraction
Given that video games have changed quite drastically along with improvements in computing and graphics technology, it could be tempting to assume that the level of abstraction is simply due to technological
limitations. Perhaps, given the right technology and sufficient amount
of resources, we can make a game that both photorealistically represents a kitchen and simulates it to an arbitrary level of detail. This goal
was the 1990s dream of virtual reality or of the holodeck from Star Trek
(Murray): to have a game-like experience without a level of abstraction,
or a game where anything was possible and everything was simulated to
arbitrary detail. In a hypothetical virtual reality game of Cooking Mama,
we would finally be able to make carrots sticks or even order takeout, as
we would in a real kitchen.
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This idea of a hypothetical, perfect simulation resurfaces at regular

intervals, but critical voices remain. As game designer Frank Lantz has
put it:
I think there is a widespread and largely unexamined belief in this
community that computer games are evolving towards an infinitely detailed and utterly seamless simulation. That this is their destiny. To evolve to a Star Trek Holodeck, a seamless simulation indistinguishable from real experience. [...]
Even if you could by some magic create this impossible perfect
simulation world, where would you be? Youd need to stick a game
in there. Youd need to make chess out of the simulation rocks in
your world. Its like going back to square one. I dont want to play
chess again. I want to play a game that has the dense simulation and
chess combined. This requires a light touch. This requires respect
for the gap. The gap is part of your toolset. (n. pag.)
Furthermore, the role of abstraction is not simply to make the game
different from what it represents but also to make it different for specific purposes. Chaim Gingold has compared game development to the
aesthetics of Japanese gardens: A miniature garden, like a snow globe,
model train set, or fish tank, is complete; nothing is missing, and nothing can be taken away. Clear boundaries (spatial and non-spatial), overviews, and a consistent level of abstraction work hand in hand to make
the miniature world believable, complete, and tractable for both the author and player (67).
Gingolds view presents abstraction as a way of both making a world
and of making that world readable. Indeed, abstraction can be seen as
the process by which any given subject matter is transformed into game
form. Consider fighting games. When the genre began with games such
as Street Fighter (Capcom) or Karate Champ (Data East) (see figure 7.7),
fighting games were predominantly two dimensional. At the time, this
limitation was out of technological necessity since the hardware was not
capable of representing three-dimensional worlds.
What happened once technology progressed to the point where threedimensional worlds could easily be created? Compare Karate Champ to
Super Street Fighter IV (Dimps/Capcom) shown in figure 7.8.
Even in this lavish three-dimensional game world, the fighting is
On Absent Carrot Sticks

183

Fig. 7.7. Karate Champ (Data East 1984): 2-d game in a 2-d world.

placed on a single axis, where the players are always facing directly toward or away from each other.2 This design can be motivated in several ways: the amount of possible actions is more manageable when players can only attack each other from the front or the back, it makes the
game easier to learn, and it allows the visuals to be more elaborate without making the gameplay too complex.
This example represents an abstraction that remains part of a genre
even when technological advances would allow games to remove an abstraction, in this case the absence of the third dimension. It proves that
the history of video games is not simply driven by technological advances. Rather, a genre that is well understood by game players and game de184

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Fig. 7.8. Super Street Fighter IV (Dimps/Capcom 2010): a 2-d game in a 3-d world.

signers can remain stable over time regardless of changing technological affordances.
Abstraction as Player Optimization
To play a game is to learn and to examine that games level of abstraction. Additionally, games tend to push the player toward optimizing his
or her strategy and influences the way players perceive a game. As in the
previous discussion of real-time strategy players, an experienced player may understand the game as a variation on a genre, but a player not
used to the genre may use the fiction to understand what type of actions
are possible in the game. A study of first-person shooter players (Retaux
and Rouchier) found that acquiring proficiency in a game was often accompanied with decreasing the level of detail of the graphics. It would
be possible to make the argument that this change constitutes a shift of
the players focus away from the subject matter of the gamethe game
as fictionto the rules of the game (Juul 139). In certain types of games,
this players focus probably is the standard: the novice player begins playing with a focus on the game fiction and ends up thinking only about the
game as an opportunity for optimizing strategies. However, for psychological reasons there is great variation between different games.
One of the theories of skill acquisition examines how users learn to
separate task-relevant from task-redundant information: [W]e argue
On Absent Carrot Sticks

185

that people learn, over the course of practice, to separate task-relevant

from task-redundant information and to limit their processing to relevant aspects of the task. Thus, the information processed early in skill acquisition may be qualitatively different from the information processed
late in skill acquisition. [Performance improvement] may at least partially reflect systematic reductions in the amount of information that is
processed, rather than changes in the efficiency with which task components can be performed (Haider and Frensch 306).
Any game that enforces its goals strongly or is highly competitive,
pressuring the player to improve his or her performance, will push the
player toward information reduction, or to thinking only about what is
relevant for the present task. If the fiction is not relevant for the players task, it becomes possible for the player to play the game as if it were
an abstract game.
To shift the focus away from the fiction means that when thinking about the game, we can plan strategies by considering the abstract
rules of the game exclusively and without using the knowledge that we
have from the game fiction. On the one hand, in a game like chess, it is
straightforwardly true that we can play chess without considering the societal roles of the pieces, because thinking about the societal roles of the
pieces is unlikely to be of any help when playing the game. On the other
hand, while The Sims 2 (Maxis), shown in figure 7.9, could theoretically
be played as an abstract game containing a number of entities with parameters that had to be optimized, it is hard to imagine playing the game
without thinking about it as consisting of virtual people with emotions.3
Incidentally, the way we play The Sims is explained by philosopher
Daniel Dennetts concept of the intentional stance. Dennett argues that
it is not as much that objects (humans included) have intentionality but
that it simply is more efficient to predict other peoples behavior by considering their possible intentions than by thinking of them as physical
systems or designed objects (1618). And surely, even though we know
that The Sims 2 contains no actual people but only simplistic simulations
thereof, it is much easier to play The Sims 2 by thinking of the on-screen
characters as having genuine intentions and desires than by thinking of
the game as a mathematical problem.
The other interesting aspect of The Sims is the games focus on quotidian actions such as taking out garbage. Before the launch of The Sims, it
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Fig. 7.9. The Sims 2 (Maxis 2004).

was generally assumed that household chores were too dull a subject to
become a central part of a video game. In a historical perspective, The
Sims game mirrors the appearance of the realistic novel in the later part
of the nineteenth century where, broadly speaking, novels began to describe everyday life rather than heroes and dramatic events. In the case
of video games, the change reflects not only a change of description detail (describing hitherto unmentioned aspects of human existence) but
also that the game implements everyday life in game rules such that the
player can make mundane decisions about what furniture to buy, what
food to cook, and when to take a nap. The executives at software company Maxis were famously skeptical of the concept when designer Will
Wright proposed it, but The Sims went on to become the best-selling personal computer (pc) game of all time (Donovan 25).
Finally, the players attitude toward a game cannot simply be reduced
to one of optimization; the player may possess a will to fiction, or a desire
to engage in make-believe. For example, Jonas Linderoth has documented the struggles of a guild in World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment)
whose players had decided to actively avoid any reference to their game
On Absent Carrot Sticks

187

Fig. 7.10. ssx (ea Canada 2012): Fictional space.

playing as a rule-based game. Instead, they preferred to explain every

interface element or out-of-game action (both the left and right sides of
the model in figure 7.3) by way of elaborate fictional argumentations (see
Linderoth). For example, players who had to temporarily step away from
their computers would refrain from employing the standard afk (away
from keyboard) expression, choosing rather to say that they were adjusting their armor, and so on.
Space: The Unabstractable
Although figure 7.10 may appear to show otherwise, there is no space inside the snowboarding game ssx (ea Canada). It has no snow, no snowboarder, no mountain, and no space. All of these elements are fictions,
but some of themthe spatial layout of the mountain, the snow, a somewhat abstracted version of normal laws of physicshappen to be partially
implemented in the rules of the game. Rune Klevjer has argued that concerning the issue of space, the rules-fiction distinction outlined earlier
is dangerously close to the breaking point (61). He has a case: analytically, we can explain why the space is a fiction, but at the same time it is
hardly possible to play the game without perceiving it as space. Space in
video games is special because most video games take place in a space,
because the space usually is part of the fiction of the game, and because
space is at least partially implemented in the rules (belonging to the over188

Juul

lapping middle of the diagram in figure 7.3). In the same way that The
Sims 2 could theoretically be played as an abstract game of numbers, so
could ssx. This model would involve a long series of calculations determining which different variables were close to each other in value and
so on. In practice, this version would be a very challenging game that
could certainly not be played in real time.
Humans are not general-purpose calculators. We have limited overall processing power but specialties in certain areas. It is comparatively straightforward to make a computer program perform long series of
complex mathematical calculations but much more difficult to program
a character to navigate a complex landscape in a way that appears intelligent to a human observer. Compared to computers, humans come with
amazing spatial skills. Thus problems that can be solved in a spatial way
tend to be solved spatially by humans; therefore, it is hard for a player to
abstract from and, hence, to disregard the space in a game.
The Game in There
The level of abstraction determines how we can reason about the world
as players. In a story about a hungry person in a kitchen, we would reason that he or she would have other ways to acquire food than by cooking in the kitchen according to fixed recipes. In a cooking game, we accept that cooking provides the only source of food. Here, we can see the
difference between regular stories and games: In a story, the limit of a
characters possible actions is our understanding of the fictional world,
by whatever logic it follows. For a game, the limit of a characters possible action is the level of abstraction; that is, the available actions are always a subset of the actions that would be available with hypothetical
full access to a fictional world.
This factor is not as strange as it would first appear but pertains to the
fact that video games are games. In a well-known formulation, Bernard
Suits defines games as being about attaining a goal using the less efficient means available. For example, the high jump would be easier if
we could use a ladder, a race would be easier if we could cut across the
tracks, and soccer would be easier if we could pick up the ball. To stick
a game in there, as Lantz was quoted saying, is fundamentally about
reducing the number of possibilities available to the player in order to
make a game (n. pag.).4 From this perspective, the level of abstraction
On Absent Carrot Sticks

189

comes from the root of video games in non-digital games. The rules that
decide what actions are or are not allowed on a soccer or baseball field
can be considered a type of abstraction, one that makes certain parts
of the physical world off-limits in a game. The soccer ball, for instance,
can only be handled in certain ways; the baseball player actually runs
on a one-dimensional line with a few discrete bases. The magic circle of
games (Huizinga) that delineates what is inside from what is outside the
game, then, not only is a visible spatial boundary but also can be seen
as dividing every single object, action, and player into components that
are either part of the game or not part of the game.
Just as real-world soccer removes the ability of field players to touch
the ball with their hands, Super Street Fighter IV removes many of the
details of actual fighting. Furthermore, though a video game version of
soccer is an abstraction of the physical game of soccer, players of video
game soccer rarely complain about the inability of field players to capture the ball with their hands. Since soccer identifies this contact as an
off-limit action, we do not expect to find it implemented in video game
form. This previous argument also explains why we do not find it strange
that Cooking Mama prevents us from ordering takeout. In a game about
cooking, we accept that our actions are limited to those directly relevant
to cooking. Likewise, we accept that we are not free to cut carrots any
way we want, since this subsection of the game is specifically about slicing carrots as fast as we can.
We interpret game events through the lens of game conventions. When
we experience a game event that is not explained by the game fiction, we
always have two other strategies available: we can explain the event as
stemming from the necessities of the rules of the game (see left side of figure 7.3), or we can assume that some fictionally reasonable action is not
available to us owing to the level of abstraction (see right side of figure 7.3).5
The seemingly strange limitations that prevent video game players
from making perfectly logical actions, such as cutting carrots into sticks
or ordering takeout, are exactly the limitations that make video games
part of the field of games. The level of abstraction at first may seem a byproduct of technological limitations, but it is in actuality a central component of game genres and player expectations. Video games are a double movementgiving us access to new fictional worlds but then giving
us only limited options in those worlds in order to make a game.
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Notes
An earlier version of this article was presented as A Certain Level of Abstraction
at the DiGRA conference, Tokyo, September 2007. Thanks to Marie-Laure Ryan,
Jan-Nol Thon, and Nanna Debois Buhl for comments.
1. It is of course possible to create a fictional motivation for any game rule, but the
point is that we often do not. Players do not explain the three lives of Mario in
Donkey Kong (Nintendo) by claiming Mario was reincarnated but by referring
to the rules; otherwise, the game would be too hard (Juul 4).
2. It can be argued that three-dimensional (3-d) fighting games lack certain types
of ranged attacks, such as fireballs, because they would have appeared incongruous given that 3-d games often rotate the two-dimensional axes that the
opponents play on and ranged attacks would have to move magically with this
rotating axis (otherwise it would be possible to sidestep such an attack). I am
indebted to Charles Pratt for this observation.
3. A player with autism would perceive The Sims as a different type of game, since
the player would lack an existing set of skills for processing people interaction
and emotional issues.
4. A similar argument is made by Salen and Zimmerman (138).
5. This argument that games allow for interpretation strategies that refer to the
medium itself has many parallels in the theory of narrative. For example,
Monika Fluderniks concept of narrativization describes a reading strategy that
naturalizes texts by recourse to narrative schemata (25).

Works Cited
BioWare. Mass Effect 2. Electronic Arts, 2010. Xbox 360.
Blizzard Entertainment. StarCraft. Blizzard Entertainment, 1998. Windows.
. World of Warcraft. Blizzard Entertainment, 2004. Windows.
Capcom. Street Fighter. Capcom, 1987. Arcade.
Data East. Karate Champ. Data East, 1984. Arcade.
Dennett, Daniel C. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge ma: mit Press, 1989. Print.
Dimps/Capcom. Super Street Fighter IV. Capcom, 2010. Xbox 360.
Donovan, Tristan. Replay: The History of Video Games. Sussex, UK: Yellow Ant
Media, 2010. Print.
ea Canada. ssx. ea Sports, 2012. Xbox 360.
Ensemble Studios. Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings. Microsoft, 1999. Windows.
Fludernik, Monika. Towards a Natural Narratology. London: Routledge, 1996.
Print.
Gingold, Chaim. Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons: Games, Spaces, & Worlds.
MS thesis Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003. Web. May 2, 2012.
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Haider, Hilde, and Peter A. Frensch. The Role of Information Reduction in Skill
Acquisition. Cognitive Psychology 30.3 (1996): 30437. Print.
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Roy
Publishers, 1950. Print.
Humble, Rod. The Marriage. Rod Humble, 2006. Windows.
Infocom. Witness. Infocom, 1983. dos.
Juul, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds.
Cambridge ma: mit Press, 2005. Print.
Klevjer, Rune. What Is the Avatar? Fiction and Embodiment in Avatar-based
Singleplayer Computer Games. Diss. University of Bergen, 2006. Web. May 2, 2012.
Lantz, Frank. Game Developers Rant II. San Jose ca, 2006. Web. May 2, 2012.
Linderoth, Jonas. The Struggle for Immersion: Narrative Re-Framing in World of
Warcraft. Proceedings of the [Player] Conference. Ed. Olli Leino, Gordon Calleja, and
Sarah Mosberg Iversen. it University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008. 24274. Print.
Maxis. The Sims 2. Electronic Arts, 2004. Windows.
Murray, Janet H. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
Cambridge ma: mit Press, 1998. Print.
Nintendo. Donkey Kong. Nintendo, 1981. Arcade.
Office Create. Cooking Mama. Taito, 2006. Nintendo ds.
Pajitnov, Alexey, and Vadim Gerasimov. Tetris. 1985. dos.
Pavel, Thomas G. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge ma: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Print.
PlayFirst. Diner Dash: Flo on the Go. PlayFirst, 2006. Windows.
Retaux, Xavier, and Juliette Rouchier. Realism vs Surprise and Coherence:
Different Aspect of Playability in Computer Games. Playing with the Future
Conference. Manchester, UK, April 57, 2002. Web. May 1, 2012.
Rovio Entertainment. Angry Birds. Chillingo, 2009. iOS.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Print.
. Possible Worlds in Recent Literary Theory. Style 26.4 (1992): 52853. Print.
Salen, Katie, and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals.
Cambridge ma: mit Press, 2004. Print.
Suits, Bernard Herbert. The Grasshopper: Games, Life, and Utopia. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1978. Print.

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Film + Comics
A Multimodal Romance in the Age of
Transmedial Convergence
jared gardner

Born together at the end of the nineteenth century, comics and film were
both multimodal narrative forms from the start, telling stories using
multiple, interdependent semiotic chains of text and image. Together,
comics and film became the first two new narrative media of the twentieth century, and in developing their conventions they borrowed heavily from each other even as they also explored their own unique affordances (see Gardner ch. 1). The significance of this development in the
history of narrative media in the last century cannot be overestimated.
After all, while narrative, in one sense at least, has always been multimodal (see Grishakova and Ryan 4), it is hard to find sustained or culturally significant examples in the West that do not inevitably make one
semiotic chain subservient to the other. An illustrated book is not multimodal, after all, in the same way that a sequential comic is; the pictures
almost always serve to illustrate the text, which is primarily responsible
for the work of telling the story. While our reading experience of Oliver
Twist would certainly be different without the twenty-four illustrations
that accompanied the original serialization of the novel, that they are not
essential is evidenced by the fact that few modern editions include all of
the original illustrations and many include none at all. And although increasingly we see examples in the twenty-first century of what Wolfgang
Hallet has usefully described as the multimodal novel (129)a novel in
which it is the systematic and recurrent integration of non-verbal and
non-narrative elements in novelistic narration that makes the difference
(130)this phenomenon has largely developed in the last twenty years in
response to a dramatically changing media ecology. Thus I would argue
that we risk misreading both the significance of the phenomenon of the
multimodal novel of the twenty-first century and the new multimodal
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narrative forms of the twentieth centuryfilm and comicsif, as Ruth

Page recently called for, we start reconceptualiz[ing] all narrative communication as multimodal (5).
Of course, multimodal narratives existed long before comics and film,
with opera and theater being the most obvious predecessors for those encountering film and comics for the first time in the late nineteenth century. But here, too, the differences are worth considering. Theater and
opera were experienced livethat is, with performers enacting the story in the narrative present and live in the sense of happening in real
time. And neither opera nor theater were available yet for mechanical
reproductionfor interactions such as looping, rewinding, and rereading
that would be opened up by translating the experience of the multimodal performance out of the live space of the theater into a multimodal text.
18901910: Birth of Modern Multimodal Media
An important part of what defined the unique experience of the
twentieth centurys new multimodal media is that early comics and
film both told their multimodal narratives in complex transmedial
environmentsnewspapers, illustrated magazines, vaudeville houses,
and nickelodeonswhere paratexts multiplied in profusion, creating
almost infinitely varied and unruly encounters with the text. From the
early Kinetoscope through the heyday of the nickelodeon, early film
was experienced in environments that included vaudeville routines, live
music, narration, and sound effects, not to mention the lively commentary of the audience itself. As the saying goes, silent film was never silent, but it was also never simply film, just as the early sequential comics were never simply comics.
The early narrative strips were experienced across the serial disruptions of the weekly (and later daily) newspaper, with its own cacophony
of tragic headlines, advertisements, and data. And as was the case with
early film, the audience itself contributed vitally to the transmedial experience of the early comic, with people often reading and commenting
upon the comics in public spaces and collaborative environments. With
the rise of the daily continuity strip in the late 1910s and 1920s, comics
creators began inviting readers to collaborate on the stories, offering contests and often deliberately blurring the boundaries between front-page
news and graphic narrative.
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In both cases, at least initially, multimodal narrative was inseparable from transmedial reading experiences and environments; so it is
not surprising that within a very short time both film and comics began
to discover possibilities for complex transmedial storytelling. They began with the first adaptations of comics by film in 1903 and continued
through the rise of the serials of the early teens. They told their stories
across both newspaper and film and actively invited audiences to participate in shaping the story and, in so doing, to literally become part of
the story (see Stamp 10253).
These first multimodal narrative forms were inherently interactive in
ways we often imagine are unique to new media forms of the twenty-first
century, being not only inviting but often responding to active participation from readers. In addition, these narratives placed heavy demands
on readers to cross the inevitably contentious relationship between the
semiotic systems of text and imageto which, in the case of comics, we
must also add the cognitive demands inherent to the elliptical form, requiring the reader to actively fill in the missing action from one panel to the next.
Of course this last formal feature of comics would prove significant in
the different developments of these first modern multimodal narrative
forms in the United States. Even as early film was exploring the transmedial possibilities for the future development of the form with the early serial dramas, the film moguls, recently settling in their new base in
Hollywood, were largely consolidating their approach to narrative with
the codification of what we now refer to as the classical Hollywood system. As David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson have effectively demonstrated, the style-less style of the classical Hollywood cinema worked to obscure the mechanics of film. A generation of filmgoers
accustomed to playing with their own moving-picture devices or turning the crank on a Kinestoscope at the local arcade was, through the disciplines of the classical narrative system, effectively replaced by passive
spectators fixed to their privileged knot-hole in the fence (Bordwell,
Staiger, and Thompson 215). New guidelines handed down from the industry explicitly worked to diminish many of the features of the earliest cinema that defined it as an explicitly multimodal form, erasing the
sense of the film as a text to be actively engaged, played with, looped,
and edited in favor of, as one screenwriting manual from 1919 put it,
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making the audience forget the mechanical end of picture production

(Lescarboura 110).
Whereas the early films up through the rise of the serial queen films
of the early teens relished in the materiality of filmand in the spaces for interaction opened up by this new mediaclassical Hollywood
would devote itself after 1916 to obscuring the apparatus and creating an
illusion of events unfolding before the viewer in real time. Now, however, the audience no longer viewed the real time of the theatrical performance (where the fact that it is a performance is always rendered visible by the proscenium arch) but what the new screenwriting manuals
termed the illusion of realitya cinematic realism whose preservation came to trump all other considerations in the production of classical Hollywood cinema. New spectatorial disciplinesincluding the rise
of the picture palace in the 1920s with new disciplines of promptness, silence, and darknessalso were enforced to preserve this illusion of reality and the transformation of the cacophony of the nickelodeon party into an evenings entertainment.
Leaving aside the twenty-first-century failed experiment of motion
comics (which I touch on later), comics never had the possibility of developing the tools and techniques that would allow them (as Hollywood
cinema would do after 1920) to efface the gaps inherent in the form or
to obscure the mechanics of its own making. Such acts of suture have
never been available to comics; so as film became more committed to
obscuring its status as a multimodal text (a goal aided by the addition of
a new modesynchronous soundafter 1927), comics remained bound
to its formal gutters and its status as a marked text, one whose materiality does not magically dissolve in the experience of reading. If we often
experience a film or novel as a kind of virtual reality in which we forget
that we were, in fact, watching a movie or reading a book, such forgetting is never truly possible when reading a comic.
All of which is to say that when film began pursuing this path
exploiting certain of its affordances the better to discipline consumers
and rationalize productionthese two multimodal narrative media began to pursue dramatically different directions that would largely define their history during the remainder of the century. In the twentyfirst century, however, this pattern has begun to change. Comics and film
are seemingly engaging each other as they have not in a century, and as
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both media are seeking out creative and financial futures in new digital
platforms, there is reason to believe that this collaboration is much more
than a passing Hollywood trend. Of course, where a century ago comics
and film went their separate ways largely as relative equals, this renewed
engagement takes place on very unequal terms with regard to corporate
structure, audience, and cultural prominence. Therefore, while there are
reasons to see the potential for a new investment in multimodal storytelling and the active and unpredictable readership it encourages, there
is also good reason to question what it is Hollywood really wants from
comics and their readers this time around.
19972013: Hollywood and the dvd
In the digital age Hollywood undeniably has been coming to terms with
an audience that increasingly seeks out precisely that which the classical system had long worked to make invisible: the mechanics of film and
the seams through which active readers might grab hold of a film text
and make of it something other than the platonic ideal of the theatrical
screening that remains, even today, what most in the industry and the
academy have in mind when they refer to a film. Cinema is now in the
final stages of its most significant transformation in almost a century,
as it enters the final chapter of the digitization of every aspect of its production, distribution, and exhibition. For some time now theatrical ticket sales have accounted for a fraction of the overall revenue generated by
films, which are increasingly consumed on small screens and in digital
(dvd and streaming) formats. Nonetheless, both the mainstream media
and academic film criticism continue to speak of film and theaters,
even as film and theaters have increasingly little to do with the experience or business of cinema.
At least insofar as the press is concerned, the decision to ignore the
changing realities of film production and exhibition in favor of an anachronistic fantasy of the theatrical spectator is no simple case of nostalgia or institutional laziness. For the industry and its attendant media,
as Edward Jay Epstein has argued, the relentless attention to theatrical
box office receipts obscures the byzantine economy of digital cinema for
which the theatrical run largely serves as a loss leader. More important
for our purposes, this continued privileging of the theatrical audience
allows for the preservation of the ideal of the passive, focused spectator
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in the dark and distracts attention from the far messier realities of narrative film increasingly being consumed on mobile screens and with controls that allow the spectator to rewind, slow, remix, and break the film
down frame by frame as never before.
Paradoxically, even as Hollywood continued to trumpet box office
records as if they were meaningful data regarding audience preferences
or behaviors, the same industry began exploiting what would prove its
most important profit center in the last decade: the dvd. And here, in
addition to affording a means through which audiences could explore
the unprecedented power accorded them by the remote control in the
digital age, many dvds come loaded with paratexts claiming to provide
behind-the-scenes insights into the mechanics of the film, including directors commentaries, deleted scenes, bloopers, and making of featurettes (see Gray). Studios created official fan websites for fans to discuss and debate aspects of both the film and its viral marketing, held
contests, planted Easter eggs in dvds, and even in some cases provided clues to hidden meanings outside the film itself on websites and other digital environments. All of these efforts make film in the first decade
of the twenty-first century look similar to film a century ago when the
serial dramas of 1912 were playing out in newspapers and magazines, as
well as on the screen, and when audiences were invited to contribute solutions to the mysteries and rescues from the perils that awaited the heroines at every turn.
When we couple the new tools film viewers have at their disposal
through the dvd player with the explosion of paratexts that seem to push
against the very dictates that the industry began enforcing a century ago
in its drive to discipline an active and unruly audience and mystify the
mode of production itself, it might appear that in the digital age film is
finally, belatedly, returning to that fork in the road to meet an increasingly engaged, interactive, and media-savvy audience. Certainly many academic critics greeted the early years of the new century in these terms.
Writing in 2000, for example, Catherine Russell envisioned a construction of spectatorship that challenges the unitary, transcendental spectator position of the classical period, returning us to the possibilities
of early cinema when spectatorship was more fluid, unstable, and heterogeneous (553). And a few years later, Graeme Harper saw in the dvd
the culmination of thirty years of change in styles of film production
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and consumption originating with the immediate new punk technologies of videotape and cd-rom (100).
Today, however, it is harder to find scholars who see in dvd technology and its attendant paratexts the kind of punk or utopian possibilities for a transformed and liberated spectator that Russell and Harper
quite rightly imaged as possible a decade earlier. More typical is the
cautious skepticism that Jo T. Smith articulated in a 2008 essay, dvd
Technologies and the Art of Control, in which she argues that the
promise of greater consumer control and interactivity [...] contributes
to an ever-expanding regime of capture and immersion that paradoxically enables the media producer to assert a firmer control over the audiovisual market (141). More recently, Jonathan Gray has convincingly
argued that far from destabilizing traditional notions of authority and
the master text, [...] new media such as webpages, dvds, and podcasts
surround texts with a paratextual veneer of artistry, aura, and authority that seeks to reclaim the authority and value of the auteur for media texts that never had access to such cultural capital before the advent
of digital media (115).
The growing skepticism on the part of film critics and historians about
the more utopian possibilities of film in the digital age is fairly easy to understand. A technology that transformed completely the ways in which
we teach and study the medium has, in the course of the last decade, become intimately familiar, making it impossible not to attend to the ways
in which the new freedoms of the medium came hand in glove with new
restrictions and a loss of freedoms enjoyed for a generation on vhsfor
example, regional codes and encryption and the inability to skip past
trailers or warnings from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi) and
Interpol about the consequences of violating those codes. Further, the
growing sameness (and smallness) of the paratexts over recent years in
particular has made more visible how little is truly being given away and
how carefully circumscribed are the freedoms active viewers are being
invited to explore. What results is a growing sense of malaise on the part
of film scholars regarding a technology once perceived as potentially democratizing and liberating.
It is a malaise felt equally, if not more so, by consumers, whose appetite for dvds has diminished in the last couple of years after an unprecedented saturation during the first decade of the new millennium. Since
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2010 dvd sales have dropped precipitously as audiences have moved to

streaming and digital downloads for their films, choosing the convenience, portability, and often reduced pricing of renting or owning
film content through their pc and mobile devices.
Publicly, Hollywood is wringing its hands over this sudden change of
fortunes in what was, briefly, its life raft in the face of declining theatrical
attendance. But there is good reason to believe that the rapidly declining
appetite for dvds is not a coincidence. One need only compare the kinds
of dvd extras, Easter eggs, and other interactive features available on early dvd films such as Memento (2000) and Se7en (1995) to what is found
on the average release in 2012 to see that the studios of their own volition
have been quietly and deliberately killing the golden goose. After trading the vhs for the dvd a little more than a decade agoa trade most
willingly made both for increased picture and sound quality and for the
improved freedoms to zoom, rewind, remix, and rewatchaudiences
are now voluntarily trading the dvd for streaming video services. Not
only do these services severely limit most of the freedoms and powers
of the dvd but also, in the vast majority of cases, they completely eliminate the paratextsfrom Easter eggs to deleted scenesthat promised
to make the cinematic experience a more interactive one.
I pause at length over this story of the media transformation unfolding as I write in early 2012 because it gets to the heart of a larger issue that
should be central to any attempts to theorize the future of multimodal storytelling in a media ecology dominated by a handful of horizontally integrated multinational media conglomerates. Too often in transmedial narratology we are inclined to theorize a future independent of
capital and its controls, but the story of the dvd and its imminent demise should have taught us an important lesson: fostering the kinds of
futures for texts or their readers we like to imagine might arise organically with the emergence of new technologies is not in Hollywoods longterm interest. Even the word Hollywood is an obfuscationlike the fetishization of box office receipts and, now, dvd salesone that conjures
up images of palm-lined streets, bustling bungalows, and movie sets in
Los Angeles. Hollywood in the twenty-first century, of course, is Viacom
(Paramount), TimeWarner (Warner Bros.), News Corp. (20th Century
Fox), Disney (Disney, Pixar), and ge (Universal). The Big Five major
studios of classical Hollywood are still there, but each is now one enti200

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ty in a larger multinational corporation that also owns cable networks,

newspapers, publishing houses, Internet service providers, sports teams,
and theme parks. The vertical integration of the classical Hollywood system, whereby the five major studios controlled all aspects of production,
distribution, and exhibition, has been replaced by the horizontal integration of the twenty-first-century media conglomerates. Now the Big Six
(which includes cbs, the only one without major film holdings) have an
almost monopolistic control (roughly 90 percent by most calculations)
over the commercial content that is supplied to our increasingly mobile
screens (Epstein, Big Picture 82; Campbell, Martin, and Fabos 213). The
culture of convergence with all of its utopian possibilities is ultimately
inseparable from the economics of transmedial corporate integration.
Any fantasies we might have about the possibilities of multimodal storytelling in the twenty-first century must always be attenuated by the realities of transmedial corporations that are determined to shape storytelling environments to serve their horizontal monopolies.
Film + Comics in the Twenty-First Century:
A Spectacular Reunion
Returning to the recent re-convergence of comics and film since 1997 and
the birth of digital cinema only, the most starry-eyed observers still believe that cinema as we know it is over, that Hollywood producers will
now be sharing power with an increasingly savvy and engaged audience,
that new voices outside of the Big Six will gain meaningful access to the
means of production and distribution, or, to put it more bluntly, that
digital cinema will increase in quality or the diversity of the films being commercially distributed. Remarkably little, however, has changed.
The vast majority of Hollywood productions are still targeting the same
young adult audience with safe, modular products designed primarily
to optimize the possibilities for merchandizing, franchising, and synergizing across the media companys television networks, publishing houses, and theme parks. As we have seen, the explosion of transmedial storytelling is intimately related to the horizontal monopolies that seek to
maximize the profitability of a property by exploiting it via multiple
media producers within the corporation.
Of course, if the majority of the ways in which the digital revolution
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ble to audiences (and increasingly so as digital cameras catch up with the

quality of the best traditional equipment), one major exception to such
claims comes in the area loosely defined as special or visual effects.
After all, one of the most important reasons why comics and live-action
film went in separate directions a century ago was because comics, in addition to engaging an active and unpredictable reader, increasingly came
to feature unruly and plastic bodies in dynamic flights of fancy that were
impossible to duplicate on film in 1910 or even 1980. While animation
developed as a viable narrative form in its own right after 1910 (and it is
telling that the cartoonist Winsor McCay served as a pioneer in the new
field of animation as well), photographic film began to focus more strenuously on cinematic realism, leaving to comics and cartoons what Scott
Bukatman has recently termed the poetics of slumberland (Poetics).
In the twenty-first century this long-standing distinction between animation and live-action cinema has increasingly eroded. Digital compositing allows animation and photography to blend seamlessly in a digital environment, such that in both special effectsdependent films (such
as Transformers) and indie films (such as A Scanner Darkly) the distinction between live action and animation often feels as anachronistic as the obsession with box office. Similar technologies allow actors bodies to be digitally augmented, transformed, or disguised behind
layers of digital animation (Sin City, 300); and advanced motion-capture
technology now complicates the category of actor itself, as in the digital performances of Andy Serkis in the Lord of the Rings trilogy or Rise
of the Planet of the Apes.
It is not a coincidence that several of the films I have mentioned are
based on comics. The digital environment that makes it possible for
photographic and animated elements seamlessly to share the frame has
brought Hollywood back to the plastic, fantastic possibilities of the comic book body that initially proved impossible to imitate with twentiethcentury cinematic technologies. As Bukatman points out, superhero
comics were the ideal subject matter for the new digital effects: The
cinematic superhero is a function of special effects, effects of programming[...]. [T]he terrain of special effects is a human body that will become uncontainable, a body that not only expresses emotion and physical
power (not to mention emotion and physical trauma), but also the morehuman-than-human capabilities of digital imaging (Secret Identity
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Politics 115, original emphasis). Like Shilo T. McClean and Angela

Ndalianis, Bukatman is challenging the critical assumption that special
effects solely serve to foreground the wonders of the cinematic technology and not any narrative function. But as his previous point suggests,
in the end the turn of Hollywood to the comic book superhero has less
to do with inherent interest in comics or their readers than in the superhero as the ideal vehicle to display the industrial and technical powers
of twenty-first-century digital effects. There is no reason to reinvent the
wheel, when the studio already owns the superhero.
After all, as we consider the future for comics in the digital age, we
must remember that the two major comic book companies in the United
States are now wholly owned subsidiaries of two of the Big Six: Marvel
Comics is owned by Disney, dc by TimeWarner. And these comic book
companies, which have long served as the Big Two within mainstream
comics, are now relatively minor entities within larger media corporations. Making the relationship between comics and film still more unequal, the readership of comics is shrinking markedly in the twentyfirst century even as comics-related stories and characters are visible on
screen as never before. A best-selling comic book today might hope to
sell 100,000 issues, while a movie such as Spider-Man (2002) sold more
than five million tickets in Germany alone. Despite the flattering attentions bestowed on once-marginal events such as the annual Comic-Con
in San Diego, Hollywood is not counting on comic book readers. Instead,
Hollywood now understands that comic book readers ways of reading
ways of reading that the film industry had worked to foreclose a century
agoare increasingly vital to multimodal storytelling in the twenty-first
century and to Hollywoods economic vitality in a horizontally integrated transmedial corporate environment. Comic book readers had been exploring the pleasures of multimodal serial storytelling for generations,
following their favorite characters and narratives across installments,
media, and industries. If Hollywood could translate those investments
from a relatively small community of active comic book readers to a mass
audience, then its success in the twenty-first century was guaranteed. So
what better place to start, especially now that movies can finally convincingly make superheroes fly, transform, hurl cars, and catch airplanes?
Yet in 2012, we can confidently say that Hollywoods love affair with
Comic-Cons heavily invested and critically engaged fans is cooling fast.
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At the convention in 2011, Big Hollywood, which had dominated the convention floor and the largest ballrooms for most of the previous decade,
was a greatly diminished presence (Barnes and Cieply). This shift occurred not because comics-related movies are no longer part of the studios long-term plans; in fact, 201314 will likely see the largest number
of comics-related films yet. Instead, what the declining interest in comic
book readers suggests is that, as with the imminent demise of the dvd,
Hollywoods period of bending knee to the active reader (whether film
geek or comic geek) is coming to an end. The comic book communities
and reading practices that appeared so promising a laboratory for big
media to learn about the appetites and demands of twenty-first-century
readers now increasingly seem an unnecessary expense as new and more
tightly controlled networks of digital distribution and exhibition begin
to take shape. If the comic book readers in 2000 represented the ideal
transmedial consumers that the horizontally integrated conglomerates
desperately desire (inclined to seek out collectibles, merchandizing, and
extensions of the narrative world across various media), then their reading practices (as with those encouraged by the first wave of dvds) have
proved precisely what Hollywood does not wish to encourage. In the very
short time since I wrote the conclusion for Projections (in 2011), where I
described an ongoing interest by Hollywood in the kind of multimodal
reading practices that comics have long encouraged, Hollywood has apparently begun to move on.
As Frederic Wertham pointed out with considerable anxiety in 1954,
comic book readers are deliberate and even obsessive readers, despite
the assumption on the part of many that comics are ephemeral works
that are quickly consumed and just as easily discarded. For Wertham, of
course, this obsessiveness was a very real cause for concern. He saw comics and the reading practices they encouragedrereading and hoarding
treasured comics, plus the mediums demand for the reader to fill in the
action between the panelsas inherently corrupting, leading the reader away from healthy, orderly reading practices. Thus, Werthams comic book readers in Seduction of the Innocent are inveterate (26, 54, 87),
rabid (8), experienced (81)and in profound danger.
While media history has largely expunged Wertham from its pages
for his association with the anti-comics hysteria that swept through the
United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, in many ways he deserves
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more respect than we have traditionally accorded himif only for being among the first to recognize how very serious and engaging was the
work of comics reading. In his last published book, almost two decades
after Seduction, Wertham turned his attention to fanzines, or amateur
publications by active and engaged readers of comics and science fiction.
And here his assessment was almost entirely positive, acknowledging,
as he did not in his earlier work, the ways in which the active, rabid
reading practices that such multimodal forms as comic books and science fiction pulps encouraged might lead to other outcomes than those
that he had feared most in Seduction.
The outcome Wertham celebrated in The World of Fanzines was one
in which readers created their own networks and their own publications while repurposing the materials of mass culture that he, as well
as his fellow German expatriate Theodor Adorno, had long regarded
with deep suspicion. The fanzines, Wertham noted admiringly in 1973,
function outside the market and outside the profit motive. Publishing
them is not a business but an avocation (74). The thin line between
the avocation he celebrated in one book and the extreme avidity
(Seduction 50) he worried over in the other notwithstanding, clearly
Wertham recognized early on that there was something unique about
comics reading and the investments it generated, for better and for
worse. And these investments did not work in neat consort with the
efficiencies and demands of the consumer marketplace. Comic book
readers were slow readers and compulsive rereaders, and the form
had from its earliest days encouraged active agents who were inclined
to become producers themselves.
dvds and the cinema of complexity that was produced to engage active film readers eager for a more participatory, interactive, and multimodal storyworld exploration emerged simultaneously with Hollywoods
newfound interest in readers of comics (and comics properties). The ultimate convergence of dvd and comics storytelling in cinema might be
epitomized by the 2009 adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
1986 comic Watchmen. Directed by Zach Snyder with art design by Alex
McDowell (one of the most influential digital designers of the present
generation), the film successfully adapted what was long thought to be
an unadaptable story due to the previously unrealizable effects required
to tell the complex tale. In the theaters, the film was only moderately
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successful in terms of box office, but Snyder and his collaborators clearly saw the dvd viewer as their intended audience. As McDowell said, I
think if this film works it will be because you have to see it ten times to
really get all of that layering (Alex McDowell n. pag.). Several dvd editions offered to the viewer different archives through which to engage in
this rigorous archeology, remote control in hand. The feature film on the
five-disc The Ultimate Cut alone runs more than three and a half hours.
Watched ten times, as McDowell insisted that it was meant to be if all
the clues and details were to be uncovered, and for the price of one (admittedly pricey) dvd purchase, fans had enough material to keep them
occupied for days or weeks (see Gardner 18889).
However, Watchmen and its Ultimate Cut dvd will likely serve as objects of film history to which we turn to mark the end of Hollywoods
flirtation with comic book readers and their reading practices. After all,
if the dvd of Memento invited viewers to rewatch the film in chronological order and the original website supporting the film offered dossiers and files that promised new insights into the films unanswered
questions, in the end all that the studios would have accomplished was
to encourage an engaged, avid reader to rewatch the film compulsively in search of clues or Easter eggs they might have missed the first time.
In educating audiences in how to be close and engaged readers and rereaders of film textshow to be, that is, like comics readersHollywood
realized that instead of golden eggs, this goose was laying only endless Easter eggs that led readers to find new pleasures in rewatching the
dvd they had already purchased. The cinema of complexity requires a
spectator with skills at breaking down films frame by frame, and to acquire these skills takes discipline and timetime that might otherwise
be spent watching (and buying) new films.
These lessons arent new. But for a little more than a decade, visions
of synergy made the new horizontally integrated media monopolies forget the lessons their vertically integrated predecessors learned in the
early years of the industry. Thus the dvd gives way to streaming, and
Hollywood no longer goes courting the approval and insights of comic book readers at Comic-Con. After all, the industry never needed the
readers, and now it seems determined to leave those reading practices
in the margins of the cultural and academic ghettoes, where close reading, rereading, and avid reading are valued and rewarded.
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Comics in the Digital Age

Finally we turn to the fate of comics as they follow film and other media
forms across the digital rubicon. In many ways comics have remained the
narrative medium most resistant to digitization, and in 2013 it remains
unclear what form comics will take on our screens in the years to come
even as other media are developing complex and relatively stable digital formats and economies. There are, of course, many reasons for this
resistance to digital translation. First, comics are always a marked and
opaque text in a way that, for example, a novel or a classical Hollywood
film is not; the comic page always bears the evidence of the physical labor of what Philippe Marion calls the graphiateur on the page (Baetens
149). Further, being a profoundly elliptical form whose parts never hide
the spaces and gaps in between, comics are also, as Hillary Chute puts it,
a profoundly site specific narrative form in a way very different from
novels and films (10).
And so we have something of a paradox: the form that is best positioned to teach us how to explore the multimodal narratives of the
twenty-first century is also the most resistant to the media convergence
within which twenty-first-century storytelling will take place. Moreover,
the vast majority of attempts to wrestle with the problem have thus far
assumed the problem lies with comics and that the solution, therefore,
is to make comics more like film or video games.
That the Hollywood corporations who own the most popular comic
book properties have sponsored many of these wrong steps is not surprising. For example, in the buildup to the release of the Watchman
movie, in 2008 Warner Bros. released a motion comics version of the
original comic series, and Marvel Entertainment has developed a whole
motion comics department, primarily dedicated to tie-ins to its motion
picture productions. The idea behind motion comics is to set into movement the still figures, to provide voices, and to fill in the action between
the frames. What results, inevitably, looks highly similar to early animation and very little like comics.
The other early model for the translation of comics into digital formats also came from Marvel and has since been adopted by other digital
platforms with an eye toward making the comics translate to the smaller
screens of iPhones, PlayStationPortables (psps), and netbooksthat is,
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a guided view in which the reading program essentially breaks down

the comics page into a series of sequential slides, directing the viewers
eye in precisely the disciplined way that the traditional comic page by
its nature resists. Stripped of our Dr. Manhattanlike power to see past,
present, and future in a single glance, we are also denied our ability to
let the eye move across panelsback and forth in timeand to focus
on the layout of the two-page spread, the page unit, and the single panel according to our own choosing.
In both of these examples, the shift to digital platforms reduces rather than augments the readers agency and avenues for interaction with
the form. Even leaving aside issues of digital rights management and
the lack of cross-platform mobility in all of the early commercial digital comics experiments, there is already reason enough to be wary of
the fate of comics in an age of digital convergence. Henry Jenkinss ideal of convergence culture envisions a move from medium-specific
content toward content that flows across multiple media channels, toward the increased interdependence of communications systems, toward multiple ways of accessing content, and toward ever more complex relationships between top-down corporate media and bottom-up
participatory culture (243). But as we have seen when the media converging are controlled by the Big Six, there is also the very real likelihood that old corporate structures will continue to dictate terms to
those at the bottom who might have the best possibility of exploiting
the affordances of digital media.
That comics have always remained a gutter form, both formally and
culturally, arguably makes them best suited to help map out the narrative possibilities for the new century. But it will require a fairly dramatic
change in attitude from their creators, who have long been wedded to the
printed page and, especially in the last two generations, to the codex
the graphic novel.
Without more creators and readers exploring the ways in which new
media convergence can expand rather than reduce the multimodal potentialities for comics, the example of comics provides a cautionary tale
to more utopian visions of the future of new media convergence. Media
matter, but so does the institutional history of those media. If we see
multimodality everywhere, we miss how rare and important the unique
century-long experimentation with multimodal narrative by comic book
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creators and readers truly is. And if we assume new media convergence
is necessarily a force for the emancipation of narrative and its readers,
we have only to look to the story of film and comics in the early years
of new media convergence to see good reason for a more skeptical and
cautious approach.

Works Cited
Alex McDowell Talks Watchmen. WatchmenComicMovie.Com. February 19, 2009.
Web. May 26, 2012.
Baetens, Jan. Revealing Traces: A New Theory of Graphic Enunciation. The
Language of Comics: Word and Image. Ed. Robin Varnum and Christina T.
Gibbons. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. 14555. Print.
Barnes, Brooks, and Michael Cieply. Movie Studios Reassess Comic-Con. New
York Times June 12, 2011. Print.
Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood
Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1985. Print.
Bukatman, Scott. The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating
Spirit. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Print.
. Secret Identity Politics. The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero. Ed.
Angela Ndalianis. New York: Routledge, 2009. 10925. Print.
Campbell, Richard, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos. Media and Culture: An
Introduction to Mass Communication. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2012. Print.
Chute, Hillary L. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Print.
Epstein, Edward Jay. The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood. New York:
Random House, 2006. Print.
. The Hollywood Economist 2.0: The Hidden Financial Reality behind the
Movies. New York: Melville House, 2012. Print.
Gardner, Jared. Projections: Comics and the History of 21st-Century Storytelling. Palo
Alto ca: Stanford University Press, 2012. Print.
Gray, Jonathan Alan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media
Paratexts. New York: New York University Press, 2010. Print.
Grishakova, Marina, and Marie-Laure Ryan. Editors Preface. Intermediality and
Storytelling. Ed. Marina Grishakova and Marie-Laure Ryan. Berlin: De Gruyter,
2010. 17. Print.
Hallet, Wolfgang. The Multimodal Novel: The Integration of Modes and Media in
Novelistic Narration. Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research.
Ed. Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009. 12953. Print.
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Harper, Graeme. dvd and the New Cinema of Complexity. New Punk Cinema.
Ed. Nicholas Rombes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. 89101.
Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
New York University Press, 2006. Print.
Lescarboura, Austin Celestin. Behind the Motion-Picture Screen. New York:
Scientific American, 1919. Print.
McClean, Shilo T. Digital Storytelling: The Narrative Power of Visual Effects in Film.
Cambridge ma: mit Press, 2008. Print.
Ndalianis, Angela. Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment.
Cambridge ma: mit Press, 2004. Print.
Page, Ruth. Introduction. New Perspectives on Narrative and Multimodality. Ed.
Ruth Page. New York: Routledge, 2010. 113. Print.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Dir. Rupert Wyatt. 20th Century Fox, 2011. Film.
Russell, Catherine. Parallax Historiography: The Flneuse as Cyberfeminist.
A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema. Ed. Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra.
Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2002. 55270. Print.
A Scanner Darkly. Dir. Richard Linklater. Warner Bros., 2006. Film.
Smith, Jo T. dvd Technologies and the Art of Control. Film and Television after
dvd. Ed. James Bennett and Tom Brown. New York: Routledge, 2008. 12948.
Print.
Stamp, Shelley. Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the
Nickelodeon. Princeton nj: Princeton University Press, 2000. Print.
300. Dir. Zach Snyder. Warner Bros., 2007. Film.
Transformers. Dir. Michael Bay. DreamWorks skg, 2007. Film.
Watchmen. Dir. Zach Snyder. Warner Bros., 2009. Film.
Wertham, Frederic. Seduction of the Innocent. New York: Rinehart, 1954. Print.
. The World of Fanzines: A Special Form of Communication. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press, 1973. Print.

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Tell It Like a Game

Scott Pilgrim and Performative Media Rivalry
jeff thoss

Todays media landscape, perhaps more than any past one, is marked
by a fierce rivalry among media. In their classic study Remediation:
Understanding New Media, Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin argue
that [o]ur culture conceives of each medium or constellation of media as it responds to, redeploys, competes with, and reforms other media (55). For them, changes to the media landscape are the result of an
ongoing process of media refashioning and revisingin short, remediating one another. Coming from a different angle, Uta Degner and
Norbert Christian Wolf observe that the current rise of intermedial artistic practices does not reflect a culture of media equality but is rather a
sign of an accelerated dynamics of competition (Indiz fr eine akzelerierte Konkurrenzdynamik; 11).1 The title of their book, Der neue Wettstreit
der Knste: Legitimation und Dominanz im Zeichen der Intermedialitt,
hence proclaims a new paragone, one that takes place under the banner of intermediality. This chapter, too, explores the relationship between remediation or intermediality and media rivalry.2 My case study,
Edgar Wrights screen adaptation of Bryan Lee OMalleys Scott Pilgrim
comic books, promises ample material in this regard. Adaptations from
one narrative medium to another arguably constitute a privileged site
of competition, seeing that different media are charged with telling the
same story and representing the same storyworld. Even though, as Linda
Hutcheon remarks, our culture harbors a disdain for adaptations, deeming them inferior because they are derivative (24), no adaptation aims
at inferiority; rather, any adaptation vies with the work it adapts, tacitly claiming that it is at least equal if not superior to its source material.
Yet in addition to adaptation, a further dimension to media rivalry enters the equation in the case of Scott Pilgrim: OMalleys comic book con211

tains numerous references to video games, and these mentions are carried overand, as we shall see, amplifiedin the film. This crossover is
where a type of media rivalry, or at least a perspective on media rivalry,
emerges that has hitherto been neglected in media studies.
One might ask, what motivates media to compete with other media?
For Bolter and Grusin, remediation has a double logic as media tend toward both immediacy (eradicating the signs of mediation) and hypermediacy (foregrounding the signs of mediation) in their attempts to appropriate each others techniques and forms, to improve upon them, and to
outdo one another. However, the pole of immediacy is clearly preferred:
remediation is acted out in the name of transparency (49), while hypermediacy is relegated to an awareness of mediation whose repression almost guarantee[s] its repeated return (37). The two scholars here
seem to allude to a way of thinking about media that is deeply embedded in Western culture: where media compete, they primarily do so
based on their ability to efface themselves and purely serve that which
they represent. One only needs to think of the Renaissances paragone,
in which painters pointed to the greater illusionistic quality of their art
while sculptors highlighted the haptic and three-dimensional property
of theirs, or Gotthold Ephraim Lessings strict division of verbal and visual art in his treatise Laokoon. According to Lessing, literature is a
temporal art form suited to the representation of actions, while painting
and sculpture are spatial art forms suited to the representation of objects
(it being understood that the poet who tries to represent objects will always fall short of the painter). In a similar vein, albeit on a less theoretical note, the notorious discussions of whether particular novels are better than their film adaptations frequently involve generalized assertions
about medial adequacyfor instance, that narrative fiction is more apt
to relate characters thoughts than film, which must resort to the unfilmic technique of voice-over for this purpose. In all these cases media are evaluated according to their mimetic potential, and media rivalry hence takes place in the name of mimesis.
Media rivalry as it is present between the comic book and film versions of Scott Pilgrim does not fit into this pattern. In order to characterize it, I use the distinction between mimesis and performance as it has
notably been elaborated by Wolfgang Iser. For Iser, representation, while
understood as mimesis, always already contains a performative (that is,
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productive) element, but a blank remains for as long as what is represented is considered to exist independently of the representation or,
in other words, for as long as the representation is thought of purely in
terms of an imitation of something that is already there (284). However,
the more the actual process of mimesis comes under scrutiny, the more
questionable it becomes as to whether one is really dealing with the imitation of an object and not with producing the illusion of an object
(287). As the focus shifts from the former to the latter, representation reveals its performative nature. An example is found in Andreas Mahlers
discussion of Parnassianism and its practice of transposition dart, or
transposition into another medium. In Parnassian poems about art
objects, Mahler states, mimesis turns into performance in the course
of being raised to a higher power (potenziert; 36). Literature imitates
sculpture or painting not to achieve a better effet de rel (besseren effet
de rel) but to achieve a media-conscious production of art out of art
(medienbewusste Produktion von Kunst aus Kunst; 37). Art no longer revolves around the representation of something (apparently) extant (die
Reprsentation von [vermeintlich] Existentem) but around a presentation that creates this extant something in the first place (eine dieses
Existente allererst erschaffende Prsentation; 37). This fact opens up the
possibility for a different media rivalry, one where, unlike in the cases
described in the previous paragraph, media do not dispute which one
of them can best imitate a given object and efface itself in the process of
doing so; instead, they contest which one can best produce the illusion
of an object and in the process draw attention to its creative processes.
In other words, such a performative media rivalry centers on discursive
acts of presentation rather than the quality of the representation. In the
case of Scott Pilgrim, the comic book and film vie with one another not
over which medium can tell the story best (render the storyworld in a
more detailed, immersive, and plausible fashion) but over which medium
can best tell it like a video game. The two media do not claim to be the
more adequate, transparent medium for the particular story at hand, but
both try to put forward a more opaque, more inadequate use of their
respective medium in their attempts to create the illusion and simulate
the presence of a third medium. In the following paragraphs, I trace this
rivalry between comics and film via video games first on the level of story and then on the level of discourse.
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Scott Pilgrim the comic book was published in six volumes between
2004 and 2010. It contains a storyworld that could initially be identified
as realistic. The setting is contemporary Toronto, and the characters are
a group of friends in their early twenties, foremost among them slacker
Scott Pilgrim. Much of the narratives beginning focuses on Scotts relationship with other people and his rock band. Up to this point, Scott
Pilgrim could pass for a typical slice-of-life indie comic book in the tradition of Daniel Clowess Ghost World (199397) or Peter Bagges Hate
(199098). Yet the narrative shifts with the introduction of Scotts new
love interest Ramona Flowers. As Scott soon finds out, he must defeat
Ramonas seven evil ex-boyfriends one by one to win her heart. From
that moment, the story is propelled forward by Scotts battles against the
evil exes, some of whom are surrounded by henchmen and each of whom
he faces in hand-to-hand combat. The plot here resembles, and arguably draws upon, that of two video game genresthe beat-em-up game
(best exemplified through the Double Dragon or Final Fight series) and
the fighting game (best exemplified through the Street Fighter or Mortal
Kombat series). In the beat-em-up genre, player characters fight against
waves of enemies, who are typically gang members and their leaders, in
so-called boss battles. Common objectives include the rescue of a kidnapped girlfriend. In the fighting game, player characters confront a series of opponents one-on-one in elaborate melee combat. If it were only
for this semblance in their overall structure, one could doubt whether the
comic book really simulates video games here and does not rather follow
an archetypal narrative patterna hero overcomes a series of obstacles
to win his beloveds heartthat is not bound to any particular medium.
However, in the context of the numerous other elements that OMalleys
comic appropriates from video games, the beat-em-up and fighting game
plot structure is a first indication that Scott Pilgrims storyworld is a video game storyworld. Using Irina Rajewskys model of intermedial relations, we could say that the medium of comics is contaminated (kontaminiert) by that of video games here and that Scott Pilgrims narrative
continually constitutes itself [...] in relation to [a different medial] system (konstituiert sich [...] durchgehend in Relation zu [einem fremdmedialen] Bezugssystem; Intermedialitt 16162). When reading the comic
book, readers are persistently made aware of its video game characteristics and, in a way, receive a second medium within the first one; yet, as
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Fig. 9.1. Scott collects an extra life that pops up in the storyworld (from Scott
Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness).

is always the case with such intermedial references, it exists as a conceptual rather than physical presence (Wolf 254).3
If we turn from the macro level to the micro level of the narrative, we
discover a myriad of storyworld details borrowed from video games
that link OMalleys book to this medium in general and the genres of
beat-em-up and fighting games in particular. As in those games, characters in Scott Pilgrim perform special moves or combos and have designated weak points (to use the appropriate jargon). Whenever Scott
defeats one of his foes, they drop coins or other video game items. Of
particular note is the 1-up (the extra life) that the protagonist picks
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up in the course of his adventure (see figure 9.1). In the concluding battle against the last evil ex-boyfriend, Scott is killed, but with the 1-up he
has collected, he is revived and able to continue the fight. Purest video
game logic is at work here, just as it is when the hero discovers a save
point in the storyworld earlier on and decides to save his progress before entering the next fight. Similar to a character in a role-playing game,
Scott also gains experience points (exp) and once in a while moves up
a level. Through the use of such video game conventions and tropes, the
game-like nature of the comic books storyworld is exhibited and underlined time and again. Although Scott Pilgrim contains numerous references to specificand occasionally obscuretitles, many of the video game references possess a generic quality or make use of well-known
clichs so that these intermedial references should be obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of games. Although we conventionally conceive of storyworlds as being divorced from mediathat is, as a
represented that exists independently of the representationthe video
game references turn Scott Pilgrims storyworld into a medially marked
one. Elements such as extra lives and save points stand out in the storyworld because they typically do not appear and probably also do not
make much sense in comic books or, for that matter, any media other
than games. As with the case of the beat-em-up and fighting game narrative pattern, these details make readers aware of their origin in a different medium and contaminate the comic book storyworld.
As with the Parnassian transpositions dart, in imitating video games
the comic is calling attention to and exhibiting its own creative means
rather than striving for a more perfect mimesis. Each video game reference foregrounds the intermedial gap (Rajewsky, Intermedialitt 70)
between comics and video games and thus the media themselves, distracting from a straightforward immersion into the storyworld rather than enhancing it. For Sean Ahern, cartoonist OMalley use[s] video game culture as a way to tell a story of romance and self-realization
(n. pag.), yet I would argue that it is the other way around: the relatively trite and uninspired story of romance and self-realization is used as a
mere foil for OMalley to demonstrate his arguably novel and ingenious
skills in impersonating games. Scott Pilgrim turns its storyworld into a
video game storyworld in order to show how comics can performatively simulate the presence of a different medium.
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On the surface, Scott Pilgrim the film (officially titled Scott Pilgrim
vs. the World), whose release in 2010 coincided with that of the comics final volume, does what nearly every screen adaptation does with
its source material: it condenses it. OMalleys comic contains numerous flashbacks, side plots, and secondary characters, but Edgar Wrights
film all but does away with them. What it retains and almost exclusively focuses on are Scotts battles against the evil exes. This streamlining
of the story, however, cannot simply be explained by the fact that a sixvolume comic book is transformed into a two-hour film. Even more so
than the book, the film is about a series of fights, which intensify the video game quality of the narrative. Neither the beat-em-up nor the fighting game is a story-driven genre; at best, the battles might be bookended by cut-scenes containing bits of dialogue or narration, with whatever
minimal plot is there serving as but a frame for the games actual raison
dtre, the fights. The film tightens up the story and becomes more similar to this type of game, thus outdoing the comic book.
This process is where performative media rivalry comes into play, for
the condensation is obviously not made at the service of the storyworld;
on the contrary, there is considerably less of it in the film. If readers are
looking for a richer, more lifelike storyworld where characters have some
psychological depth and human interactions are portrayed in a somewhat
realistic fashion, then they are better served by the comic book. In other words, if one evaluates the screen adaptation from a mimetic point of
view, its cuts to the narrative only serve to devaluate its appeal. It is only
when one adopts a performative perspective and accepts that what the
film tries to do is to present a better simulation of video games that the
decision to reduce the comic books slice-of-life passages to a minimum
makes sense. The strategy of condensing the narrative and focusing on
the battles is, then, not a necessary by-product of transposing a narrative from one medium into another but a means of heightening the illusion that we are dealing with a different medium altogether.
Attempts on behalf of Scott Pilgrim the film to surpass the game-like
quality of Scott Pilgrim the comic book can also be found on what I previously called the micro level of the storyworld. On the whole, Wright
includes most of the elements present in the source material, such as the
video game items and the fighting mechanics. While he drops some storyworld detailsthe save point, for instancehe adds others, such as
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making the characters flash when they are hurt. The extra life Scott collects is of note, though, since it is put to a rather different use in the film.
In the book, Scott is immediately brought back to life after using the 1up and continues the final battle where he was interrupted. In the film,
however, the 1-up takes Scott back to an earlier point and allows him to
relive the last part of the story and to correct his previous mistakes. This
different use of the 1-up can be viewed as a further claim on the films
behalf to provide a better simulation of video games and perfectly illustrates how the film emulatesemulation in its double sense of both imitating and improvingthe comic book. OMalley maintains a linear
narrative that is medially inconspicuous and, if one ignores experimental cases, perhaps also medium appropriate. Wrights film, meanwhile,
embraces the ergodic nature (to use Espen Aarseths term) of games and
tries to incorporate the trial-and-error procedure and the act of replaying that are ubiquitous in this medium. The 1-up is turned from an object that merely allows two aspects of video gamesthat is, the existence
of collectible items and the ability of the player character to be revived
and continue the gameto contaminate the storyworld into an object
that transfers additional video game characteristics, such as the ability to replay (parts of) the game, to the storyworld. Thus it has a much
more profound effect on the storyworld, effectively creating a completely new section of the story.
Both the comic book and the film version of Scott Pilgrim manage to
weave a great many video game references into their respective plot structures and storyworlds. However, as has already been hinted at, the story may not actually be Scott Pilgrims main point of interest but serves
rather as a pretext for the comic and the film to display their performative prowess in simulating games. To better characterize this state of affairs, I draw upon Rainer Warnings theory of comedy. For Warning,
this genre contains a syntagmatic axis on which the plot is located and
a paradigmatic axis on which the various comic situations are located.
Comedies privilege the paradigmatic over the syntagmatic axis insofar as
the plot (the Fryean move from order to disorder and back) is secondary
and is merely an enabling structure (Ermglichungsstruktur; 291) that
allows for comic situations to occur. Simply put, we do not see or read
comedies because we are interested in the development and outcome of
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uations. In the case of Scott Pilgrim, the story could also be described as
just an enabling structure for something else, albeit for intermedial references instead of comic situations. Scott Pilgrims syntagmatic axis of
its romantic-comedy plotboy meets girl, boy encounters obstacles, boy
overcomes obstacles, boy gets girlcan hardly be deemed the reason of
its success. Yet it is a perfect foil for the exploitation of video game references on the paradigmatic axis, where the performative rivalry between
book and film, then, also takes place. Because the course of the narrative
is already clear and perhaps even irrelevant, the creators and the audience can focus their attention on the repeated simulation of games and
on which medium can do it better. This point becomes even more evident when we turn our attention from the level of story to the level of
discourse. After all, the more common way to simulate another medium
is not content based but consists in trying to borrow its formal features,
or its means of representation and narration that set it apart from other media, and results in what Andreas Bhn terms intermedial quotations of forms (intermediale Formzitat[e]; 7).
In terms of the overall presentation of the narrative, the comic books
six volumes easily correspond to six video game levels, at the end of
which player characters typically engage in a boss battle. In each of the
volumes 1 through 5, Scott faces one of the evil exes; in volume 6, he faces two. While the film is not divided into distinct units, it nevertheless
achieves a similar effect of presenting itself as a game by displaying the
words Level 7 across the screen, in a clear visual nod to the (head-up)
displays of video games, when Scott is on his way to meet the final evil
ex-boyfriend. As a matter of fact, text and graphic displays styled after
games abound in both the comic book and film version of Scott Pilgrim.
Thus Bryan Lee OMalley uses a heavily pixelated font reminiscent of the
ones used on 8-bit game systems such as the Nintendo Entertainment
System (nes) or Sega Master System for numerous captions. Since the
video game genres that Scott Pilgrims storyworld is modeled on are
mostly associated with the 8-bit and 16-bit erasthat is, roughly the
mid-1980s to the mid-1990sit follows that the comic book also adopts
the look of this period. Text and graphic displays range from relatively
inconspicuous indications of time and place in which only the distinctive
font points to a different medium to game-specific displays when Scott
gains experience points+500 exp (vol. 4, 62)or levels up: Level up!
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219

Guts +2, Hearts + 3, Smarts +1, Will +1. Scott earned the Power of Love
(vol. 4, 18081). The books also use Game Over and Continue? displays (vol. 5, 152, 167) and a variety of status bars, most notably a pee bar
that depletes when Scott visits the bathroom (vol. 4, 79; see figure 9.2),
just as health bars do in fighting games when characters are wounded.
Anyone who has ever played an (older) video gameand certainly members of Scott Pilgrims target audience havelikely has encountered such
elements, though, again, they possess such a highly generic and clichd
quality that their medial origin should be immediately recognizable. As
with the extra life or coins appearing in its storyworld, the comic book
here is trying to pass itself off as a video game.
Of course, one could read mimetically the displays, which are obviously not part of the storyworld, and argue that the level-up display exists to
trace character development or that the Game Over and Continue?
displays and status bars exist to metaphorically comment upon or reflect
the internal state of a character. Yet why would the comic book have recourse to another medium and not use its own mediums affordances in
that case? Is Scott Pilgrim the tale of someone who has played too many
games and as a result experiences life as a game, hence prompting this
unusual manner of presentation? It certainly does not read as though it
were this kind of narrative, with the protagonist having little psychological depth and there being no indication that he is in some way delusional. Rather than attempt to look through these discursive elements
and search for some mimetic (re)solution, readers are perhaps asked to
look at them, stay on the medial surface, and rejoice in the ways that the
comic book is producing the illusion of a different medium for them.
Edgar Wrights film emulatesonce again, in both senses of the
wordthe discursive intermedial references (or intermedial quotations
of forms) present in its source material.4 In a way, it is better suited to a
simulation of games than comics are in terms of its media affordances.
Simply put, comic books share the elements of image and text with video games, but film also shares moving images and sound with them. In
Rajewskys terms (Intermedialitt 161), film can actualizethat is, directly usethe medium of video games where their resources are congruent (play the exact same sound effect, for instance), whereas comic
books must more often translate that medium and evoke video games
resources through their own methods when they do not have the same
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Fig. 9.2. A pee bar is displayed as Scott visits the bathroom (from Scott
Pilgrim Gets It Together).

means at their disposal (for example, by rendering the animated depletion of a status bar through a sequence of still images). This difference
might raise the suspicion that the rivalry between the two versions of
Scott Pilgrim has already been decided in advance, with the comic book
never being able to catch up with films more advanced technological possibilities; however, it is not so. Wrights film claims to surpass OMalleys
book regardless of media affordances. To begin with, discursive intermedial references occur at a much higher frequency in the film version.
This higher frequency may be linked to the condensation of the narrative, but as Erin Hollis remarks, the film go[es] out of [its] way to include video game references (n. pag.), even adding them to scenes in
which the comic book refrains from doing so. Elsewhere, the film version initially seems to behave as expected. It makes use of sound effects
and music suggestive of those used in 8- or 16-bit games, some of which
are actually directly lifted from well-known game franchises such as The
Legend of Zelda or Sonic the Hedgehog. It also offers many of the comic books textual and graphic displaysa level-up display, a score counter, a status bar, and a continue countdownin fully animated versions.
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Fig. 9.3. The film emulates the comic books use of the pee bar (from Scott
Pilgrim vs. the World).

One might get the impression that the screen adaptation faces no
competition and simulates video games better simply because it is closer
to them as a medium. Yet the film continually exaggerates, doing more
than necessary if it were after a straightforward transposition of the
books intermedial references. The beeps and blips on the soundtrack,
for example, are omnipresent. For the continue display, Edgar Wright
chooses to update the comics blocky low-resolution font to a glossier
high-definition type, evoking a later, more technologically advanced
stage in video game history. Occasionally, it appears as if the film were
out to prove that it can not only do games better than comics can but
also do games better than games do themselves. The films pee bar (see
figure 9.3) is not simply animated, it is hyperanimated, containing threedimensional movement and radiant lighting effects that, owing to hardware constraints, are unlikely to be found in its 8- or 16-bit models.
These surplus flourishes demonstrate the films intent to outdo the book,
notwithstanding medial resources; further, they are evidently not motivated by a mimetic desire. If one chose to read the comic as the tale
of a delusional gamer, one might be inclined to argue that the film ups
the ante on the discursive video game elements to make us experience
Scotts affliction in a more visceral, more immediate fashion; yet I have
already pointed out the implausibility of such an interpretation (Scott
is, in fact, an even shallower character in the film). If OMalley invites
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Fig. 9.4. A panel is designed to resemble a frame from a fighting game (from
Scott Pilgrims Precious Little Life).

us to marvel at his simulation of video games, then Wright invites us to

marvel even more so at his.
In some passages in the Scott Pilgrim books, rather than introducing
a foreign medial element into what could otherwise pass for a regular
comic book panel, the whole panel is designed to resemble a video game
screen. In panels from Scotts first and third encounter with one of the
evil ex-boyfriends, the composition of the image, as well as the placement of the characters and the text, recalls that of fighting games.5 In the
first example, Scott is seen standing in the center of the panel with his
right arm outstretched after punching his opponent, who is flying head
over heels through the air. A text display in the lower right-hand corner
indicates that the hero has performed a reversal, the term for a type of
counterattack in fighting games (see figure 9.4). The whole image resembles a freeze frame from Street Fighter II (1991) or a similar game. In the
second example, Scott and his enemy face each other, with Scott on the
left-hand side of the panel and his enemy on the right, while a large text
display between the two musicians reads Bass Battle: Fight! The text
is both a pun on the ubiquitous boss battles in video games and a reference to using such displays to cue players in fighting games. Again, the
panel looks as if a player had pressed pause on the gamepad.
If one examines the corresponding scenes in Wrights film, one can
discern that the adaptation pursues its familiar strategy of emulation, improving upon the video game aspects not only through its use of sound
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223

Fig. 9.5. The film emulating the comic books fighting-game panel (from Scott
Pilgrim vs. the World).

and moving images but crucially also through exaggeration and multiplication. The film meticulously re-creates the panel from Scotts first fight
(see figure 9.5), yet its visual opulencethe flickering lights and colors, the
extreme but smooth slow motionfar exceeds the jerky movements and
reduced color palette of such 16-bit titles as Street Fighter II. Once again
the film rivals both the comic book and video games themselves. The
panel from the third battle appears in slightly modified form, with Scott
and his opponent facing each other but with the letters v and s placed between them (another common text display in fighting games). In fact, all
seven battles in the film feature this versus shot, which goes to show
how Wright increases video game references on the discourse level. The
fight against ex number 4 arguably even contains the filmic equivalent of
a prefight screen, a further fighting-game convention where portraits of
the two opponents are shown side by side before the fight proper begins.
What I have said previously about the discursive devices also applies to
the ones mentioned here, and perhaps even more so, since it is no longer
a single video game element that intrudes upon an otherwise medially
inconspicuous panel or shot. In basing the design of whole shots or panels on game screens, both versions of Scott Pilgrim demonstrate an even
less transparent use of their respective medium, one that seems bent on
obfuscating or denying the medium that is materially present while conversely engaging in the most exhaustive simulation of video games yet.
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Still, the most complete disguise of one medium as another can probably be found at the close of Scott Pilgrim the film in a sequence that
basically has no parallel in the book. Here the film combines all of the
previously encountered discursive elements and adds some more to create a visual and aural video game overkill. Specifically, it models parts
of Scotts fight against the final boss, the seventh evil ex-boyfriend, on
a fictitious game called Ninja Ninja Revolution that Scott and his thengirlfriend Chau played in an arcade at the beginning of the film. Ninja
Ninja Revolution (the title alludes to the popular Dance Dance Revolution
series) is a hybrid dancing-fighting game where Scott and Chau have to
perform coordinated dance-fight moves on a platform that controls the
action on-screen. In the sequence where they play the game, the film
alternates between shots of them on the platform and close-ups of the
screen, which features such salient display elements as health bars and
different texts: Get Ready!! Here We Go! Good and Combo. A
voice also announces these lines, and the games sound effectsvarious
blips, punches, and groansare heard on the soundtrack. The closing
battle could be said to take place in the mode of Ninja Ninja Revolution.
While the characters act out a choreographed fight scene, the film appropriates the games presentation style for its own discourse level, copying the health bar, text displays, announcer, and sound effects (see figure 9.6). Where the earlier scene is about a video game, this one tries to
be a video game. And since the game has been prominently featured in
the storyworld, no viewer will miss that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has
now morphed into Ninja Ninja Revolution. Slightly before the climactic
battle, a text display even reads 2 Player Mode, creating an additional
link to the fictional game and suggesting an interactivity that is otherwise largely absent from both the film and the comic book.
This whole sequence represents the most blatant violation of the concepts of medial transparency and adequacy. If one tries to read it mimetically, one will not gather much from it for just as Scott has battled and
defeated the other evil exes, he battles and defeats the seventh evil exboyfriend. At times, it is even difficult to know what exactly is going on
in the storyworld given the abundant display elements that, so to speak,
obstruct our view. The segment embodies the privileging of the paradigmatic over the syntagmatic axis and the triumph of discourse over story, or of style over substance, if you will. Spectators do not watch Scott
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225

Fig. 9.6. Video gamestyle displays swamp the frame during Scotts final battle
(from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World).

Pilgrims ending because they are interested in the details and outcome
of Scotts fight, but this fight is a pretext for the film to find as many ways
as it can of styling itself as a game and for viewers to enjoy the resulting
discursive spectacle. Even though this specific sequence exists in the film
version only, the same strategy is also followed by the comic book version. Both media try continually to come up with new variations on intermedial, discourse- and story-based references to video games in their
attempts to outdo one another. This realm is where they compete, where
their rivalry takes place.
In the end, one might wonder if one medium emerges victorious from
this battle. Since I have discussed in detail the films claims to surpass
the comic book and since its over-the-top finale is unparalleled in the
source material, one might be tempted to declare the film the winner.
Yet the film does not have the final word. In the same manner that old
media are rarely rendered extinct by new ones, it is not as if the comic
book were rendered obsolete through the films alleged better simulation
of video games. After centuries of predominantly mimetic media rivalry, we have not arrived at a situation where there are fewer media than,
let us say, in the Renaissance. On the contrary, there are many more. If
the desire for immediacy, for a better mimesis, has led to a proliferation
of media rather than the consolidation of one definitive medium, then
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there is no reason to assume that the desire for hypermediacy, or a better performative use of media, should lead to opposite results. Instead of
creating a better simulation of video games, the film has perhaps merely generated a different one. In any case, it has created a new one. Thus
the rivalry between comic book and film is not a game played to be won
but a game played for its own sake. Its purpose is to probe media for
their potential and to explore and proliferate new medial and narrative
possibilitiespossibilities that are, crucially, not tied to a mimetic imperative. Rather than finding novel ways to create a storyworld so convincingly that it will let recipients forget all about mediation, the idea is
to find novel ways of violating the principle of ars est celare artem (art
is to conceal art) by building a storyworld that is already medially contaminated and thus continually reflects recipients attention back to its
medial constitution. Rather than discovering methods of using ones
discursive means in an innovative yet unobtrusive fashion, the idea is
to discover innovative methods of making them appear to be another
medias discursive means. To some, this quest to have media tell stories
in the guise of other media may appear as a futile or even decadent endeavor, yet in a media-saturated and media-savvy age, it might also be
seen as an instrumental and appropriate update to the traditional concept of paragone.

Notes
I would like to thank Judith Brand, Andreas Mahler, Marie-Laure Ryan, and JanNol Thon for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
1. All translations are mine.
2. In Intermedialitt und remediation, Irina O. Rajewsky duly distinguishes remediation as a category that describes the relations between media in general
from intermediality as a narrower category denoting aesthetic phenomena involving more than one medium in specific texts, films, and so forth. However,
both terms are frequently used in both senses.
3. It is also known as the as if quality (als ob-Charakter) of intermedial references, or their way of behaving as though a different medium were materially
present (Rajewsky, Intermedialitt, 3940).
4. The film also contains discursive intermedial references to comics, first and
foremost onomatopoeias, albeit to a smaller extent. These references could be
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seen as another way in which the film version tries to establish its supremacy,
demonstrating that it can emulate not only the comics video game references
but also the comics themselves. However, this point takes us on to a different
level of rivalry, where the book cannot offer anything in reply to the film; it has
never tried to simulate this medium.
5. Both panels occur toward the end of their respective volumes (1 and 3), yet as
only the last three volumes of Scott Pilgrim are paginated, I cannot offer a more
precise reference here.

Works Cited
Aarseth, Espen. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore md: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997. Print.
Ahern, Sean. Oh Check It Out! I Learned the Bass Line from Final Fantasy II:
Scott Pilgrim vs. Geek Culture. Ol3Media 10 (2011): n. pag. Web. May 1, 2012.
Bhn, Andreas. Einleitung: Formzitat und Intermedialitt. Formzitat und
Intermedialitt. Ed. Andreas Bhn. St. Ingbert, Germany: Rhrig, 2003. 712. Print.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media.
Cambridge ma: mit Press, 1999. Print.
Degner, Uta, and Norbert Christian Wolf. Intermedialitt und mediale Dominanz:
Einleitung. Der neue Wettstreit der Knste: Legitimation und Dominanz im
Zeichen der Intermedialitt. Ed. Uta Degner and Norbert Christian Wolf.
Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2010. 717. Print.
Hollis, Erin. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as Postmodern Parody of Parody: Allusion,
Exclusion, and Consumption in the Film Adaptation. Ol3Media 10 (2011): n.
pag. Web. May 1, 2012.
Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology.
Baltimore md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim. Laokoon: Oder ber die Grenzen der Malerei und
Poesie. Werke VI: Kunsttheoretische und kunsthistorische Schriften. Ed. Herbert
G. Gpfert and Albert von Schirnding. Munich: Hanser, 1974. 7187. Print.
Mahler, Andreas. SpracheMimesisDiskurs: Die Vexiertexte des Parnasse als
Paradigma anti-mimetischer Sprachrevolution. Zeitschrift fr Franzsische
Sprache und Literatur 116 (2006): 3447. Print.
OMalley, Bryan Lee. Scott Pilgrim & the Infinite Sadness. Vol. 3, Scott Pilgrim.
Portland or: Oni, 2006. N. pag. Print.
. Scott Pilgrim Gets It Together. Vol. 4, Scott Pilgrim. Portland or: Oni, 2007.
Print.
. Scott Pilgrims Finest Hour. Vol. 6, Scott Pilgrim. Portland or: Oni, 2010.
Print.
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. Scott Pilgrims Precious Little Life. Vol. 1, Scott Pilgrim. Portland or: Oni,
2004. N. pag. Print.
. Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe. Vol. 5, Scott Pilgrim. Portland or: Oni, 2009.
Print.
. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Vol. 2, Scott Pilgrim. Portland or: Oni, 2005. N.
pag. Print.
Rajewsky, Irina O. Intermedialitt. Tbingen, Germany: A. Francke, 2002. Print.
. Intermedialitt und remediation: berlegungen zu einigen Problemfeldern
der jngeren Intermedialittsforschung. Intermedialitt analog/digital: Theorien,
Methoden, Analysen. Ed. Joachim Paech and Jens Schrter. Munich: Fink, 2008.
4760. Print.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Dir. Edgar Wright. Universal, 2010. dvd.
Warning, Rainer. Elemente einer Pragmasemiotik der Komdie. Das Komische.
Ed. Wolfgang Preisendanz and Rainer Warning. Munich: Fink, 1976. 279333.
Print.
Wolf, Werner. Intermediality. Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory. Ed.
David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan. London: Routledge, 2005.
25256. Print.

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10

Those Insane Dream Sequences

Experientiality and Distorted Experience
in Literature and Video Games
marco caracciolo

In the years since the publication of Monika Fluderniks Towards a

Natural Narratology, her key concept of experientiality has established
an impressive citation record. Defined as the quasi-mimetic evocation of
real-life experience (Fludernik 12), experientiality provides a tight conceptual link between classical narratological research on the representation of conscious experience in fiction and post-classical, cognitivist approaches. However, Fluderniks central claim that experientiality is the
defining feature of narrative has not withstood closer scrutiny. Starting
with Meir Sternberg (122) and Jan Alber, scholars have argued that experientiality cannot be straightforwardly equated with narrativity (see Wolf
181; Ryan, Theoretical Foundations 4; Herman, Basic Elements 211). And
yet, this conclusion does not imply that experientiality holds no narratological interest. Theorists such as Werner Wolf and David Herman
(Cognition; Basic Elements) have taken a more prudent course than
Fluderniks by including experientiality among their narratemes or
basic elements of narrative without equating it with narrativity. For example, Herman has defined experientiality as the impact of narrated situations and events on an experiencing consciousness (Cognition 256).
What remains unclear, however, is the level at which we should investigate this impact. Indeed, in fictional narratives there is a significant
and obviousdifference between characters consciousnesses and the
real consciousnesses involved in the act of narrative presentation, or
that of the story producers and the recipients. Is experientiality, as in
Fluderniks model, a representation of the experiences undergone by a
characterusually, the protagonist (see Fludernik 30)? Or should it rather be understood as a measure of the impact a story has on its flesh-andblood recipients?
230

In this chapter I attempt to show why it is importantand to some

extent necessaryto tie up these aspects of experientiality. In short, my
suggestion is that characters experiences can be represented only because stories tap into the experiential reservoir shared by the recipients,
cueing them into attributing experiences to fictional beings. Conversely,
a story can have an impact on its recipients because it plays on this experiential repertoire in order to bring the characters experiences to life.
Experientiality becomes, then, the tension that arises between the recipients experiential background and the experiences that they attribute to
characters on the basis of textual cues.1 An important caveat here is that
this tension is not always foregrounded by stories; in many cases, the recipients react to the situations and events in which the characters are involved as if from the outside, without engaging with characters experiences in any meaningful way. Even when the recipients reactions are
directed toward the experiences of a character, they may take the form
of a sympathetic feeling for the character (we may feel hatred for a villain or compassion for someone who has suffered a tragic loss, for instance). Only rarelyand as an effect of specific textual strategiesdoes
the recipients engagement with characters involve the empathetic perspective taking that I explore in the following pages.
Indeed, both of my case studies invite recipients to imaginatively engage with a character whose experience is distorted by hallucinations or
dreams. Martin Heidegger remarks in a passage of his Being and Time
(sec. 32) that we become aware of the structure of our experience only
when something disrupts the flow of our interaction with the world.
Likewise, examining two texts that present a characters non-ordinary
experience will yield important insights into our experiential engagement with characters and more in general with stories. I analyze a passage from William S. Burroughss experimental novel Naked Lunch (1959)
and a few dream sequences from the video game Max Payne 2: The Fall
of Max Payne (2003) developed by Remedy Entertainment. In the first,
a character has drug-induced visions during an interrogation. This text
addresses the Burroughsian theme of language as an instrument of control via the readers empathetic engagement with the character. For its
part, Max Payne 2 is an interesting test bed for transmedial narratology because of the way it implements multimodal techniques and intermedial references to tinge the game world with the dream-like quality
Those Insane Dream Sequences

231

of the protagonists experience. In considering these texts, I describe the

medium-specific techniques through which literature and video games
generate a tension between the recipients and the characters experiences.
At the same time, I would also like to stress the continuity between
my case studies by arguing that they fall into the same basic pattern of
experientiality. On the one hand, recipients are cued into attributing to a
character an experience that is distorted at the perceptual and emotional level. On the other hand, the recipients imaginative engagement with
the character feeds back into their experiential background at a higher,
culturally mediated level, since it produces a specific meaning effect (language as an instrument of control in Naked Lunch, free will as an illusion in Max Payne 2). The distortion in the characters experience in each
case is thus used to channel meanings that have a disruptive potential
for the recipients own experiential background. Importantly, this effect
is achieved by breaking with the conventions surrounding the mediumspecific strategies for narrative presentation. In Naked Lunch, the readers expectations regarding the novelistic form are continually frustrated by the lack of narrative coherence, whereas the dream sequences of
Max Payne 2 defy the traditional distinction between the game proper
and narrative-advancing cut-scenes, since they neither offer a significant
challenge to the player nor further the story. We have, therefore, a close
connection between the characters distorted experience, the innovative
solutions through which it is presented, and its unsettling reflection on
the recipients own experience.
The Experiential Background and Its Traces:
Imagining Characters Experiences
To begin, I would like to clarify the idea that stories draw on interpreters
experiential background in order to represent the experiences of characters. The term background comes from John Searles theory of intentionality, where it stands for a set of nonrepresentational mental capacities that enable all representing to take place (143). Searle distinguishes
between a deep and a local background: the first is constituted by the capacities that are common to all human beings in virtue of their biological makeup, such as perceiving, running, grasping, and so on; and the
second is shaped by social interaction and includes all sorts of sociocultural practicesfor example, the stance we take towards [...] cars, re232

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Sociocultural
practices
Higher-order
cognitive functions
Perceptual
and emotional
experience

Bodily
DZDUHQHVV

Fig. 10.1. A sketch of the experiential background.

frigerators, money and cocktail parties (14344). What I would like to

do here is expand Searles definition in order to provide a somewhat more
detailed mapping of this background.
Figure 10.1 is a first attempt at charting out this terrain; it spans from
the basic modes of embodied consciousness to the complexity of culturally and linguistically mediated experience. In proposing this model, I follow the embodied and interactionist account of social cognition
developed by scholars working in the new wave in cognitive science
known as enactivism (see Di Paolo, Rohde, and De Jaegher). In the
neo-phenomenological framework of this approach, our sense of self
(see Gallagher and Zahavi 4951) is closely bound up with our proprioceptive awareness of our own body. Perceptual and emotional experience includes the sensorimotor patterns that structure our interaction
Those Insane Dream Sequences

233

with the world (ORegan and No) and our embodied, precognitive interpretation of what is at stake in situations (Colombetti). Experience at
these levels possesses a distinctive, qualitative feel: humans are conscious of what it is like to have a body, to smell the sea air, or to be angry with someone. Higher-order cognitive functions are abilities such
as long-term memory, imagination, conceptual thought, and language.
Finally, the last circle contains the sociocultural scaffolding of our encounters with the world, people, and artifacts: beliefs, values, social structures, cultural conventions, and so on.
It is worth emphasizing here that I conceive of the background as a
constantly evolving repertoire, with new experiences taking on meanings
in the light of past ones and at the same time potentially leaving a mark
on the background itself. Moreover, the levels of figure 10.1 are tightly intertwined. To return to Searles distinction, the deeper levels are partly
shaped by our local cultural background: perception and emotion always exist in, and are influenced by, a network of cultural meanings and
sociocultural interactions. Conversely, conceptual thought and cultural practices are structured by our physical makeup and capabilities, as
cognitive linguists and theorists of embodiment have repeatedly pointed out (see Gibbs; Evans and Green).
The first proposition that I would like to advance in this section is a
version of Marie-Laure Ryans principle of minimal departure (Possible
Worlds 51): recipients understand characters experiences by drawing
on regions of their own experiential background. This process involves
the activation of what psycholinguists such as Rolf A. Zwaan have called
experiential tracesthat is, the sensations, memories, or knowledge
structures that may fall at any point in the continuum represented in figure 10.1.2 Here are some illustrative passages taken from Ian McEwans
On Chesil Beach (2007), from a section that describes the apprehensions
and expectations of Florence and Edward, a newly wed couple, as they
slowly slide toward their first physical contact.
t
Perceptual experience: His napkin clung to his waist for a moment, hanging absurdly, like a loincloth, and then wafted to the
floor in slow motion (27).
t
Emotional experience: Even in his exalted, jittery condition he
thought he understood her customary reticence (28).
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t
Higher-order cognitive functions: She made herself remember

how much she loved this man (28).
t
Sociocultural practices: And the thrilling fact remained that it
was Florence who had suggested lying on the bed. Her changed
status had set her free (28).
In order to understand these sentences, readers must piece together
traces of their past interactions with the world. For example, they must
be familiar with the motion of an object that falls gently to the ground,
with the mixture of anxiety and excitement that precedes and accompanies Edwards first sexual contact, and with the practices regulating relationships between genders in twentieth-century Western society.
But, of course, stories can invite interpreters to imagine characters
experiences with various degrees of closeness, in Jens Eders term.
Building on philosophical theories about our imaginative, empathetic
responses to fictional characters (Coplan; Currie and Ravenscroft; Gaut),
I have argued elsewhere (see Fictional Consciousnesses) that our engagement with the experiential dimension of characters mental lives
oscillates between two poles: at one pole, recipients limit themselves to
attributing an experience to a character without sharing ita strategy
that I call consciousness-attributionand at the other pole, in acts of
consciousness-enactment, recipients simulate, or try on, the experience that they attribute to a character. In both consciousness-attribution
and consciousness-enactment the recipients draw on their experiential
backgrounds to understand the characters experiences. However, in
consciousness-enactment the recipients engagement with a character
also has a first-person aspect in that they simulate the characters experiences by reutilizing traces stored in their background.
The possibility of consciousness-enactment explains why some stories do more than activate regions of our experiential background. By
involving us in the characters experiences, they can provide us with a
full-fledged imaginative experience and therefore bring about a feedback effect at various levels of our background. For example, a text can
evoke vivid imagery by focusing on a characters perceptions. I have
never visited a coal mine, but after reading the internally focalized descriptions of mile Zolas Germinal I think I know what one must be
like. However, it is on the plane of our emotional engagement that the
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235

impact of stories becomes clearly evident. In broad terms, an emotion

is a precognitive evaluation of a situation (see Colombetti). Stories can
trigger emotional reactions by bringing into play values and evaluations that are part of recipients experiential background. In one of the
last scenes of Germinal an explosion traps the protagonist, tienne, in a
mine tunnel. Knowing that being trapped in a mine entails a major risk
for ones well-being, I can imagine how I would feel if I found myself
in that situation without reading Zolas novel. However, by entangling
tiennes life project (and narrative) in that situation and by implementing strategies that invite readers to put themselves in the characters shoes, Zola is able to convey that emotional experience in a powerfully effective way.
Finally, engaging with the experiences represented by stories can provide what Eileen John has called cognitive stimulation, which invites
us to restructure our background at the level of higher-order knowledge,
thus expanding our worldview and changing our cultural beliefs. Part
of Zolas agenda was to bring the appalling conditions of the coal miners in northern France to the attention of his bourgeois audience as he
attempted to warn his readers that it was not too late for social changes that could placate the working class (Aliaga-Buchenau 20). In other cases, stories may offer us a radically different perspective on situations we are already familiar with, bringing about an unsettling effect
that has much in common with the Russian formalist notion of defamiliarization (Shklovsky).
In sum, there is a two-way exchange between stories and our experiential background: in temporarily adopting the characters perspectives, we afford them a chance for interacting withand leaving a mark
onour broader outlook on the world. This dynamic tension between
the experiences that recipients attribute to characters and their own experience is, in my view, constitutive of experientiality. In the next sections I home in on this dynamic by concentrating on two cases in which
recipients imaginative engagement with a characters perceptual and
emotional experience bears directly upon their sociocultural background. As announced in the introduction, I look at the ways in which
two medialiterature and video gamescan challenge recipients sociocultural meanings through their empathizing with the distorted experience of a character.
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Experientiality through a Distortion Lens: Case Studies

Burroughss Naked Lunch and Mind Control
The first of my case studies is a section from William S. Burroughss novel Naked Lunch. It is one of the few relatively stable narrative sequences in a text that is well known for its assault on narrative sense making (see Murphy, Intersection Points 90). And yet, as we will see, the
threat this passage presents to its readers is no less serious for its apparent readability. This section, titled The Examination, is about halfway
through Naked Lunch. The protagonist, Carl, is hastily summoned for
an interview at the Ministry of Mental Hygiene and Prophylaxis, where
Doctor Benwayan old acquaintance of Burroughss readersmakes
veiled insinuations about Carls homosexuality. Carl firmly denies everything, but during the interview he experiences some visions. Perhaps
they are signs that Doctor Benway has drugged him in order to extract
a confession from him.
The first hint of these visions comes after Doctor Benways ominous
warning: Wed like to go light on you... If you could help us in some
way (Naked Lunch 163, ellipsis in the original). Suddenly, these words
open out into a desolate waste of cafeterias and street corners and lunch
rooms. Junkies look the other way munching pound cake (Naked Lunch
163). By this point, the readers of Naked Lunch will have grown accustomed to this kind of disruption in the narrative texture of the novel.
This time, however, we are asked to make the further move of attributing this sudden change of scenery not to the whims of the author/narrator but to the hallucinatory experience of a fictional character. Indeed,
as soon as the scene returns to the examination room, Carl has another, unambiguous vision:
A green flare exploded in Carls brain. He saw Hans lean brown
body twisting towards him, quick breath on his shoulder. The flare
went out. Some huge insect was squirming in his hand. His whole
being jerked away in an electric spasm of revulsion.
Carl got to his feet shaking with rage.
What are you writing there? he demanded.
Do you often doze off like that? in the middle of a conversation...?
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I wasnt asleepthat is...

You werent?
Its just that the whole thing is unreal... Im going now. I dont
care. You cant force me to stay.
(Naked Lunch 165, ellipses and emphasis in the original)

Carls first vision (we will never know if it is the recovered memory
of a homosexual encounter or a drug-induced hallucination) is framed
by the metaphor of a green flare exploding in his brain. This metaphor
marks the transition from the shared, public world of perception to Carls
hallucination and seeks to capture the felt quality of the characters experience, its suddenness and incongruity. The same applies to the image
of the insect squirming in his hand. Readers imagine both visions on the
basis of their own experiential background, particularly their familiarity
with explosions and insects and squirming things.3 At the same time, interpreters are encouraged to engage with the characters perceptual perspective by imaginatively trying it on through three stylistic and narrative strategies. The first is the use of what I call a phenomenological
metaphor, one that attempts to render the phenomenological quality
of the characters sensation in the same way as he experiences it from
the inside.4 The second is internal focalization, which grants readers
a more direct access to the characters consciousness than would be possible for an observer on the scene. Since we assume that Carls hallucinations are not accessible to anyone but himself, recipients are primed
to read these linesand possibly through a recency effect (see Jahn 157),
the whole sectionby empathizing with him.
The third textual trigger of readers empathy for the character has to
do with Burroughss handling of dialogue. Indeed, what is really surprising about this passage is the way we learn that the character was
asleep while he had his visions. This revelation comes, after the fact, from
Doctor Benways question, and it is likely to reinforce the empathetic
bond between readers and Carl. Since both Carl and the readers did not
know that he was sleeping before Doctor Benways words, readers become more acutely conscious that they have been experiencing with the
character all along and that they have been enacting his consciousness
or imagining his experiences from the inside. In this case, the imaginative experience readers undergo falls in the perceptual-emotional zone
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of figure 10.1. And yet an even more complex identification process seems
to play out here. When Carl says that the whole thing is unreal, he is in
a sense echoing the reaction of all first-time readers to Burroughss novel. His cognitive disorientation (see Hogan 10), then, becomes symbolic
of the larger project of Naked Lunch. Interestingly, when Carl attempts
to leave the room he experiences more hallucinations:
The door seemed to recede.
Where can you go, Carl? The doctors voice reached him from
a great distance.
Out... Away... Through the door...
The Green Door, Carl?
The doctors voice was barely audible. The whole room was exploding out into space.
(Naked Lunch 165, ellipses in the original)

These words are the last in the section. As readers, we are not afforded a final, non-distorted glimpse at the fictional world. Locked in Carls
consciousness, we are tempted to draw a connection between the explosion and the end of the section, as if the characters hallucinations
expanded beyond his skull, warping the fictional space and eventually
obliterating everythingincluding the character himself, who never appears again in the remainder of the novel. You cant force me to stay,
Carl says; but in fact Doctor Benwayand, behind him, Burroughs
can do much more: by giving him hallucinations, they can plunge him
into nothingness.
Through these textual strategies, this section addresses what many
commentators have identified as the central theme of Naked Lunch
social control over the individual, a control that is exercised through
drugs, social practices, and language itself. It is no coincidence that Carls
examiner is Doctor Benway, who is introduced at the beginning of the
novel as an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and
control (Naked Lunch 19), and that Carls first hallucinations are triggered by the doctors words. But Naked Lunch does much more than denounce the complicity between language and control systems in a detached, impersonal way; as critics such as Robin Lydenberg and Ron
Loewinsohn have argued, Burroughs wants to subject his own readers
to the violence of that control in an attempt to free them from it. How
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this treatment works in this particular passage should be clear enough:

having to stick to Carls hallucinatory perspective, readers empathize
with him, only to be dismayed at his strange disappearance from the
fictional world. Burroughs once said that it is precisely [our] automatic
reactions to words themselves that enable those who manipulate words
to control thought on a mass scale (The Job 59). In this case, the author
foregrounds his control over the readers imaginings through the repressive power of Doctor Benways words over Carls consciousness. However,
unlike the readers, Carl has no chance to find out that, as Lydenberg puts
it, [o]verexposure to the word [...] has a liberating and purgative effect
(43).5 Such an effect is channeled through, and made more forceful by,
the readers empathetic engagement with the character.
The activation of perceptual and emotional traces makes it possible for
Burroughss novel to challenge readers conventions at the sociocultural
level, exposing the violence of control systems. Whats more, the attack
on the interpreters social values is implemented through a systematic violation of their expectations regarding literary form and, in particular, narrative continuity. This kind of distortion, which is abundantly
evident in the novel as a whole, manifests itself in this section through
the instability of the ending, suspended as it is between the characters
hallucinatory perspective and the image of a vanishing fictional world.
All in all, by conveying and disrupting the characters perceptual experience and eliciting the readers confusion as he or she tries to cope with
the novel, Burroughs succeeds in advancing the ideological (or, rather,
anti-ideological) agenda of Naked Lunch.
Playing on Maxs Dreams: Max Payne 2
Max Payne 2 represents another striking instance of how distortions in
a characters experience can be used to have an effect on the experiential
background of story recipients. This case study is made even more interesting by the special features of the video game medium itself, including
its multimodality and interactivity; although, as we will see, Max Payne
2 explicitly thematizes recipients inability to alter the course of the story. Max Payne 2 is a story-driven third-person shooter with fairly traditional game play. In itself, the plot is pungently cheesy, as a reviewer
puts it (Poole n. pag.). It centers on a conspiracy story heavily influenced
by film noir and hard-boiled fiction in which Max Payne, a detective with
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Fig. 10.2. Max loses consciousness (a graphic narrative scene from Max Payne 2).

a painful past, cracks an evil scheme with the help of Mona Sax, his love
interest and herself a hired killer.
Where this game really shines, however, is in how it renders the felt
quality of the protagonists experience and specifically the surreal aspect that leaks from Maxs dreams to the games baseline reality. Before
turning to the dream sequences, though, I would like to comment on
the first moments of the game in order to briefly examine another technique through which Maxs experience is conveyednamely, the graphic
narrative scenes that appear between the chapters. The first comic book
page in the games prologue shows a police car pulling up at an unspecified manor and in juxtaposition, possibly inside the manor, a kiss between Max and Mona. After this initial sequence, the words the hospital,
earlier tonight, alert us to a spatiotemporal leap, and we are transported to the hospital where Max has just been rushed after receiving multiple gunshot wounds. No first-time player is able to understand the causal relationship between the manor and the hospital scene and even less
the reasons for Maxs hospitalization. Again, the players disorientation
is reflected, at another level, in the characters confusion when he wakes
up at the hospital (see figures 10.2 and 10.3).
In both pages the game seems to exploit the expressive potential of
comics to provide players with a straightforward access to Maxs subjectivity (see Mikkonen), partly making up for the shortcomings of threedimensional computer graphics. Figure 10.2 shows the characters losing consciousness (in the upper panel) and his regaining his senses (in
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Fig. 10.3. Max wakes up at the hospital (a graphic narrative scene from Max Payne 2).

the lower strip). As often in graphic narrative, the character is seen from
the outside, but his traumatized state is expressed by stylistic features
such as the fuzzy borders of the panels and the visual noise that appears more or less everywhere as, most notably, vertical, scar-like lines
crossing the panels and white spots that seem to settle on the surface of
the drawings. In figure 10.3, by contrast, Maxs experience is thrown into
sharp relief by his pained facial expressions, which provide players with
a fast track to narrative empathy, in Suzanne Keens phrase. Both motifs of the characters confusion and of his pain are repeated in the ensuing cinematic sequence, setting the tone for the whole game by placing the characters physical and mental distress center stage.
The three in-game dream sequences that are scattered throughout
Max Payne 2 serve as a powerful reminder of this experiential backdrop,
inviting players to align themselves with it by drawing both on their
firsthand familiarity with dreams (at the perceptual and emotional levels of the background) and on cultural stereotypes about dreamsfor
instance, horror film clichs. The underlying narrative structure is identical in all dream sequences: Max runs after a person he cannot catch,
makes his way through endless corridors, and encounters some of the
games main characters, usually in absurd but emotionally charged situations. In the first sequence he chases an unknown person, who disappears after knocking on his apartment door and sliding Monas photograph under it. In the second he runs after Mona, whereas in the third
he tries to catch another Max, his alter ego. Indeed, a number of Maxs
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Fig. 10.4. Maxs alter ego (a dream sequence from Max Payne 2).

doubles appear in his dreams. In what is probably one of the most bizarre dream scenes, Max walks past a number of holding cells in a police
station; in some of the cells another Max mumbles incoherently while
signs bearing words such as mad, paranoid, and insane hang from
the walls (see figure 10.4).
Another feature that strikes the player as dream-like is the way many
locations and elements from the fictional actual world are injected into
Maxs dream world in a distorted, incongruous fashion. Consider, for
example, the spatial setting. The dreams take place in three game locations: Maxs apartment, the hospital, and the police station. These settings are disconnected in the fictional actual world, since the player is
instantaneously transported from the one to the other in the transitions
between the chapters. In Maxs dreams, however, the apartment, the hospital, and the police station are seamlesslyand absurdlyconnected
by long corridors.
But how does this dream-like quality reflect itself in the players own
experience? To begin with, the distortion filter applied to the camera
reminds us of the characters altered consciousness by blurring and warping the game world. However, from a game-theoretical viewpoint, the
most puzzling aspect of these dream sequences is the fact that while allowing players to directly control Max in the 3-d game world, they foreThose Insane Dream Sequences

243

ground their lack of agency. Indeed, the interactivity of these sections is

severely limited, and they pose no challenge to the player, who only has to
steer the character through a series of interconnected spaces. This design
choice poses an interesting paradox. We should not forget that linearity
especially when coupled with a very low difficulty levelis commonly
regarded as going against the nature of the video game medium itself. At
best, it is associated with the cut-scenes that serve to advance the games
plot. But the dream sequences of Max Payne 2 neither require the player
to succeed in any nontrivial task nor further the story since, of course,
what happens in Maxs dreams cannot have any effect on the fictional actual world. They are purely atmospheric, serving to convey the felt quality of the protagonists experience in a way that is innovative and, at the
same time, extremely effective. Indeed, by dramatizing the contrast between the apparent interactivity of the dream sequences and their shallow, linear game play, Max Payne 2 defamiliarizes the players interaction
with the game, thus providing them with a stand-in for the characters
unsettling experience. This unnerving aspect of the dream sequences is
attested by some forum posts on the Internet, including one that gives
its title to this essay (Anonymous, Insane Dream Sequences). For example, a forum user writes: I and every person I know hate the damn
dream sequences. They are so twisted, disorienting, and totally do nothing for me in terms of plot development (Anonymous, Does Anyone).
Note that these players do much more than express their dislike for
the dream sequences; the adjectives they use (insane, twisted, disorienting) signal that players found these sections disturbing because
of the way they blur the traditional distinction between online and offline sequences, the actual game and pre-rendered cut-scenes. Similarly
to what happens in the Burroughs passage, the distortion in the characters perceptual experience feeds back into recipients engagement with
the story but at a higher, conceptually mediated level. As with the character trapped in his nightmares, the players become aware that they have
to follow a linear, pre-scripted trajectory through Maxs dreams and, indeed, through the game world; in turn, this realization can strengthen
their empathetic bond with Max. The forced linearity of the game is thus
blended with the painful lack of agency of the dreamer and, by extension, of Max Payne himself, as announced in an important graphic narrative scene (see figure 10.5).
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Fig. 10.5. On linearity and the illusion of free will (a graphic narrative scene
from Max Payne 2).

Without advancing the story, the dream sequences seem to reveal how
narrative causality works in this game: free will is an illusion, an afterthought, and the course of events is deterministically shaped by who
you are (for Max) or by which game you play (for the player). Again, this
meaning construction would not be possible without a deep resonance
between the characters and the players experience, a resonance that becomes clearly audible in distorted experientiality.
The aim of this chapter was to develop a theory of experientiality that accounts in the same breath for both characters and story recipients experiences. Thus, I have argued that a characters experience can only be represented in stories by providing pointers to the experiential background
of recipientsthat is, to the repertoire that includes all the experiences
with which they are acquainted. At the basic level, then, recipients draw
on their experiential background in order to attribute experiences to the
characters on the basis of textual cues. However, by combining our experiential traces in novel ways, stories can do more than refer recipients
to already familiar experiences. Stories can have us undergo full-fledged
imaginative experiences that interact with (and leave a mark on) our experiential background, for example, by triggering our emotional reactions or by providing us with cognitive stimulation. This exchange forms
the basis for the dynamic relationship between stories and our experiential background that I have investigated in this chapter.
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In particular, I have focused on texts in which such a feedback effect

is elicited through recipients empathetic engagement with characters
whose consciousness is distorted by hallucinations and dreams. I have
found that in these cases the characters experience tends to reflect itself
at a higher, culturally mediated level in the recipients own experiential
background by challenging their cultural values and the medium-specific
conventions of narrative presentationthe novelistic form, with its demand for narrative coherence and continuity, in Naked Lunch and the
distinction between in-game sequences and cut-scenes in Max Payne 2.
All in all, I have suggested that experientiality manifests itself in
the tension between the experiences we attribute to fictional characters and our experiential background. We may therefore hypothesize
although I will not be able to expand on this claim herethat experientiality comes in degrees as a function both of the capacity of a story
to have an emotional or cognitive impact on the background of its recipients and of the historical, sociocultural, and individual variations in
the background itself. Indeed, it goes without saying that my readings of
Naked Lunch and Max Payne 2 reflect my own sensitivity and predispositions. To some extent, the reactions and interpretations of other recipients can be used as an intersubjective touchstone to back up our claims
about the effect of a story; thus Ive referred to Burroughs critics and to
the impressions of other players of Max Payne 2. But, of course, the subjectivity of our responses cannot be completely eliminated. What matters, however, is not reaching an agreement on the content of our reactions but on the experiential dynamics underlying them. By focusing on
such dynamics, my case studies identify a consistent pattern of interaction between the recipients, the experiencing characters, and the storytelling medium itself.

Notes
1. Here and elsewhere in this chapter I use the words text and textual for any
narrative artifact, irrespective of the medium.
2. Compare with Zillmann: empathy through cognitive role-taking can [...] be
viewed as mediated through the partial revival of related past experiences (166).
3. This point does not imply that readers who have never experienced hallucinations wont be able to imagine this passage. Other peoples reports are usu246

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ally sufficient to form an idea, however imprecise, of experiences weve never

undergone in a first-person way. Arguably, though, these readers may be able
to empathize with the character less deeply than those readers who do have a
greater familiarity with hallucinations.
4. See Caracciolo, Phenomenological Metaphors.
5. Murphy (Wising Up) and Loewinsohn have insisted on the didactic element of
Naked Lunch.

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Gallagher, Shaun, and Dan Zahavi. The Phenomenological Mind: An Introduction to
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Part 3

Transmedia Storytelling
and Transmedial Worlds

11

Strategies of Storytelling on
Transmedia Television
jason mittell

Few storytelling forms can match serial television for narrative breadth
and vastness. A single narrative universe can continue for years, or even
decades in the case of daytime serials, with cumulative plotlines and
character backstories accruing far beyond what any dedicated fan could
reasonably remember. Even a show that fails to find an audience typically airs for a comparatively long time. For instance, the single-season
Terriers may be seen as a commercial failure, but it still offered thirteen
episodes of serial storytelling, with a combined running time of more
than nine hours, that eclipses the scope of most novels and nearly every
feature film. In short, of all the challenges that the creators of television
fiction face, the lack of screen time to tell their stories is hardly an issue.
Given serial televisions temporal vastness, it would seem unlikely
that producers would want to expand their storytelling scope into other venues, as managing the single-medium realm of a television series is
more than enough work for a creative team. However, the 2000s saw the
rise of innovative forms of narrative extensions, grouped under the term
transmedia storytelling, that have significantly expanded the scope of a
television series into an array of other media from video games to jigsaw
puzzles and books to blogs. To understand the phenomenon of transmedia television, we need to look closely at the strategies that various series
employ, the motivations behind such narrative extensions, and the tactics that viewers use to make sense of such expanded serialized vastness.1
Any thoughtful study of contemporary transmedia must start with
the vital caveat that transmedia is not a new phenomenon, born of the
digital age. Even if the term is new, the strategy of expanding a narrative into other media is as old as media themselves; think of paintings
dramatizing biblical scenes or iconic nineteenth-century characters such
253

as Frankenstein or Sherlock Holmes whose narrative scope transcends

any single medium. Early television employed transmedia strategies as
well, as one of the mediums first hits, Dragnet, spanned multiple media. Starting as a radio show, the more popular television series of the
1950s spawned a number of books; a feature film; tie-in toys such as a
board game, police badge, and whistle; and even a television reboot in
the late 1960s.
Highlighting the history of transmedia is not to suggest that nothing
new has happened in recent years; undoubtedly the proliferation of digital forms has led to transmedia techniques that are both greater in degree and different in kind. Certainly technological transformations have
helped enable such proliferations, as digital platformsonline video,
blogs, computer games, dvd supplements, social networking, and new
forms such as alternate reality games (args)are cost-effective and widely accessible avenues for expanding a narrative universe. Additionally,
industrial shifts that have shrunk the relative size of any one programs
television audience and expanded ratings competition across numerous
cable and broadcast outlets have encouraged producers to experiment
with transmedia as a way to get noticed and build viewer loyalty in an
increasingly cluttered television schedule. We might characterize this
development as a shift in norms; in previous decades, it was exceptional
for a program to use a significant transmedia strategy, while today it is
more exceptional for a high-profile series not to adopt one.
Despite the growing ubiquity of transmedia, we need to avoid confusing general transmedia extensions with the more particular mode of
transmedia storytelling. Nearly every media property today offers some
transmedia extensions, such as promotional websites, merchandise, or
behind-the-scenes materials. These forms can be usefully categorized as
paratexts in relation to the core text, whether a feature film, video game,
or television series. As Jonathan Gray has argued in his defining work on
the topic, we cannot view any text in our media-saturated age in isolation from its paratexts. For instance, films come pre-framed by trailers,
dvd covers, and posters, and once any text enters into cultural circulation, it becomes part of a complex intertextual web. However, we can follow Grays lead by distinguishing between paratexts that function primarily to hype, promote, and introduce a text with those that function
as ongoing sites of narrative expansion and that I explore here.
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Transmedia storytelling thrives in these ongoing paratexts through a

strategy best captured by Henry Jenkinss comprehensive and influential definition of the form: Transmedia storytelling represents a process
where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across
multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it own
unique contribution to the unfolding of the story (Transmedia 202
n. pag., original emphases). This definition of transmedia storytelling
problematizes the hierarchy between text and paratext, for in the most
ideally balanced example, all texts would be equally weighted rather
than having one being privileged as text while others serve as supporting paratexts. However, in the high-stakes industry of commercial television, the financial realities demand that the core medium of
any franchise be identified and privileged, typically emphasizing the
more traditional television form over newer modes of online textuality.
Thus in understanding transmedia television, we can identify the originating television series as the core text with transmedia extensions serving as paratexts.
This issue of relative emphasis and priority across transmedia is crucial to both the industrial and storytelling logics of serial television.
American commercial televisions core business model is predicated on
attracting viewers to a television program, aggregating them into measurable audience segments, and selling that viewership to advertisers in
the currency of Nielsen ratings. Even as televisions industrial structures
shift toward more flexible measures of audience practice, the emphasis
still remains on producing high ratings to generate the majority of revenues used to fund both television and its associated forays into transmedia storytelling. So the industrial edict to protect and strengthen the
core business of watching commercial television dictates a creative imperative as well: any television-based transmedia must protect the mothership, to borrow the term Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton
Cuse used for the central television series at the heart of their armada
of paratextual transmedia extensions. For the industry, transmedia extensions might provide an additional revenue stream, but their primary function is to drive viewers back to the television series; for creators,
transmedia storytelling must always support and strengthen the core
television narrative experience.
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This imperative creates challenges to mesh Jenkinss definitional ideal of distributed transmedia as a unified and coordinated entertainment experience with the reality that television storytellers must privilege the mothership by designing experiences that can be consumed by
viewers in a wide range of ways without sacrificing coherence or engagement, regardless of how aware they may be of the paratextual extensions.
This challenge of differential engagement plays a crucial role in one of
this chapters case studies, as Lost embraced a wide range of transmedia
strategies that tried both to protect the mothership for television-only
viewers and to reward participation for transmedia-savvy fans. But before turning to this detailed example, it is important to chart out some
of the earlier established narrative strategies that television has used to
extend into other media and clarify precisely what is meant by storytelling when discussing transmedia.
Precedents of Transmedia Television
The commonsense notion of storytelling assumes the centrality of narrative events, where a story consists of what happens. Certainly events are
crucial ingredients of any story, but a narrative also comprises two additional components that are crucial to transmedia storytellingcharacters
and settings. A television series works to create a sustained narrative setting, populated by a consistent set of characters who experience a chain
of events, with all three factors combining to forge a coherent storyworld.
A primary feature of serialized television is that these facets are cumulative and consistent in the storyworld, with everything that happens and
everyone we see as a part of this persistent narrative universe. Such cumulative persistence is one of the chief ways that serial storytelling is defined against episodic television. Although an episodic drama or sitcom
may have the same characters and storyworld, such characters rarely remember previous events, and there is little sense of continuity between
episodes, enabling viewers to watch intermittently and out of chronology.
For fans of serial television, charting the canonical events, characters,
and settings featured in a storyworld is a central mode of engagement,
with viewers striving for both narrative comprehension and deeper understanding of a fictional universe. The rising prevalence of transmedia
television alongside the increase in complex seriality has complicated
this question of canon, forcing producers to make difficult choices about
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how transmedia serial storytelling situates its paratexts in relation to the

core television canonical mothership. We can see the important precedents for these issues playing out through older examples of transmedia
television in the forms of tie-in books and video games.
Both in conventional prose and comics-based graphic form, books
have a long history as paratexts to moving-image media, such as film
and television, but their role is typically derided as nonessential addons rather than viewed as integrated transmedia. For many film properties, the most common books are novelizations, or direct retellings of
the story events, characters, and settings previously seen on-screen, and
are typified by cheap mass-market paperback novelizations and their
comic book counterparts. Although such novelizations are far from the
model of coordinated, dispersed transmedia storytelling as defined by
Jenkins, they frequently do add material to the storyworld by filling in
gaps in the story left unseen, whether they are events not seen on-screen
or internal character thoughts or backstories that are far easier to convey by the written word. Strict novelizations that retell on-screen stories are much rarer for series television, with most examples found in
the realm of cult television classics such as the original 1960s-era Doctor
Who and Star Trek, both of which saw many of their episodes adapted
to novel format. In these television franchises and others in film, such
as Star Wars, the novels can become part of the canonical storyworld,
with details that are expanded in the novels sometimes appearing in future on-screen installments.
The form of series television encourages another more common form
of tie-in novel, with a book functioning similar to a new episode of an
ongoing series. This approach makes sense for a highly episodic series,
as the established characters and setting can easily host a new set of narrative events without much need for policing canonical boundaries. We
see this type of tie-in novel frequently in shows that connect to popular
fiction genres, such as police procedurals from Dragnet to Columbo to
csi. In such episodic narratives, the books function mainly to stay true
to the characters, tone, and norms of the narrative universe. Their actual plots are frequently irrelevant to larger continuity, and thus questions
of canonicity rarely matter. For the cult realm of science fiction, tie-in
novels are quite common, but the questions of canon are more fraught.
Early cult sci-fi show Star Trek featured dozens of new episode-like tieStrategies of Storytelling

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in novels in addition to novelized retellings. While the franchises creative team regarded most of them as noncanonical, many fans embraced
them, especially in the decades between the original series leaving the air
and the emergence of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the late 1980s.
Novelistic extensions from more contemporary serialized programs
often fall in the awkward realm of semi-canon; that is, they are endorsed
by the shows creative team but not fully integrated into the shows complex serial arcs. Examples include 24, whose novels typically predate the
shows continuity by telling tales from characters backstories, and Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, which features both novelized retellings and new episode novels (in both prose and comic forms) that explore a broad chronology in the franchises mythology. Such tie-ins are usually written independently from the shows core writers but are based on story outlines
that are approved by showrunners and production studios. In some notable instances a shows producer pens his or her own canonical tie-in,
as with Buffy creator, Joss Whedon, writing an arc of comic books that
came to be known as Season 8 and extended the shows continuity after
it left the air. Print extensions of popular series can be quite popular with
fans, who often have a love-hate relationship with the books as they try
to police boundaries of canon, seek tonal consistencies, and otherwise
explore the borders of their favored fictional storyworlds.
While fans typically judge print extensions on how well they capture
the tone, setting, and characters of the mothership, the type of integrated transmedia Jenkins explores in his example of The Matrix franchise
places more emphasis on narrative events, where the plot is distributed
across media (Convergence Culture). Few television series have attempted to create transmedia extensions that offer such canonic integration,
with interwoven story events that must be consumed across media for
full comprehension. This reluctance is surely in large part due to the industrial demands of a commercial television system that depends on
revenue from selling eyeballs to advertisers, and mandatory transmedia might seem to undermine that effort. Additionally, the broad (if erroneous) cultural assumption that television is a low-commitment and
passive lean back medium would prohibit against experiments that
demand more from viewers beyond simply sitting and watching an episode. As complex narratives have demonstrated, viewers will actively
engage with challenging television; thus producers have been willing to
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try more overtly narratively integrated transmedia storytelling, albeit

with very mixed results.
One of the first examples of a canonically integrated tie-in book came
from complex television pioneer Twin Peaks, with the publication of The
Secret Diary of Laura Palmer in 1990 between the airings of the shows
first and second seasons. Written by Jennifer Lynch, series cocreator
David Lynchs daughter, Secret Diary functions as a distinctive form of
transmedianamely, a diegetic extension, where an object from the storyworld gets released in the real world. Most diegetic extensions are objects featured in a series that do not bear much storytelling weight, such
as Davy Crocketts coonskin cap, or items bearing the logo of an in-story
brand, like a Dunder Mifflin mug from The Office. Secret Diary was a reproduction of Lauras diary as featured on the series and had pages that
were ripped out to obscure crucial narrative revelations still to come,
making it both an object from the show and an early experiment in integrated transmedia storytelling. The diary, which sold quite well at the
height of Twin Peaks cultural relevance, provided numerous clues about
Lauras murder and her hidden dark past. While a viewer need not read
the diary to comprehend the shows plotlinesalthough with Twin Peaks,
ones comprehension is always a bit vague and muddledthe diary did
provide important canonical story information about both events and
characters, material that was later explored in the prequel feature film
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. The show followed up the diary with two
other diegetic tie-in booksan autobiography of Agent Dale Cooper
that was transcribed from his iconic dictated, tape-recorded notes to
Diane and a travel guide to the town of Twin Peaksbut neither were
particularly popular given the shows deflated ratings and cancellation
in its second season.
Although they do not have as long of a history as television-based
novels, tie-in video games offer another window into the strategies and
challenges of transmedia television. Again, these games are not new phenomena of the contemporary era. Star Trek games date back to the 1970s
with text-only adventure games and the 1980s with flight simulators,
and Doctor Who similarly had tie-in games from early on (not to mention even earlier pre-computerized board games). However, we can see
a set of strategies emerging in games tied into recent contemporary television serials in terms of how they negotiate the three realms of characStrategies of Storytelling

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ters, events, and storyworld and how they tackle the question of canon.
While most of these games are not part of larger transmedia narrative
campaigns, they do highlight the challenges of extending an ongoing
serial across media.
Nearly every tie-in game foregrounds the storyworld of its original
television franchise, allowing players to explore the universe that was
previously only seen on television. With settings as diverse as the mean
streets of The Shields Los Angeles, the suburban cul-de-sac of Desperate
Housewives, or the deep space exploration of Battlestar Galactica, television tie-ins fulfill Henry Jenkinss suggestion that game narratives function primarily as spatial storytelling; we explore the virtual representations of the storyworlds created in serial television as a way to extend
the narrative experience and participate in the fictional universe (Game
Design). The tie-in games that fans seem to embrace most are those that
re-create their television universes with vivid and immersive storyworlds,
such as the virtual Springfield found in a number of The Simpsons games,
with game worlds often surpassing the televisual versions in terms of level of detail and breadth. While such games need not relay vital narrative information through their spatial reconstructions, one key criterion that fans use to judge the merits of such games is the accuracy with
which they re-create the storyworld and make them feel consistent with
the fictional spaces they have come to know over the course of years of
a television series.
The treatment of characters within tie-in games has proven to be trickier to navigate. While the digital animation of games enables developers to re-create television settings with depth and fidelity, the creation
of robust and engaging people is still a technical challenge where games
clearly lag behind television production. Adding to the challenge is the
frequent problem of games not featuring the original actors voicing their
parts, widening the gap between a television character and its game avatar for viewers. Arguably, the most intense bond that fans of a television serial have with the show is their affection for and connection with
the characters; thus a game that fails to re-create a beloved, well-known
character often alienates fans. Even when original actors are used, players often bristle at how limited a games versions of beloved characters
become, often reducing complex character depth into a set of quirks or a
limited menu of actions. For instance, the game Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
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Chaos Bleeds allows you to play many different characters from the series (some with original voices and others with soundalikes), but it limits what you can do as each character when navigating a level, fighting
monsters, and spouting wisecracks. The ability to try on the skin of a favorite television character is certainly a major appeal for licensed games,
but seemingly no television tie-in game has been able to re-create the
core pleasure of spending time with fully realized characters in a television serial, an issue that will become pertinent in discussing more wideranging transmedia franchises.
One common strategy to overcome this gap between television and
game characterizations is to focus a tie-in game on a new protagonist
placed within an already established storyworld. For example, in the
Sopranos game Road to Respect, you play as Joey LaRocca, the neverbefore-mentioned son of late gangster Big Pussy Bonpensiero. Joey
explores fictionalized New Jersey locales such as the Bada Bing and
Satriales and interacts with core characters such as Tony Soprano,
Christopher Moltisanti, and Paulie Walnuts Gualtieri. Even though
Joey is a new character unburdened by the need to accurately re-create
a television version, the action of the game reduces the storytelling scope
to focus solely on the violent life of a mobster and thus eliminates the interplay between Tonys dual families that helped define the series as a
television landmark. Similar tie-in games, including The X-Files Game,
Prison Break: The Conspiracy, and Lost: Via Domus, use new characters
as a way to navigate an existing storyworld and interact with established
television characters. Thus whether they are exploring established or new
characters, tie-in games are marked by a narrowing and simplification
of characters, contrasting how they frequently expand upon the original
show in creating an immersive and expanded storyworld.
The problems with tie-in characters often stem from a lack of depth
and a fidelity to the original, but the third facet of story events suffers
more from issues of confounded coordination with its serialized source
material. Following the patterns outlined for novels, tie-in games typically choose one of two options for what narrative events will be told.
The first is to retell events from the source material, allowing players
to participate in an original core narrative. This strategy is common
for film tie-ins, as most games from franchises such as The Lord of the
Rings and Toy Story vary little from the original narrative events, alStrategies of Storytelling

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though Ive yet to find a television-based game using a retelling strategy

comparable to those in novelizations. More commonly, television tieins treat the game as a new episode in the series, depicting events that
could feasibly function as an episode from the series but have not. Thus
the 24 and Alias games both place their heroes in situations very similar
to an arc from the original series and have them interacting with core
characters in familiar locales, but the plots are essentially stand-alone
stories amid highly serialized narratives. At their worst, such new episode tie-in games are merely conventional formulaic games in a typical genre, like espionage or action, with a thin veneer of another diegetic world and a cast of characters ported from a television series. They
are not fully realized games that capture the tone or spirit of the original narrative.
Even when they are enjoyable gaming experiences, most television
tie-ins fail to provide a transmedia resonance that delivers on the pleasures from the original series. Sometimes such games are peppered with
mythological information, allowing a die-hard fan to recognize a reference to the shows backstory or ongoing mystery, but I have yet to find
a tie-in game that delivers an integrated narrative payoff that feels tied
to a serial canon in a significant rather than superficial way, aside from
creating a navigable storyworld. I do not attribute this lack of integrated transmedia storytelling to any deficiency in video games as a medium, as many games do create compelling narrative experiences, deep
and nuanced characters, and engaging plotlines. And Jenkinss example of The Matrix franchise shows that it is possible for a video game
to offer canonical integration into a series narrative, even though most
saw Enter the Matrix itself as a less-than-satisfying gameplay experience. This lack of an effective television-based integrated game speaks to
a creative challenge that plagues the entire transmedia enterprise: how
do you create narrative extensions from an ongoing core franchise that
reward fans seeking out canon but do not become essential consumption for single-medium fans, especially when the core narrative experience is serialized over time and requires a sustained investment in time
and attention? In other words, the constraints of the television industry
and norms of television consumption insist that transmedia extensions
from a serial franchise must reward those who partake in them but cannot punish those who do not.
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Lost in Transmedia Television

While individual transmedia extensions such as novels or video games
can exemplify some general strategies storytellers use to expand their
narrative horizons, it is useful to look at how a particular show mounts
an extensive transmedia campaign to get a sense of the scope that a television serial might embrace. Exploring transmedia storytelling poses significant research challenges, as many paratexts are hard to access after
their initial release, whether they are online sites that are pulled from
the web, ephemeral objects that disappear from circulation, or emergent
practices that change over time. In many cases, such as that of args, the
paratext itself is experiential more than textual, making it impossible to
re-create the narrative moment of participating in the game. Thus, as
researchers, we must rely either on our own experiences or secondhand
accounts of transmedia consumption rather than being able to revisit a
story for analytical purposes.
A number of expansive transmedia television landmarks, including
Heroes, 24, and The Office, might prove effective as a primary case study,
but I have chosen to focus on Lost for two main reasons. First, it is undoubtedly one of the most extensive and expansive examples of both
complex television narrative and transmedia storytelling, with extensions sprawled across nearly every medium throughout the shows sixseason run.2 Second, I approach the shows transmedia as a participant
observer, having been highly involved in following and documenting the
first arg and having consumed most of the other paratexts in real time
as they were released. Many of these texts no longer exist in accessible
form, so I hope to use my personal consumption as a source for critical
reflection on how the show used transmedia storytelling within the context of an ongoing serial narrative.3
Losts approach to transmedia storytelling is expansionist, working
to extend the narrative universe across media and introducing many
new characters, settings, plotlines, time periods, and mythological elements. While few viewers would accuse Losts television mothership of
being too simplistic in its narrative scope, the show used transmedia to
extend itself into tales that surpassed the wide scope of the series itself.
This expansionism led Lost to add to its six seasons of television with
four alternate reality games, four novels, a console/pc video game, mulStrategies of Storytelling

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tiple tie-in websites and online videos, dvd extras, and an array of collectible merchandise. Owing to both its fantasy genre and its storytelling commitments to create a rich mythological universe, Lost is suited
to this expansionist approach to transmedia, using paratexts to extend
the narrative outward into new locales and arenas through an approach
we might term centrifugal storytelling.
One important aspect of Lost that makes it ripe for transmedia extensions is its unique locale in a mysterious place with a rich history. The unnamed island has been inhabited by various factions of people since ancient Egyptian times and offers a deep well of backstory to be exploited.
Showrunners Lindelof and Cuse have used the metaphor of an iceberg to
represent the storyworld: the material appearing on the show is what is
visible above the waterline, but underwater depths and layers exist that
are never directly addressed on television. As with other deep mythologies, such as J. R. R. Tolkiens Middle Earth or the Star Wars universe,
Losts producers tapped into a wide range of styles, characters, and eras
to extend the narrative universe to other media. And such transmedia
extensions helped encourage viewers to engage with the show and its paratexts as forensic fans, drilling into texts to crack their hidden meanings and discover secrets, and to collaborate on building extensive databases of story information such as Lostpedia, the vast fan wiki detailing
the Lost universe.
One strategy that Lost took advantage of throughout its run was creating openings within the television show to invite viewers to explore
the storyworld in more depth. Such invitations, sometimes called Easter
eggs if they are seen as throwaway bonus features or trailheads if they
lead to larger narrative pathways, rarely were central to Losts core narrative, but typically they provided a bit of backstory, cultural references, or deep history of the island. Lindelof and Cuse have discussed in
interviews and podcasts that they had a specific litmus test for what mythology to reveal and explore on the show itself versus in the transmedia extensions: it would only appear on the show if the main characters
cared about it. While we can quibble as to how precisely they followed
their own edict, it is instructive in establishing the shows orientation as
a character-centered drama rather than as a mythological fantasy.
Lost, in large part due to its centrifugal use of transmedia, offered a
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ence fiction mystery, a dimension-spanning romance, a rip-roaring outdoors adventure, and a religious parable about letting go of the past and
finding fellowship. In the end, the television series downplayed the puzzle
box of trailheads it had left throughout its journey and, in doing so, betrayed the expectations of many of its most hard-core fans. One of Losts
biggest challenges was always in managing the rabid fan bases divergent expectations. Fans were invested in a wide range of the shows narrative facets, from the complex mythology to romantic relationships and
heady time-traveling sci-fi to adventure-driven action sequences. While
at times fans split on the relative merits of particular plotlines, episodes,
or characters, as a whole the show did an admirable job of servicing such
a broad array of appeals and fan bases. A key strategy for accomplishing
this storytelling breadth was to center the core television show around
its characters, particularly their adventures and dramas, and how they
encountered the mythology, allowing the more in-depth mythological
explorations and explanations to flower both in fan-created extensions
and transmedia properties.
The majority of Losts transmedia extensions prioritized storyworld
expansion and exploration instead of building on the shows emotional arcs and character relationships, with some narrative events posited in an awkward relationship to the narrative canon. Two high-profile
paratextsthe video game Lost: Via Domus and the novel Bad Twin,
which was posited as a diegetic extension authored by deceased Oceanic
815 passenger Gary Troupwere initially framed as canonical extensions, but later the showrunners partially recanted and claimed they
were not fully connected to the core story. In both cases, Lindelof and
Cuse highlighted that the outsourced creators of these extensions took
the plotlines they outlined in new directions that contradicted the core
canon from the television show; instead, both fell into familiar traditions of new episode storytelling outside the core canonical arc. One
of the chief challenges for creating canonically integrated transmedia for
an ongoing serial is that the demands of running such a complex show
as Lost already tax the energies of producers; thus paratexts are left in
the hands of outsourced writers who frequently fail to meet the expectations of both creators and producers. Creating coherent complex narratives requires a degree of storytelling control that the current systems
of transmedia production seem unable to meet.
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Aside from the video minisodes that appeared online and on dvds
(which were produced by the standard television production personnel),
the transmedia paratext over which the core writers had the most control was arguably its most innovativenamely, the first arg, The Lost
Experience (tle). Running in the summer of 2006, tle was the first extensive arg to emerge during an ongoing mainstream hit television series, and it filled the hiatus between seasons 2 and 3 of the television series. Lasting four months and spanning an array of media across the
world, including websites, podcasts, television appearances, voice mail,
live events, and merchandise, it is also arguably the most ambitious and
extensive arg yet attempted for a television series. It thus established
many of the industrys assumptions about the form and its possibilities
and limitations. tle was conceived by Lost showrunners Lindelof and
Cuse, with leadership from staff writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach, making the arg an integrated aspect of the shows narrative canon and core
production team.
Losts producers have suggested that tle had three main goals: to offer narrative revelations for hard-core fans that would not be addressed
in the show itself, to experiment with innovative forms of storytelling,
and to keep the show active in press coverage and the public consciousness during its summer hiatus (Cuse and Lindelof). The last objective
was clearly successful as the experiments of tle generated a good deal
of press coverage, including a June Entertainment Weekly story teased
on the magazines cover; effectively avoided a summer slump of waning
enthusiasm; and placed args in the mainstream consciousness like never before. As an innovative form of narrative, the lessons learned from
storytelling mistakes and problems outweighed any compelling formal
innovations. tle consistently had to balance the desires of arg players
wanting to be challenged with innovative puzzles and the television fans
clamoring for more direct narrative payoffs. The in-game story of Rachel
Blake investigating the Hanso Foundation rarely resonated as much more
than a skeleton upon which to hang clues, and the games narrative does
not stand alone from the storyworld established in the television series.
The gameplay and immersive experience were too erratic in quality and
sophistication for hard-core arg players, driving many of them away
after the first few weeks and leaving less experienced players to try to
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ing with sponsors such as Jeep, Verizon, and Sprite struck many players
as crass and intrusive, violating the playful spirit that args aim to capture (Mittell, Lost).
As to the goal of revealing narrative mythology for the ongoing television series, the arg proved to be more frustrating than rewarding. The
canonical narrative content was not sufficiently integrated into the television series as a whole, making some players feel as if they had wasted their time on trivia rather than getting a head start on what was to
come during Losts season 3. The biggest revelations in tle came from
the so-called Sri Lanka Video, which included an orientation film featuring Danish industrialist Alvar Hanso, explaining the origins and
mission of the research project known as the Department of Heuristics
and Research on Material Applications (dharma) Initiative, the meaning of the numbers (a central mystery from the shows first two seasons) as being part of an equation predicting the end of the world, and
the numerous other clues that connected directly with the television
canon. The video received more than a million views on YouTube, but
that number is still a small fraction of the shows global television audience. Moreover, its revelations never appeared in the show itself, and
the numbers were given a different (but not contradictory) explanation
in the shows final season. For the fans who had participated in the arg
and already had solved the mystery of the numbers, they felt the shows
new explanation was a slap in the face that undermined fan engagement
by placing the narrative events uncovered in the arg into an ambiguous para-canonical status. In contrast, some of the revelations from tle
were considered unanswered questions by television fans, who were
left unsatisfied with the mythological ambiguity of the shows final season. That the numbers and dharma were only explained in the arg increased these fans frustration over the television shows narrative, as
they wanted to be able to comprehend the show fully without doing
online research. Even for tle players who learned the secrets of the
Sri Lanka Video, that these revelations were never addressed, or subsequently contradicted or displaced, on the television show made the
gameplay more frustrating. In retrospect it was more of a waste of time
rather than a storytelling bonus.
The scaled-down efforts to use args in the Lost franchise in subsequent years suggest that many of these lessons were in fact learned as
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the producers reduced their ambitions to create transmedia experiences that were less robust and complex but ultimately less disappointing
to their target audiences. Lindelof and Cuse told me that they found the
challenges of running an integrated arg within the already complicated television production process too daunting to try again; thus they
scaled back the subsequent args to be less integral to the shows canon.
No matter how enjoyable such games and extensions were to fans, they
often fell short in rewarding the core edict of adding to the franchises
storytelling without taking away from the main television experience.
One of the great contradictions of Lost is that the series built as robust
a mythological universe as was ever devised for television but then undermined the importance of its own mythology by relegating many of
its mysteries to transmedia extensions, or bonus content, rather than
to core storytelling. The show was unmatched in its ability to posit mysteries and encourage fans to immerse themselves expansively into clunky
alternate reality games and poorly paced video games and novels with
the hope of uncovering answers. Yet by the final season, while the show
offered emotional character resolutions and thrilling adventure storytelling, it left many mythological questions unaddressed in the television series itself or was ambiguously vague in its answers. On its own,
I found the shows emotional payoffs and sweeping character arcs sufficiently engaging and entertaining; however, its use of transmedia and
cultivation of a forensic fandom encouraged us to expect more, leading
many fans to revolt against the show in its final hours for not delivering
its answers in a clearly marked package.
This dichotomy between forensic fans watching (and playing) for
coherence and emotional viewers getting swept up in the adventurous
melodrama mirrors one of the shows main thematic structuresthe
contrast between rational and supernatural outlooks as embodied by
the battle between Jack Shephards man of science and John Lockes
man of faith. Even though neither character survives the narrative, it
is clear by the shows conclusion that faith trumps science, with Jack sacrificing himself to the islands mystical forces and endorsing Johns vision of fate and spiritual meaning. In choosing faith over science and in
turn privileging the genre of fantasy adventure over science fiction, Lost
was willing to let many of the shows dangling mysteries go unexplained
as it offered instead a spiritual celebration of Jacks (and by extension,
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our) letting go the need for rational understanding in the shows closing moments. And yet, the shows transmedia strategy still sided with
the rational exploration of the islands mythology, despite its frequently frustrating incoherence. The final dvd released contained a bonus
twelve-minute epilogue video that provided a flood of answers to dangling questions about the island, dharma, the unresolved fate of Walt,
and various other mythological mysteries. The playful video winks at
viewers as a dharma worker chastises the character Ben and says, Wait.
You cant just walk out of here. We deserve answers! And even though
the answers resolve some ambiguity, it becomes clear that this additional content is canonical but considered nonessential, relegated to a paratext simply to appease those hard-core forensic fans who would not follow the finales message to let go.
Thus Losts transmedia seems to follow some clear parameters: use
paratexts to expand access to the storyworld and island mythology, but
keep character arcs and dramas centered on the television mothership.
While this strategy might reward hard-core fans who are willing to expand their narrative consumption across media, it frustrates both transmedia consumers who are underwhelmed by the payoffs and television
fans who do not want to have to do homework to understand their favorite shows. Although I would not claim that most Lost fans who were
left frustrated by the finale had been transmedia consumers, the shows
reliance on transmedia to parcel out answers did set up expectations that
the finale would offer answers based on forensic rationality rather than
spiritual acceptance. Losts commercial and creative successes have established the show as a model for transmedia television and have inspired
numerous clones in both television and paratextual formats, including
Heroes, FlashForward, and The Event. But another case study suggests a
very different approach to television transmedia that seems more modest but ultimately more successful.
Breaking Bad as Character-Driven Transmedia
Mixing riveting suspense and pitch-black comedy, amcs Breaking Bad
is an intense character study of a chemistry teacher who gradually turns
into a drug kingpin. The show most closely resembles a television serial
that the Coen brothers would produce. While Lost used transmedia to
expand its narrative universe outward to the breaking point, Breaking
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Bad demonstrates the alternate vector, creating transmedia to fold in on

itself in a centripetal fashion. Most television shows that have embraced
transmedia aggressively are in fantasy or comedic genres, like Heroes and
The Office. Fantasy and science fiction shows can use transmedia to create more expansive and detailed versions of their storyworlds, which typically are a core appeal within the genre. The emphasis on world building through paratexts is a time-honored strategy for narratives set in
universes with their own scientific or magical properties that beg further investigation and exploration. For comedies, transmedia can be a
site to develop additional gags or highlight throwaway plotlines for secondary characters without disrupting the plot and character arcs of the
television mothership.
While Breaking Bad has not been as aggressive in its use of transmedia, its modest strategies offer an interesting contrast. If Losts expansive transmedia offered new narrative events and broadened the storyworld, Breaking Bads focus has been primarily on character. Its use of
character-based transmedia makes sense given Breaking Bads genre and
narrative strategies; as the show has no underlying mythology or complex
mystery to parse, the transmedia extensions offer virtually no narrative
events that seem particularly relevant to the story as a whole. Likewise,
Breaking Bads storyworld is a fairly realistic version of Albuquerque,
New Mexico, so its transmedia offers almost no attention to the setting itself. This deemphasis on storyworld and plot arcs in its transmedia is partly tied to the shows genre of serious drama, but even the similarly dramatic Mad Men grounds its small excursions into transmedia,
such as its online Cocktail Guide and Fashion Show sites, within its periodized world.
Instead, Breaking Bads transmedia extensions focus on character over
setting or plot, providing additional depth to a show that already features highly realized characters. Most of this transmedia character development focuses on secondary figures from the show rather than on
the main protagonist, Walter White, and highlights the shows comedic
rather than dramatic tone. It offers additional videos and websites illuminating the amusing backgrounds of Hank and Marie Schrader, Brandon
Badger Mayhew, and Saul Goodman, some of the least serious characters in the show (especially in early seasons). The most enjoyable is the
diegetic extension promotional website for Goodmans law firm, serving
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as a dual parody of both ambulance-chasing lawyers and cheesy website

design. Even when Walter is featured in a minisode, it paints the dark
main character in a more comedic light, with the shorts showing him
listening to the pre-wedding sexual hijinks of his future brother-in-law,
Hank, or carrying out a bungled breaking and entering with a druggedout Badger. These minisodes do not contradict the shows plot arcs and
offer a different but compatible comedic tone that tends to be downplayed
on the darker mothership.
Although Breaking Bad lacks the mythological expanses that tend to
encourage tie-in games to explore the storyworlds, the show has spawned
two online mini games that point to another direction for game-based
transmedia. Both were created for amcs website with direct coordination from the shows producers and feature motion comicstyle graphics with an interactive narrative design. The first, The Interrogation,
was launched during the shows third season in the spring of 2010, while
the follow-up, The Cost of Doing Business, was released for both the
web and mobile devices prior to season 4 in the summer of 2011. The
Interrogation places us in the shoes of Drug Enforcement Agency (dea)
agent Hank Schrader as he interrogates a suspected member of a drugsmuggling organization; in The Cost of Doing Business, we play as
Jesse Pinkman, trying to get paid what he is owed from a drug customer.
Neither plotline is canonic to the show, but both feel as if they are plausible moments for the characters in the new episode model common to
tie-in games. Gordon Smith, a writers assistant for the show, scripted the
games and suggests that each game hopefully is true to the characters
as they are on the show, but its not stories that literally take place in the
timetable of the series. We feel like theyre part of the show that somebody
could have experienced at some point, [with events that] had the same feel
of something on the show (Dixon and Gilligan, n. pag., original emphasis). This emphasis on creating extensions that coordinate characters identities and a consistent tone with the show points to a strength of Breaking
Bads transmedia: by downplaying the plot, the extensions work by allowing viewers to spend time with the characters without encouraging
the forensic attention to the story that most canonic extensions require.
The minisodes featuring Jesse are indicative of this approach. His story lines on the show can frequently be quite dark and serious, but his
minisodes focus comedically on his fledgling band and artistic creations
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rather than on his struggles with addiction or his quest for self-discovery
as Walts surrogate son. Most interesting, one video features a hypothetical animated series, Team S.C.I.E.N.C.E., featuring superhero versions of
the characters as created by Jesse, who transformed them into a crimefighting team rather than a burgeoning criminal enterprise. Not only
does this video offer an amusing take on the shows characters for diehard fans, but it also provides a compelling look into Jesses psychology,
exploring how he narrativizes and rationalizes his own experiences, and
positions his impressive artistic skills in relation to his criminal actions.
Nothing that happens in this video is canonical, as it is clearly outside
the storyworld. Perhaps it could be read as a diegetic extension of something Jesse would make, but more likely it is a hypothetical game of speculation, playing with genre, tone, and production mode while retaining
a consistency of character. As with most of Breaking Bads transmedia,
such videos draw you into the core television series and offer some additional depth rather than expanding the storyworlds scope and breadth.
All of the shows extensions seem as though they could easily be canonical, if only because their modest scope rarely intersects with the main
thrust of the television story, but they do not invite the type of intense
dissection of plotlines typical of Losts transmedia.
None of Breaking Bads transmedia extensions reward viewers with
trailheads into deeper narrative experiences, flesh out the fictional universe, or relay any seemingly vital story events. Instead, they allow us to
spend more time with characters to whom weve grown close over the
course of the television serial. While they may not seem as innovative or
immersive as Losts paratexts, Breaking Bads transmedia may even work
better as extensions to the core narrative by playing to the strengths of
serial television and establishing connections to the characters. Nobody
exploring Breaking Bads transmedia would have their expectations of the
show transformed or misdirected as they are clearly positioned as supporting, nonessential extras rather than as true transmedia plotting.
But in their modest success, I think they more effectively accomplish the
goal of rewarding viewers who consume them and not punishing those
who do not. And as we see further experimentation and innovation with
transmedia storytelling, Breaking Bad and Lost both offer valuable lessons in how to balance viewer expectations, canonical concerns, and the
relative importance of events, storyworld, and characters.
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What Is versus What If? Transmedia

In the contrast between Lost and Breaking Bads paratextual strategies,
we can see two larger tendencies that typify the practices of transmedia
storytelling, dueling approaches that we might label What Is versus
What If? The former is embodied on television by Lost and fits with
Jenkinss definition of the form as exemplified by The Matrix. What Is
transmedia seeks to extend the fiction canonically, explaining the universe with coordinated precision and hopefully expanding viewers understanding and appreciation of the storyworld. This narrative model encourages forensic fandom with the promise of eventual revelations once
all the pieces are put together. The emblematic example of a What Is
paratext might be Losts jigsaw puzzles, which literally require assembling all the pieces of four separate puzzles to reveal extra narrative information hidden within a glow-in-the-dark map. If one goal of consuming a story is mastery of its fictional universe, then What Is transmedia
scatters narrative understanding across a variety of extensions so that a
collective team of die-hard fans can piece together the elaborate puzzle.
The majority of official storytelling extensions seem designed to fulfill
the goals of What Is transmedia, and the measuring stick critics and
fans use to assess those paratexts typically revolves around canonical
coordination and narrative integration. However, an opposite mode of
transmedia points to different narrative goals and markers of success
namely, the What If? extension as suggested by Breaking Bads Team
S.C.I.E.N.C.E. This approach to transmedia poses hypothetical possibilities rather than canonical certainties, inviting viewers to imagine alternative stories and approaches to storytelling that are distinctly not to
be treated as potential canon. The goal for What If? transmedia is to
launch off the mothership into parallel dimensions, with connections
foregrounding issues of tone, mood, character, or style more than continuing with canonical plots and storyworlds. We are never meant to believe that Jesse really created a comic and animated series fictionalizing
his friends into a superhero team, but we are presented with the possibility that he could have and invited to imagine what would happen if he
did. This style of hypothetical narrative paratext highlights the fictionality of all narrative: there is nothing more real in the characterization
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tation of him as Doctor Chemistry, fighting off zombies for the right to
be awesome, for both representations are works of fiction, albeit with
one subsidiary to the other. Just as we embrace serial narrative for its
creation of compelling storyworlds in which we can immerse ourselves,
What If? transmedia multiplies the possibilities of those fictions into
the realm of hypothetical variations and transmutations.4
Both What Is and What If? transmedia can best be seen as vectors or tendencies rather than as distinct categories, with fluidity and
blur between the dual approaches. For instance, we might think of the
Lost tie-in novel Bad Twin as conceived as a What Is diegetic extension that transformed through its troubled production process into a
What If? hypothetical paratext. Many tie-in novels and games function as non-canonical What If? paratexts but lack the playful variation and imagination of Team S.C.I.E.N.C.E.; instead, they often function as failed What Is extensions, setting up viewers to search futilely
for narrative continuities and canon but forcing them to come up empty. Both transmedia tendencies embrace a ludic narrative quality, but
they draw upon different style of play: What Is transmedia work in the
same way as puzzles, with proper solutions and final revelations, while
What If? extensions feature more of a sense of dressing up or performative role-playing, spinning off scenarios with no real outcome or canonical narrative function.
We can see important precedents for both of these transmedia modes
in the realm of fan productions and consumption practices. Some fan
cultures produce paratexts that are clearly in the What Is realm. One
example is what Bob Rehak terms blueprint culture, as typified by the
detailed schematics of the technology found in the Star Trek universe.
This strategy of mapping and cataloguing the canonical universe has
boomed with the rise of wikis, such as Lostpedia or Star Treks Memory
Alpha, with fans collaborating in creating encyclopedic documentation
of a storyworld. Such modes of affirmative fan engagement prioritize
canonical authenticity, seek narrative mastery, and search for connections and theories to fill narrative gapsall facets prioritized by What
Is transmedia.
The more well-known models of fan productivity follow the What
If? paradigm, with fan fiction, remix videos, and other forms of fan creativity making no claims to canonical authenticity but playfully positing
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a range of hypothetical narrative possibilities. Such paratexts are valued

for their transformational expansiveness, thinking beyond the terrain
of canon by proposing possibilities that clearly could not be real within the fictional universewhether building on subtexts that could never be explicitly represented or offering intertextual crossovers to other
franchises or real life. Some What If? fan creations do offer stories that
strive to seamlessly fit within the canonical mothership or offer alternate
interpretations that fans may view as more in keeping with their vision
of a series than the ongoing narrative does. However, such fan creativity nearly always positions itself as outside the core canon and embraces
its hypothetical possibilities, even when they might be regarded as more
satisfying than the official narrative canon. This tension speaks to the
urge for some fans to create their own stories that mimic the canonical,
regardless of authorial endorsement or in-show confirmation, and that
at times even masquerade as official licensed transmedia (rnebring).
If fans step in to create pseudo-canonical What Is transmedia, there
is potential tension in the opposite direction as well. As fans primarily
have occupied the terrain of What If? transmedia, there is legitimate
concern that the industry producing such extensions could work to coopt fannish creativity and close down the realm of the hypothetical to
fan producers. For instance, Sci-Fi Network (now called SyFy channel)
offered an online video site for Battlestar Galactica fans to create their
own remixes but only within the channels chosen clips and usage policies, thus effectively constraining the free play of What If? creativity
(see Russo). But Id contend that the official production of a video such
as Team S.C.I.E.N.C.E. celebrates the fannish What If? impulse without closing down possibilities and validates it by using the official talent of the shows cast members to make the hypothetical feel more authentic and fully realized. While fans cannot get Aaron Paul to record
voice-over for their creative work, the short does open up new raw materials and hypothetical directions for future fan transmedia without
enforcing a hierarchy between licensed and unlicensed material around
the question of canon.
Jenkinss model of What Is coordinated transmedia, where plot coherence is distributed across media, is an exciting possibility for storytellers and deserves the attention it has gotten. But for transmedia properties
with a clear mothership in serialized television, it may be an untenable
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model as the commercial system cannot effectively sustain a franchise

that risks eroding television ratings points for viewers who are uninterested in straying beyond a single medium, not to mention the storytelling challenges of crafting complex plots that can function both over time
and across media. I would point to the comparatively unexplored realm
of What If? transmedia television as a potentially more productive avenue for serial television to develop, building on its strengths of character and mood over plotting and mythology, as well as tapping into the
clear fan interest in imagining non-canonical possibilities. Potentially,
the proliferation of hypothetical transmedia narrative offers another dimension of complexity that has yet to be discovered.

Notes
1. See Evans for an in-depth account of transmedia television.
2. See Askwith; Rose; and Smith for detailed accounts of Losts transmedia
strategies.
3. For more on my role within Lost fandom, see Mittell, Sites of Participation.
4. See Sconce for a discussion of the What If? impulse within television serials.

Works Cited
Askwith, Ivan. Television 2.0: Reconceptualizing Television as an Engagement
Medium. Masters thesis mit, 2007. pdf file. May 1, 2012.
Cuse, Carlton, and Damon Lindelof. Personal interview. March 23, 2010.
Dixon, Kelley, and Vince Gilligan. Breaking Bad Insider Podcast for Episode 409.
Sony Pictures Television. September 13, 2011. Web. May 1, 2012.
Evans, Elizabeth. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life.
London: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Gray, Jonathan. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts.
New York: New York University Press, 2010. Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
New York University Press, 2006. Print.
. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. FirstPerson: New Media as Story,
Performance, and Game. Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge
ma: mit Press, 2004. 11830. Print.
. Transmedia 202: Further Reflections. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. August 1,
2011. Web. May 1, 2012.
Mittell, Jason. Lost in an Alternate Reality. Flow. June 16, 2006. Web. May 1, 2012.

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. Sites of Participation: Wiki Fandom and the Case of Lostpedia.

Transformative Works and Cultures 3 (Fall 2009). Web. May 1, 2012.
rnebring, Henrik. Alternate Reality Gaming and Convergence Culture.
International Journal of Cultural Studies 10.4 (December 1, 2007): 44562. Print.
Rehak, Bob. Franz Joseph and Star Treks Blueprint Culture. Graphic Engine
(blog). Web. March 11, 2012.
Rose, Frank. The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking
Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2011. Print.
Russo, Julie Levin. User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of
Convergence. Cinema Journal 48.4 (2009): 12530. Print.
Sconce, Jeffrey. What If? Charting Televisions New Textual Boundaries. Television
after tv: Essays on a Medium in Transition. Ed. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson.
Durham nc: Duke University Press, 2004. 93112. Print.
Smith, Aaron. Transmedia Storytelling in Television 2.0. Honors thesis, Middlebury
College, 2009. Web. May 1, 2012.

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12

A Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling

colin b. harvey

Transmedia storytelling refers to the endeavor of conveying connected

stories using a variety of media platforms. These stories can either be understood in isolation or viewed contingently with regard to those other stories that share the same storyworld but are conveyed using different media. Such media might include novels, films, video games, comic
books, websites, alternate reality games (args), and, increasingly, userdriven content (udc) of various kinds.
Henry Jenkins explicitly differentiates transmedia storytelling from
licensed cross-media storytelling but allows for pre-digital precedents.
Stephen Dinehart echoes this viewpoint in his belief that [t]ransmedia
storytelling is not marketing and merchandising based extensions into
an existing franchise (n. pag.), suggesting instead that the term should
be used to refer to franchises envisaged as cross-media from the outset.
Dinehart contends that true transmedia storytelling enable[s] the imagination via story-driven extensions in a world in which a player seeks
to be further immersed (n. pag.).
In this chapter I argue that transmedia storytelling is more fruitfully
understood as a broad category to describe instances of convergent storytelling but also varieties of pre-digital, licensed tie-in production that
anticipate convergence, as well as contemporary cross-media production
that incorporates elements of the analogue and the digital. I contend that
there are significant parallels between these kinds of narrativizingwith
regard to production, organization, and receptionto make grouping
them into the same genus a logical course of action. At the same time, I
propound a method for differentiating kinds of transmedia storytelling
from one another rooted in the idea of what I term legally proscribed
memory.
I argue that varieties of cross-media storytelling are linked by their
reliance on memory not only in terms of what a creator asks the audi278

ence to remember but also in terms of what a creator requires the audience to forget. In all cases of professional transmedia production, the
use of memory is circumscribed by legally binding documents that dictate what elements of a franchise can and cannot be used and in what
context. This idea is not new. In 1950 the renowned sociologist Maurice
Halbwachs went some way in articulating the interrelationship between
the law and remembering (140, 16162, 164).
In the course of this chapter, I use this concept of legally proscribed
memory as a way of differentiating kinds of transmedia storytelling in
the form of a taxonomy, drawing on theoretical positions from the diverse field of memory studies as appropriate. I use theorist and practitioner Christy Denas categories for transmedia writing as a starting
point before going on to utilize my own insights as a writer of officially
licensed spin-off material for the Doctor Who and Highlander franchises, produced by the British company Big Finish under license from the
British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios
(mgm), and Davis-Panzer Productions, respectively. I also discuss how
the entries within a franchise such as Tron might be classified according to the taxonomy I propose.
Transmedia Storytelling and the
Importance of Memory
Central to transmedia storytelling is consistencyperhaps of scenario, of plot, of characterexpressed through narrative and iconography.
What differentiates varieties of transmedia storytelling from one another is the extent to which such consistency is managed by the owners of the property in question and by other active agents in the transmedial process. Crucial to these processes are the relative power of the
various active agents involved in the transmedia storytelling process to
deploy, erase, or otherwise alter existing world-internal elements of the
franchise in question.
Understood in these terms, the role of memory is central to the transmedia storytelling process. Does the mythology of the urtext allow for
a character to behave in a particular way? At what point did a specific
battle occur in the spin-off comics plotline? In transmedia storytelling,
what is remembered is crucialand so is what is forgotten. Furthermore
elements that are subject to non-memory (Reading 383) are also vital.
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The varieties of transmedia storytelling that exist emerge from transactions between owners of intellectual property (ip) rights, in-house operatives, licensees, and, of course, consumers. These legally framed interactions produce different kinds of collective or fan memory and
enable us to differentiate one kind of transmedial storytelling from another. As Joachim J. Savelsberg and Ryan D. King suggest, Law affects
collective memory indirectly by regulating the production, accessibility, and dissemination of information about the past (189). This assessment is evident from the verdicts of trials and the subsequent reportage
of such cases, in government statutes, and in licensing agreements that
determine the nature of storyworld franchises and their various transmedia extensions. Barbara Misztal similarly observes the extent to which
collective memory is shaped by the legal system (2021).
Christy Denas Categories of Transmedia Writing
Christy Dena is an academic and practitioner working actively with industry to explore ideas of transmedia storytelling and producing her own
transmedia work. In her overview of transmedia writing for if:book, the
weblog of the Institute for the Future of the Book, Dena makes the point
that [t]ransmedia is not synonymous with digital media, as it often involves both digital and non-digital media (n. pag., original emphasis).
This observation recalls the early work on transmediality undertaken
by Marsha Kinder in which she explores the interplay between the digital and the analogue in childrens consumption of media and provides
the basis for much contemporary discussion of transmediality (3986).
Indeed, while some aspects of contemporary digitally based storytelling
afford experiences unique to digitality, anyone who grew up in the 1970s
and 1980s reading spin-off novels and comics or playing with action figures will recognize many techniques from todays more formally identified transmedia storytelling. Such techniques find their antecedence
in an era when digital technology was far less prevalent and indeed date
from a still earlier era.
Dena then proceeds to outline four key methods to have emerged in
the area of transmedia writing as the field currently stands. Dena identifies one approach as a collection of mono-medium stories. Typically
in this approach individual components produced in different mediaa
film, a book, or a game, for instancecontribute distinct but related sto280

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ries that add up to the wider storyworld. Dena observes that this phenomenon is different from the pre-transmedia paradigm in which a
dominant story in a single medium spins off into other media, often in
the form of adaptations rather than continuations. Certainly this distinction, which numerous commentators have made, does seem important.
Transmedia storytelling cannot refer to the process of adaptation, as we
already have a complex lexicon to describe that particular process, and
the often connected but distinct process of dramatization.1
Denas second category is a collection of media that tells one story
and refers to a narrative spread across multiple media forms. To understand the totality of the story, the user needs to engage with all parts of
the story, and it is distinct from the first category, where each element is
capable of standing alone. Dena suggests that for creators working with
this second category an understanding of interactivitythat is, the dynamic means by which consumers engage with the various aspects of
the storyworldis paramount.
Denas third and fourth categories of transmedia writer skills are both
concerned with timing rather than form and focus on the point at which
the transmedia world is initiated. She identifies expansion analysis as the
process through which an existing mono-media property is expanded
into a transmedial property. According to Dena, it involves fixing the
world-internal history of the characters and settings as already established, identifying essential aspects of the storyworld, and pinpointing
any areas yet to be explored. This process then results in the creation of
a transmedia bible, ensuring continuity in terms of any transmedia expansion. Importantly, expansion analysis would seem to directly contradict Dineharts suggestion that transmedia storytelling is not descriptive
of the enlargement of an extant franchise.
The fourth category Dena specifies are those projects designed to be
transmedia from the beginning. Dena poses a series of questions that
the writer in this situation will need to address: which characters operate
in which media, which characters and settings suit sequential media or
interactive platforms, the issues concerning moving audiences between
media, and which elements are essential and which ones are tertiary.
Again, a bible results from this process.
As a developmental tool for transmedia storytellers, Denas categories supply a useful foundation for thinking about the broad categories
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of transmedia storytelling that can occur. As I show, a number of existing transmedia enterprises simultaneously incorporate a variety of
approaches accounted for by Denas categories. At a fundamental level, however, all are dictated by the degree of control afforded by the ip
holder to the licensee and/or the consumers of the transmedia artifact
in question. From the perspective of the transmedia storyteller, such legally framed relationships are central to the question of what can and
cannot be remembered.
Transmedia Categories
The multiplicity of media types and the diverse ways in which they can
be used in transmedia storytelling would make any attempt at a mediumled taxonomy hopelessly unwieldy. The taxonomy I propose instead uses
legal relationships as its basis. It comprises six categories, with the first
identifying the intellectual property in question. The second category,
directed transmedia storytelling, refers to those transmedial extensions
over which the ip holder exercises close control. It might refer equally
to material produced by the ip holders themselves or to licensed material produced under close supervision by a third party. Remembering, in
this instance, is tightly controlled by the ip holder. The third category, devolved transmedia storytelling, suggests more of a degree of flexibility on
the part of the ip holders relationship to the material being produced. In
this instance, while core ideas and themes might be maintained, certain
aspects of the established continuity can be forgotten or otherwise misremembered or reimagined within the terms of the licensing agreement.
The fourth category, detached transmedia storytelling, refers to those
works inspired by a storyworld but that are not licensed by the ip holder
and over which the ip holder does not therefore exercise legal control. The
lack of legal sanction means that some elements, such as names of characters or places used within the storyworld, might be deliberately misremembered in order to avoid infringement of copyright. However, archetypes, plot developments, or events within the storyworlds continuity
could be covertly referred to using these replacement names and terms.
The fifth category, directed transmedia storytelling with user participation, is used to describe content produced by consumers of the franchise that is circumscribed by the owners of the ip or the license holders.
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er from which the user can then generate their own stories, as is the case
with The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards.2 Licensed toys, a material manifestation of such resources, might be equally understood as falling under this category. Again, in this instance memory is strictly controlled, at least in terms of the available iconography if not of the stories
that might be told.
Directed transmedia storytelling with user participation is distinct
from the final category, emergent user-generated transmedia storytelling,
which is used to describe varieties of unofficial transmedia storytelling that are not licensed. Such fan fiction might occur across media. In
some cases characters, places, and events from the storyworld continuity
might be remembered with fidelity, but there is not necessarily any requirement on the part of the fan-creator to abide by these rules because
the work is not officially sanctioned. Content appearing on the websites
fanfiction.net, Twisting the Hellmouth, and The Unknowable Room would
all fall under this category.
Doctor Who
The science fiction and fantasy series Doctor Who began in 1963 and
ran until 1989 (bbc). A coproduction between the bbc and Universal
aired in 1996 in the shape of a television movie, but the anticipated series
did not appear because of lackluster U.S. viewing figures. In 2005, the
bbc successfully relaunched the series, which is now produced by bbc
Cardiff. In its new iteration, Doctor Who is now in its seventh series and
has spawned two successful bbc-produced showsthe adult-oriented
Torchwood (bbc) and The Sarah Jane Adventures (bbc), which is aimed
at children. A further television spin-off titled k9 appeared in 2009 but
with no involvement from the bbc (Disney Europe, Park Entertainment,
Stewart & Wall Entertainment, and Screen Australia producers).
Meanwhile, the Doctor Who television program has always spun off
merchandise, running the gamut from ice lollies (popsicles) to comic
strips to novelizations of television episodes to the so-called Dalekmania
of the 1960s. The Doctor Who Annuals produced by World Distributors
ran from 1966 to 1986 and were resurrected when the 2005 series began.
Two Doctor Who feature films, both starring Peter Cushing as the lead
character, appeared in 1965 and 1966 and were based on stories from the
television series (see Richards 38081). However, many of these spin-off
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stories bore only fleeting fidelity to the urtext of the television series,
contradicting such facts as the design of the Doctors Tardis or the origin of the eponymous hero.
In 1991, Virgin Publishing Books purchased W. H. Allen, the company
responsible for producing officially licensed novel versions of Doctor Who
stories. Since the license still existed but no more stories were available to
adapt, Virgin was able to produce original Doctor Who novels (Richards
379). These books in the New Adventures series were seen as the official
continuation of the series and featured contributions from such writers
as Paul Cornell and Mark Gatiss, both of whom went on to write for the
revived television series (and in Gatisss case, to appear in it). Russell T
Davies, showrunner for the first four series of the new Doctor Who and
creator of both Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, also wrote for
the Virgin series of novels. That the novel Human Nature should subsequently be adapted into an episode of the revived Doctor Who series
is suggestive of the extent to which spin-offery can inform the wider
universe of the storyworld in question (see Cornell). It also suggests that
the increasingly porous relationship between merchandising and urtext
is important in terms of both production and consumption.
The bbc has effectively split Doctor Who into two related brands. One
strand is allied to the post-2005 television program and manifested as
original novels produced by bbc Books, original audio stories produced
by AudioGO, a toy range manufactured by Character Options, and recently video games for the Nintendo Wii and ds platforms, with a further
video game, The Eternity Clock, released for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation
Vita, and personal computer (pc) in 2012. A key feature of this strand of
Doctor Who is a series of fictional tie-in websites that are timed to go live
at crucial points during the run of the program. As such, Doctor Who has
come to constitute a paradigmatic example of transmedia storytelling for
the bbc (see Perryman 22). This observation is borne out by the fact that
other high-profile bbc shows, such as Merlin and Sherlock, have sought
to emulate Doctor Whos approach in their attitude to transmediality;
although, as Evans has observed, the BBCs spy series Spooks pioneered
transmedial expansion via fiction-based websites (see Evans 910).
The other Doctor Who brand is constituted by the license that the
British company Big Finish possesses. In 1998, Big Finish won the rights
to produce officially licensed Doctor Who audio stories (see Cook 11).
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These dramas would go on to feature five of the actors to have played the
role of the Doctor, as well as other actors reprising roles from the television series. In common with the Virgin series, a number of Big Finish
writersincluding Paul Cornell, Mark Gatiss, and Joseph Lidster
have gone on to work on the revived Doctor Who and its stable mates
Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Big Finish has also produced
an additional range of spin-off audios and books set in the Doctor Who
universe, as well as licensed material for other franchises such as Stargate
and Dark Shadows.
In terms of Doctor Who, what the various layers of spin-off media
have created isarguablya very complex example of transmedia storytelling, spanning some fifty years of continuity and canonicity. This
complexity derives precisely from the nature of Doctor Whos fantasy
content. Because the fundamental conceit of Doctor Who is that of time
traveland on occasion visits to alternate realitiesit is entirely possible within these broad boundaries to include all iterations of the Doctor
Who franchise, no matter how seemingly contradictory. In fact, some
spin-off material actively engages in this process of suturing together transmedial aspects of the Doctor Who franchise, deploying explanations rooted in the fantasy of the series where appropriate (see Harvey,
Canon 35).
The post-2005 version of the program itself offers a further degree
of flexibility in the form of the Time War, an epochal event in which
proceedings from the programs past episodes may or may not have occurred or have been otherwise altered. The Time War not only provided Russell T Davies with a useful means of introducing the program to
a new audience after a nine-year absence from television but also acts as
another mechanism by which both the fan base and authors of spin-off
material can negotiate past events (31).
The restrictions on writers working on Big Finishs Doctor Who license depend on the nature of the arrangement between Big Finish and
the bbc and on the specific nature of the commission. The license from
the bbc to Big Finish stipulates that nothing from the post-2005 iteration of the series can be referred to in the Big Finish stories. The implicit intention is that the Big Finish stories should exist in a state of nonmemory in relation to the contemporary television seriesthat is, the
other Doctor Who brand. For Reading, non-memory is descriptive of
Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling

285

events that occur outside of the record; these events have not been forgotten because there is no trace of them (383). In other words, the Big
Finish stories have not forgotten the new series; instead, the new series, as well as what occurs in the past of the new television series, simply has not happened yet. (At least that is the official intention; but in
actual fact subtle and not-so-subtle references creep into the Big Finish
stories. For instance, the Daleks ability to elevate, variously hinted at
throughout the shows classic run but exploited to spectacular effect during the Russell T Davies era, becomes a recurring aspect of Big Finishs
later audio stories, while the format of the Paul McGann audio stories
owes much to the pacey approach of its television counterpart. So traces are evident.) Non-remembering also extends to the bbcs giving the
go-ahead to Big Finish on story ideas in order to prevent the latter from
compromising the television production.
A writer on Big Finishs Doctor Who is allowed to remember certain
aspects of the classic shows past but not others (see Harvey, Canon 31
35). Remembering is circumscribed by the nature of copyright arrangements appertaining to specific elements of the shows past, particularly
with regard to characters and monsters from the classic show. However,
certain Big Finish commissions will be founded on the basis that permission to use a specific element has been sought and granted. Beyond
this stipulation, writers must remain true to characterization established
in the urtext of the classic iteration of the program. Within these limitations, however, Big Finish writers and producers are awarded considerable flexibility regarding the kinds of stories they can tell using the resources of the classic iteration of the Doctor Who franchise.
In building a taxonomy of transmedia storytelling, the Doctor Who
franchise in its division into two distinct brands offers a useful point of
comparison. We can characterize the post-2005 material over which the
bbc exercises close control as directed transmedia storytelling. The Big
Finish materialand preceding spin-off material from the 1960s onward, including the Annuals (World) and Virgin Books from the 1990s
is perhaps better described as devolved transmedia storytelling, whereby the bbc lays down parameters but largely leaves the licensee company
to pursue its own narrative agenda. In terms of remembering, directed transmedia storytelling requires of the writer and production team
greater fidelity to the memory of the urtext; devolved transmedia sto286

Harvey

Intellectual
property

Direct
transmedia
storytelling

Devolved
transmedia
storytelling

Detached
transmedia
storytelling

Directed
transmedia
storytelling
with user
participation

Emergent
usergenerated
transmedia
storytelling

Doctor
Who

Spinoff
novels from
bbc Books;
audio books;
video games

Doctor
Who audio
plays and
prose fiction
licensed to
Big Finish;
Doctor Who
Annuals
published
by World

Faction Paradox novels,

graphic
novels, and
audio plays;
K9 television series

Doctor Who
Comic Maker
on official
website; Doctor Who toys
produced by
Character
Options;
licensed
role-playing
game

Fan fiction as
both films and
prose; modded
role-playing
game

Fig. 12.1. The Doctor Who franchise.

rytelling demands specific remembering but allows flexibility of recall

with regard to areas of world-internal ambiguity in the urtext. It should
be noted that the terms refer not to the position of third-party producers in the creation of transmedial storytelling but to the degree of control exercised by the ip holders.
Doctor Who would seem to fulfill Denas concept of an expansion
analysis form of transmedia storytelling, whereby the urtext of the television program has been expanded over time into numerous other media. While it is predominantly true, the longevity of the franchise means
other kinds of transmedia narrativizing also occur. The Faction Paradox
stories are a transmedial spin-off from a Doctor Who spin-off novel that
legally cannot refer to bbc-owned characters or scenarios, although the
stories do allude to very similar characters and stories (Tardis Data Core).
As such, Faction Paradox represents an intriguing deliberate misremembering of the Doctor Who urtext and can be situated as detached transmedia storytelling in our taxonomy.
Highlander
By comparison, the development of the Highlander franchise, though
considerably newer than that of Doctor Who, is also complex. The first
Highlander film appeared in 1986 to a mixed critical response (Walker
380). A poorly received sequel titled Highlander II: The Quickening, which
Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling

287

contradicted events from the first movie, appeared in 1990. Another sequel, called Highlander III: The Sorcerer, was released in 1994. This second sequel contradicted the events of both the original film and the first
sequel. A further level of complexity was added in a directors cut of
Highlander II that is considered canon by a section of Highlander fandom (There Can Only Be One). A television series ignored all the sequels
but incorporated somebut not allelements of the original film and
spawned its own short-lived televisual spin-off (There Can Only Be the
One). Another series of films spun off from the television series and attempted to retcon the events of the first film.3
Additional spin-offs included a well-received feature-length anime,
an animated television series for children, a comic book series from
Dynamite, a Flash-based online series, and video games for the zx
Spectrum and Atari Jaguar. A role-playing game intended for ps3, Xbox
360, and Windows was canceled in December 2010.
Big Finishs permission to produce Highlander audio stories is one of
a number of more recent American licenses awarded to the company. In
this case, the long-running television series constitutes the urtext from
which the audio spin-offs must draw their identity in terms of both characters and continuity. However, because the television series incorporated elements from the original 1986 film, practitioners working on the Big
Finish audios were able to tap into this resource. Different writers chose
to remember different aspects of the mythology, some explicit and some
more discreet. For instance, for the fourth episode of the first audio series titled Highlander: Kurgan Rising, the writers Cavan Scott and Mark
Wright chose to bring back the Kurgan character, who was the chief
enemythe Big Badfrom the original motion picture. For my story, the second episode in Big Finishs audio series titled Highlander: Love
and Hate, I brought back the antique shop owned by Duncan MacLeod,
the central character played by Adrian Paul in the television series, subsequent feature films, and audio productions.
The audio stories had to remain consistent with not only the preceding television series but also the feature films that came afterward in the
continuity. Big Finishs contract with mgm and Davis-Panzer is more
restrictive because in the case of Highlander, despite the multiple iterations of the franchise, the television version has become the dominant
brand identity and the version to be remembered. In this case, then, Big
288

Harvey

Intellectual
property

Directed
transmedia
storytelling

Devolved
transmedia
storytelling

Highlander

Highlander
television
series; Highlander television movies;
Highlander
audio plays
produced by
Big Finish;
Highlander
novels;
Highlander
The Game
(cancelled);
Highlander
comic licensed
to Dynamite

Highlander
the Animated Series;
Highlander:
The Last of
MacLeods
video game

Detached
transmedia
storytelling

Directed
transmedia
storytelling
with user
participation

Emergent
usergenerated
transmedia
storytelling

Highlander
massively
multiplayer
online roleplaying game
(cancelled)

Fan fiction

Fig. 12.2. The Highlander franchise.

Finishs Highlander output might be understood much more as directed

transmedia storytelling in contrast to the devolved transmedia storytelling of Big Finishs Doctor Who output across audio and prose. Arguably,
devolved transmedia storytelling in the early history of the Highlander
franchise led to multiple, continuity-contradicting iterations; thus directed transmedia storytelling has become the dominant mode in relation
to the contemporary control of the Highlander franchise. The animated television series from 1994 and the video game based upon it constitute examples of devolved transmedia storytelling in relationship to the
Highlander franchise.
Tron
Tron would seem to constitute a paradigmatic example of contemporary
transmedia storytelling, specifically of the kind Jenkins refers to when
he circumscribes transmedia storytelling as a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery
channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience (n. pag., original emphases).
Taxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling

289

The original Tron movie was a fantasy adventure featuring pioneering special effects. The film tells the story of Kevin Flynn, played by Jeff
Bridges, a brilliant programmer who is sucked into the video game of his
own devising in what Farah Mendlesohn would term a portal fantasy
(158). Here, the Flynn character must band together with the ace warrior Tron to help defeat the Master Computer Program. In 2003, an official sequel was launched in the form of a game for pc, Tron 2.0 (Monolith
Productions), and a comic book, Tron: Ghost in the Machine (Walker,
Jones and De Martinis). A range of tie-in action figures was also released.
The game and comic book told the story of Jethro (Jet) Bradley, son of
the original character, who returns to the realm of the Tron video game.
In 2010, Disney launched the high-profile film Tron: Legacy, a further
transmedial sequel to the original movie that again starred Jeff Bridges
as Kevin Flynn. The video game Tron: Evolution (Propaganda Games)
and the comic book Tron: Betrayal (Nitz, Matsuda, and Tong) were also
launched, along with a range of tie-in toys. An animated television series called Tron: Uprising aired from May 2012 to January 2013. The 2010
Tron continuation erases the memory of the 2003 video game sequel, associated comic book, and toy range. The 2003 material is effectively nonremembered, at least by the producers if not a portion of the fan base.
The Tron films and tie-ins are not only an example of Denas expansion analysis, in that the approach draws on an existing premise, characters, and events established in the 1982 film, but also something that has
been designed as a transmedia approach from the beginning, at least in
terms of the 2010 material. Darren Hedges, the games director, makes
abundantly clear that the filmmakers and the game team wanted to
have a trans-media experience and have the film and game narrative tie
together rather than retelling the games story in the video game medium (McCabe 52). Even with a close level of integration between the development of the film, game, and comic book, some fans have identified
contradictions between the comic book and film (tron Wiki).
Clearly those involved in the creation of the 2010 Tron material considered themselves to be working on a transmedial project. This perspective further problematizes Dineharts view that existing products cannot
be transformed into transmedial stories but that they must be designed
in that fashion from the outset. Arguably, Tron: Legacy, Tron: Evolution,
and Tron: Betrayal can be conceived of as a new transmedia endeavor, yet
290

Harvey

Intellectual
property

Directed
transmedia
storytelling

Tron; Tron:
Legacy

Tron: Evolution video

game; Tron:
Betrayal
comic; Tron:
Uprising tv
show

Devolved
transmedia
storytelling

Detached
transmedia
storytelling

Directed
transmedia
storytelling
with user
participation

Emergent
usergenerated
transmedia
storytelling

Tron toys;
Tron alternate
reality game

Fan fiction

Fig. 12.3. The Tron franchise.

this view neglects the memory of the original Tron that has been handed down and informs the newer iterations of the brand, from the worldinternal of the new material displayed in the film, video game, and comic book through to associated marketing.
Equally, according to Dineharts position, the post-2005 Doctor Who
material constitutes transmedia storytelling, but the other side of the
license does not, even though both examples aim to enable the imagination via story-driven extensions in a world in which a player seeks
to be further immersed (n. pag.). Again, the movement of some writers
working on both kinds of spin-off product between the two varieties, as
well as the movement of writers from spin-off material to urtext, is worth
noting at this point. We can presume commonalities of process on this
basis and commonalities in terms of the skill sets of those involved in
the production of these different kinds of material.
Transmedia storytelling is, by its very nature, dependent upon the interactions between manifold types of media. As Dena has observed, it often
involves both the digital and the analogue; I would further argue that
just as there are examples that are exclusively digital, so in the past there
existed exclusively analogue examples of transmedia storytelling. The
multiplicity of media forms involved and the sheer number of resulting
interactions that can occur render attempts at adumbrating a mediumled taxonomy impossible, necessitating another approach.
As I have demonstrated, the role of memory is central to the activity
of transmedia storytelling. The legal owner(s) of the franchise in quesTaxonomy of Transmedia Storytelling

291

tion control the extent to which their in-house operatives, licensees, and
ultimately the consumer base are afforded access to these memories.
Legally binding contracts circumscribe what can and cannot be done in
terms of remembering, forgetting, non-remembering, and misremembering the plot events, characters, and settings that writers and producers can deploy and that can link one entry in a transmedial franchise to
another. These restrictions are consistent with Halbwachss belief that
the law supplies a framework through which groups collective memories are discursively constructed (see Reading 385).
In the case of transmedia storytelling, the laws impact on collective memory is more explicit than Savelsberg and King observe (189).
Licensing agreements offer up legally sanctioned memories that can be
used to determine one kind of transmedia storytelling from another and
that reflect approaches being pursued by industry in a number of contexts, even if the individuals and organizations in question do not necessarily articulate these processes in these terms. Conceiving of transmedia storytelling in terms of legally proscribed memory affords a way
of understanding how legal directives affect the stories that are told and
the ways in which they are understood by those purchasing and engaging with such material. This conception in turn enables the creation of
the taxonomy I have outlined, one that is formulated around the relationships between the various agents directly involved in the creation
of transmedia stories: ip holders, in-house operatives, licensees, and,
in some instances, the audience themselves. These relationships, rather than the particular medium being deployed at any specific point, can
help illuminate the particular character of transmedia storytelling in all
its manifold forms.

Notes
1. It is worth observing that the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers
is home to many individuals who work on licensed material that are sometimes
adaptations and sometimes continuations.
2. The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards were authorized by Lucasfilm and
undertaken by AtomFilms from 2002 until their discontinuation in 2012
(StarWarsFanpedia).
3. The term retcon is a shortened version of retroactive continuity and origi292

Harvey

nally derives from Tupper. Both creators and fan circles of pulp fiction in various media widely use it to describe the process by which the existing continuity
of a fictional world is modified, perhaps to enable the inclusion of sequels or
the privileging of a specific plot point.

Works Cited
bbc. Doctor Who Comic Maker. 2011. Web. December 30, 2011.
bbc Worldwide. Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock Teaser Trailer. December 9, 2011.
Web. December 12, 2011.
Cook, Benjamin. Doctor Who: The New Audio Adventures. London: Big Finish,
2003. Print.
Cornell, Paul. Human Nature. London: Virgin, 1995. Print.
Dena, Christy. Do You Have a Big Stick? if:book Australia. February 7, 2011. Web.
December 17, 2011.
Dinehart, Stephen. Transmedia Storytelling Defined. The Narrative Design
Explorer. January 6, 2011. Web. December 10, 2011.
Doctor Who. Dir. Various. bbc. 1963. Television.
Doctor Who: Human Nature/Family of Blood. Dir. Charles Palmer. bbc Cardiff.
2007. Film.
esm Trailers hd. Tron: Uprising Official Trailer. March 7, 2011. Web. December 30,
2011.
Evans, Elizabeth. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life.
London: Routledge, 2011. Print.
fanfiction.net. n.d. Web. December 30, 2011.
Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992. Print.
Harvey, Colin B. Canon, Myth, and Memory in Doctor Who. The Mythological
Dimensions of Doctor Who. Ed. Anthony S. Burdge, Jessica Burke, and Kristine
Larsen. Crawfordville fl: Kitsune Books, 2010. N. pag. Print.
. Highlander: Love and Hate. London, 2009. cd.
Highlander. Dir. Russell Mulcahy. 1986. Film.
Highlanderthe Series. Dir. Various. 19921998. Television.
Highlander II: Renegade Version. Dir. Russell Mulcahy. 1995. Film.
Highlander II: The Quickening. Dir. Russell Mulcahy. 1990. Film.
Highlander III: The Sorcerer. Dir. Andrew Morahan. 1994. Film.
Jenkins, Henry. Transmedia 202: Further Reflections. Confessions of an Aca-Fan.
August 1, 2011. Web. December 10, 2011.
Kinder, Marsha. Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games:
From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993. Print.
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k9. Dir. Various. Disney Europe; Park Entertainment; Stewart & Wall
Entertainment; Screen Australia. 2009. Television.
McCabe, Joseph. Game Changing. sfx, January 2011. 4652. Print.
Mendlesohn, Farah. Rhetorics of Fantasy. London: Wesleyan Press, 2008. Print.
Misztal, Barbara A. Theories of Social Remembering. Maidenhead, UK: Open
University Press, 2003. Print.
Monolith Productions. Tron 2.0. Buena Vista Interactive, 2003. Windows.
Nitz, Jai, Jeff Matsuda, and Andie Tong. Tron: Betrayal. New York: Marvel, 2010. Print.
Perryman, Neil. Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in
Transmedia Storytelling. Convergence 1 (2008): 2139. Print.
Propaganda Games. Tron: Evolution. Disney Interactive, 2010. Windows.
Reading, Anna. Identity, Memory and Cosmopolitanism: The Otherness of the
Past and a Right to Memory? European Journal of Cultural Studies 14.4 (2011):
37994. Print.
Richards, Justin. Doctor Who: The Legend Continues. London: bbc Books, 2005. Print.
The Sarah Jane Adventures. Dir. Various. bbc. 20072011. Television.
Savelsberg, Joachim J., and Ryan D. King. Law and Collective Memory. Annual
Review of Law and Social Science 3 (2007): 189211. Print.
Scott, Cavan, and Mark Wright. Highlander: Kurgan Rising. London, 2009. cd.
Star Wars Fanpedia. The Official Star Wars Fan Film Awards. 2011. Web.
December 30, 2011.
Tardis Data Core (Doctor Who Wiki). Faction Paradox. n.d. Web. December 30, 2011.
There Can Only Be the One: The Highlander Continuity Guide! March 2, 2008. Web.
December 29, 2011.
Torchwood. Dir. Various. bbc. 2006. Television.
Tron. Dir. Steven Lisberger. 1982. Film.
Tron: Legacy. Dir. Joseph Kosinski. 2010. Film.
tron Wiki. Tron: Betrayal. N.d. Web. February 23, 2012.
Tupper, Elgin F. The Theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg. London: scm Publishing,
1974. Print.
Twisting the Hellmouth. n.d. Web. February 22, 2012.
The Unknowable Room. n.d. Web. February 22, 2012.
Walker, John, ed. Halliwells Film and Video Guide, 2000. London: Harper Collins,
1999. Print.
Walker, Landry, Eric Jones, and Louie De Martinis. Tron: The Ghost in the Machine.
San Jose: Slave Labor Graphics, 20062008. Print.

294

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13

Game of Thrones
Transmedial Worlds, Fandom, and Social Gaming
lisbeth klastrup and susana tosca

In recent years, we have seen a growing body of scholarship on transmediality from different perspectives: storytelling, world building, industry
practices, and studies that look at both old media formats, such as film
and television and new media formats such as websites, digital games,
and mobile phones (see, e.g., Dena; Bechmann Pedersen; Evans). This
development indicates that the study of cross- or transmediality might
slowly be maturing into a field of study in its own right. However, research into transmedial structures and products is constantly challenged
by the fact that new digital communication formats and practices continue to emerge, providing new opportunities for transmedial content production. These new formats and new production modes force us to revise
how we analytically approach transmedial works. This revision includes
considering the many ways fans can now be involved with a transmedial world, not the least through social media, an area of user-involvement
that has so far not been examined in this context.
In this chapter, we revisit our previous work on transmedial worlds
(tmw) by looking at a recent example of a transmedial world campaign that included the use of social media and micro-gaming and involved fans in a variety of ways. The marketing agency Campfire developed a campaign during the spring of 2011 to create awareness and hype
around the American channel hbos launch of the new tv series Game
of Thrones (got), which is based on the fantasy novel series A Song of Ice
and Fire written by George R. R. Martin. The books, set in a medievalstyle universe, are extremely popular beyond the genre niche and have
generated a dedicated fan following despite the long time gaps between
one novel and the next. The first season of the tv series is based on the
first of the books, A Game of Thrones, and its first ten episodes aired from
295

April to June 2011. The fan community of the tmw was very active during
preproduction of the series, with countless websites, forums, and social
network activity related to casting, shooting, and other production topics.
The campaign itself sought to reach out to both existing fans of the
books and to a potential new audience of tv viewers mainly through an
episodic puzzle game called The Maesters Path, which included both online and off-line components and ran from February 2011 to April 2011.
The campaign is interesting as a case because it included elements from
both the known book and the still-unknown tv series and because it encouraged its users to spread the word about the game through Facebook,
Twitter, and GetGlue. It therefore included a complex interweaving of
world actualizations and the integration of social media as a means to
create world awareness.
While it is obvious to approach a campaign such as this one from an
industry practice perspective (which Dena argues should be an integral
part of the way we approach transmedial products in general), we want
here to combine perspectives on practice and theory. That is, we want to
discuss how the game practices and the fan reception we can observe in
relation to the got campaign can inform and perhaps change the theory of transmedial worlds that we have previously introduced with a main
interest in online game world use.1 Our focus has always been on worlds
as abstract content systems and not as particular instantiations, or products. This approach is more appropriate for large, unified, and detailed
worlds (such as The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones) rather than
for more loosely defined creations that grow overtime (such as Doctor
Who or the Ramasjang Danish tv universe).
Transmedial World Theory
Here we build upon our previous work on transmedial worlds, where
we introduced our theoretical framework and applied it to the analysis
of various cyberworlds and online computer games. The first paper focused on the design and success criteria of online tmws, and the second
and third addressed reception processes, dissecting the aesthetic experience of fan players.
Transmedial worlds are abstract content systems from which a repertoire of fictional stories can be actualized or derived across a variety of
media forms (see Klastrup and Tosca, Transmedial Worlds 409). That
296

Klastrup and Tosca

is, tmws are mental constructs shared by both the designers/creators of

the world and the audience/participants. The tmw is not defined by the
material entity of any particular instantiation (the media platform) but
by the shared idea of the world, a sort of platonic approach that situates
the ontological status of the tmw in a disembodied plane. We call this
mental image worldness, and a number of distinguishing and recognizable features of the tmw originate from the first version, or instantiation, of the world but can be elaborated and changed over time. For
example, the world of Middle Earth has its origin in the writings of
J. R. R. Tolkien, but it has been reinterpreted by Peter Jacksons films or
the designers of the Lord of the Rings Online (lotro) multiplayer game.
tmws often have dedicated fans invested in both expanding the world
(for example, by writing fan fiction) and keeping watch over new instantiations, making sure they respect the original spirit of the urtexts
actualization.
The experience of worldness is informed by three different dimensions:
t
Mythosthe establishing story, legend, or narration of the world,
with the defining struggles. It is the backstory that gives meaning to the current situation of the world, and it includes creational
myths and legendary characters and gods.
t
Toposthe setting of the world in both space (geography) and
time (history). It shows how places have changed and events have
unfolded.
t
Ethosthe explicit and implicit ethics, or the moral codex of behavior for characters. It can be considered generally, as valid for
the whole world (e.g., nobody performs or even talks about sex in
Lord of the Rings), or locally, as appropriate to a determined group
of inhabitants of that world (e.g., elves would never burn a tree).
Any story set in a tmw has to comply with its particular definition of
worldness and belong within the three dimensions. Audiences will react
negatively if any of these categories is subverted. A factual error about
an important element of the mythos, the invention of a new place that
disrupts the original topos, or a character not conforming to the particular ethos defined in the urtexts actualization will cause a bitter uproar
in the fan community.2
Game of Thrones

297

Transmedial world

Game
play
mechanics
rules

Game world, story

Fig. 13.1. Transmedial world and game world.

In our previous research we have found that users or participants

perceived the possibility of interacting directly with the tmw they love
as the strongest advantage of cyberworlds over other kinds of instantiations. Online game worlds call forth the extensive repertoire of knowledge that fans already possess and allow them to be cocreators of personal stories within the cherished frame of the tmw. Digital instantiations
encourage a special kind of performance that takes participants out of
their receiving position and give even more value to the tmw memories they already treasure (Klastrup and Tosca, When Fans).
Our model of player interaction with a tmw game world explicitly illustrates the circulation of meaning across the different layers that relate the interpretation of a particular instantiation to the general ecology
of the tmw (see figure 13.1). Non-tmw fans would stay at the inner cir298

Klastrup and Tosca

cle, or the pure game, but tmw fans have access to extra layers of meaning. Being able to relate the different levels to each other results in added emotional value for the recipients of the texts (Klastrup and Tosca,
When Fans), a process that, we venture, might explain the attachment
and enthusiasm of the fans of tmws.
The Case
The tmw of A Song of Ice and Fire is a raw medieval world similar to the
European Middle Ages. It is realistic in its depiction of power struggles,
violence, and sex, but it also has a few magical elements such as dragons,
undead warriors, and spells. The world is extremely well fleshed out: nature, weather, cities, places, people, religions, clothes, and food are described in meticulous detail; the writing style is generally polished and
vivid; the characters multidimensional and memorable; and the multithreaded plots rather complex. The overaching story is the fight among
various noble houses for the right to rule all of the kingdom of Westeros,
the continent on which the main part of the novels are set, and this struggle, referred to as the game of thrones, continues through all the books.
Our case is The Maesters Path, an online game experience that
Campfire developed as part of its marketing campaign to promote hbos
new series Game of Thrones. The game was launched in February 2011, a
month and a half before the airing of the series, and a new puzzle would
open every week up to the series premiere to ensure renewed fan visits.
The game site is unfortunately no longer available online, but features
from it can be experienced in a promotional video by Campfire.3
The Maesters Path was designed to create hype and expectation before the tv shows opening. The riddles could be solved without previous knowledge of the books, but the games design and its exploitation
of detailed symbolism from the tmw talked directly to fans, who were
the only ones with a strong enough motivation to engage with the interactive experience, as our questionnaire results indicate. The game is
an interesting media product in that it remediates both the novels and
the television series, but its contentfor example, the amount of portrayed characters, plot details, and so onis not identical. The games
title, The Maesters Path, is inspired by the class of the maesters, a sort
of priesthood of wise men, who receive training in such different arts
as healing, alchemy, and so forth. They forge links in a chain they wear
Game of Thrones

299

Puzzle

Sense

How to

Clip

Symbol wheel

Smell

15 scents, 15 symbols

Jon gives Arya her sword

Inn sound, heraldry

Hearing

Hear gossip at inn, place

sigils right

Tyrion is seized by Catelyn

in inn

Blast the horn at

the wall

Sight

Give alarm when wildlings

approach

Tyrion and Maester

Aemon: Winter is coming

Reassemble a book

Touch

Weather app, could be

done by translating text

Daenerys and Ser Jorah

talk about Viserys

Find the secret

password

Taste

Fold the menus and print

Ned and Robert, country

scene

Final reward

The Social

Making 5 friends register

(apprendices)

George Martin thanks

you! + social media pics

Fig. 13.2. A summary of the five senses puzzles.

around their neck, and each link represents a particular area of knowledge that they have learned and mastered. Players were invited to forge
five links of such a chain by solving five riddles, with one appearing at
weekly intervals. The prize each time was an exclusive preview video
clip from the unaired series. Each riddle was related to one of the five
senses and had a pendant in the real world, where Campfire also ran
a marketing campaign (Westeros Revealed) with different events and
activities (see figure 13.2). For example, the digital puzzle about smell
was accompanied by a chest of different smells from the tmw land of
Westeros that was sent to different journalists and bloggers, who posted about their gift online. They documented its appearance and the
clues it contained so that players who had not seen it also could solve the
riddle. When the taste puzzle had to be solved, food wagons appeared
in Los Angeles and New York City, where people could taste food from
Westeros for free.
The Maesters Path website maintained a design in dark colors and
evocative sounds, introducing participants into the mysteries of Westeros
with a good re-creation of its atmosphere. The language was semi-archaic,
and interaction instructions were given in ways that tried to respect the
medieval world as much as possible. The invitation to the third puzzle,
for example, was inspired by sight: The Men of the Nights Watch stand
guard here, looking over the forests of the North for possible attacks. If
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Klastrup and Tosca

you choose now to take the black, you must stand guard here and alert
your brothers at the first sign of trouble (Campfire).
If the player clicked on yes and this way took the black, he or she
then entered a three-dimensional (3-d) rendering of one of the legendary scenarios of the tmwnamely, the wall of ice that is the frontier between the civilized Westeros and the wild lands of the North. The player had to walk around, look over the edge, and blast an alarm horn as
soon as he or she saw some wildlings attacking. The charm of this puzzle was the sense of the players immersion in the 3-d world, which players appreciated.4
Once the mission was completed, the game prompted the player to
share any progress this way: Send out a Raven. That others should learn
of your quest. In the tmw, distance communication is performed by
sending out ravens, not pigeons. To send the raven, the player had the
option of clicking on a Facebook or a Twitter button, which automatically posted a message in the respective social network that told of the
accomplished mission. The players friends would see this message, and
this way could be recruited to try the game as well. The recruiting of
other players was an integral part of the campaign, as the idea was that
each player should attract five other apprentices in order to claim the
final prize, an exclusive final video of the books author, Martin himself, congratulating the player for his or her progress.
Methodology
Our approach included both quantitative and qualitative explorations
of the development and reception of the campaign, which ran from
February 2011 to April 2011. One of us took part in the campaign by
solving the puzzles on The Maesters Path as they were released and keeping track of fan discussions of it, while the other explored the game and
the puzzles after the tv series was launched and everything was still
available online. We both watched the tv series as the episodes were released, as the ordinary fan would, and followed fan discussions on the
content of the tv episodes on various fan forums. The day after the last
episode of the first season of the tv series aired, June 20, we launched
an online survey that was spread through Twitter primarily. Both Steve
Coulson of Campfire and the administrator behind the very popular
WinterIsComing.net and Twitter profile retweeted our survey; thus we
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were able to attract quite a few responses from online fans in a very short
time.5 Obviously, these fans are active on social media, so a certain bias in
the use of social media should be expected in their answers. Nevertheless,
as our findings reveal, that these respondents use social media to keep
updated about developments in the Game of Thrones universe does not
mean that they unequivocally used social media when they participated in the campaign.
In total, 192 fans started, and 166 respondents completed the general questions about their world and game involvement in our survey. Of
them, 100 had not played the game (that is, the puzzles on themaesters
path.com), and 66 had.6 In the non-gamer group, the gender distribution
was 67 percent men and 33 percent women. In the gamer group, the gender distribution was 54.5 percent men and 45.5 percent women. The average age of the respondents in total was around thirty years old. When
we refer to answers from the survey, we refer to the gender, age, and nationality of the respondent; for example, a twenty-six-year-old female
from France is represented as F, 26, France.
After we looked at the initial responses to the survey, we used the
answers as a starting point for two e-mail interviews: one with Steve
Coulson at Campfire who is situated in New York, and one with a thirtyeight-year old female Spanish fan, who had also played the game. In the
interview with Coulson, we asked about the background and goal of the
campaign and Campfires thoughts on how to reach out to both fans and
potential newcomers to the universe and its sharing incentives. In the
interview with the fan, we asked about her experiences with the campaign and the game and about her thoughts on the use of social media
as part of playing the game.
The main objective of our Game of Thrones study has been to discover
how tmw fans embrace and respond to the combination of online game
elements and social media features as part of the launch of a new twm
instantiation. In the following section, we present some of the findings
from the survey and our interviews, revealing how fans and users have
in fact experienced the campaign.
Transmedial World Knowledge
Inspired by our previous study When Fans Become Players: lotro in
a Transmedial World Perspective, we asked respondents how they first
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learned about the world. Of the gamers, 97 percent knew the Game of
Thrones universe from the books, 1.5 percent from the tv series, and,
judging from the free-text answers, 1.5 percent from other instantiations
such as the Fantasy Flight Living Card Game or the Fantasy Flight board
game. After reading the books, 71 percent of the gamers played the game
and then (72 percent) went on to watch the tv series.
In the non-gamer group, the pattern is evidently different: 82 percent
of them first learned about the universe through the books, 16 percent
though the tv series, and 2 percent through nonapplicable ways (again,
we suspect, through card or board games). Then 70 percent went on to
watch the tv series and 15 percent also read the books. After that 18 percent of the readers went on to watch the tv series and 3 percent of those
who watched the series went on to read the books, but most of them had
yet to engage with a third instantiation.
These numbers are interesting in that they indicate, albeit only slightly, that those respondents who chose to play the game are more hard-core
fans than those who did not play it, since almost all gamers had read the
books before they started playing the game, and most of them (75 percent) watched the tv series, too. Getting to know the tv series, however,
also inspired people to read the books: of the 17 non-gamer respondents
who first saw the tv series, 14 of them then went on to read the books.
In the survey, we also asked people how they got to know the world in
the first placethat is, what motivated them to start reading the books,
watching the tv series, and so on. To this optional question, folks provided a free-text answer, and 163 people (both gamers and non-gamers) responded to it. Judging from the answers, recommendations from friends
or peers play an important role in disseminating knowledge about a tmw
such as the Game of Thrones universe, since 72 out of the 163 people said
some form of word of mouth led them to pick up the book or to watch
the tv series. Typical examples of the ways people describe how they
were introduced to the tmw of Game of Thrones are: Friends gave me
the book. Back in 2004, people were talking about it in a metal music
forum. Was reading a thread in a forum about the fantasy series The
Wheel of Time and someone in the thread said that A Song of Ice and
Fire was better so I bought the first book. This finding is not surprising
since research indicates that both children and grown-ups hear about
new books and other media through friends, peers, or experts (such
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303

as librarians) and that reading habits and practices are fundamentally socially conditioned (see, for instance, Train; Lund; Knoester). It reminds us that the sharing of worlds, such as the Game of Thrones universe, is fundamentally a social practice. Thus tapping into or extending
the knowledge of the tmw universe by encouraging existing fans to share
their enthusiasm proactively in a social media context, reaching out to
not just one but many friends at the same time, is an obvious goal for
producers and marketers.
Fan Reception and Sharing Practices
If we look at how the campaign was received, it does indeed appear that
Campfires strategy of attracting fans to the game through transmedial marketing efforts was successful. According to an interview by Mitch
Wagner with Mike Monello, executive director of Campfire, the company expected 3,000 fans to register on the website but in fact logged
40,000 users. Campfire expected 100,000 unique monthly visitors and
ended up with 200,000. And The Maesters Path website had more than
2 million page views, with an average time spent on the Website of 10
minutes, which is a long time by web standards. Perhaps even more interesting, Campfire estimates in the same interview that all together the
campaign had more than 120 million social impressionsthat is, the
total number of people who had seen a status update, a blog post, or similar reference relating to Game of Thrones on social media sites such as
Facebook, GetGlue, Twitter, and blogs (n. pag.).
In order to supplement Campfires numbers on social media use, we
decided to look more closely at YouTube, which also played a central role
regarding the game in the period leading up to the tv series. We quickly discovered that the videos that players were able to watch as a reward
for solving The Maesters Path puzzles were posted on YouTube on the
same day as or soon after the puzzle had been launched. Thus players
who either did not want to spend time solving the puzzles or became
stuck could skip the sometimes time-consuming work solving the puzzle and instead simply watch the YouTube videos. Based on the videos
we were able to find on the website, as of June 24, 2011, the game reward
videos had a total of 165,208 views, which is a fairly impressive number. One should remember that it does not represent unique viewers; indeed, the number might very well reflect that some interested fans have
304

Klastrup and Tosca

Name of Poster
Arithine
1st reward

28,941

2nd reward

6,944

3rd reward

Total Views Comments

Rumpelr BalerionsWatch StevePirate

10,986

13,855

53782

70

18,326

19,072

44,342

53

12,604

14,754

27,358

24

4th reward

11,654

9,673

21,327

27

5th reward

1,409

16,990

18,399

27

Fig. 13.3. The life of game puzzle videos on YouTube.

watched all five videos or that the same person watched the same video
repeatedly. It is noticeable that only a handful of people posted the videos and that the number of video viewers and comments to the videos
seems to decline steadily as time passes. It might indicate that it was the
first video that gave the first insight into what the universe would look
like on tv, and thus attracted the most interest, while the following videos saw increasing competition from other official trailer videos from
hbo to appease fans thirst for new glimpses of the world. It might also
indicate that people lost interest in the puzzles over time and therefore
did not bother to look for the video rewards. Figure 13.3 documents the
variation in number of views from the first to the last (fifth) video posted.
Clearly, the low number of comments, or less than 1 percent of the views,
indicates that fans and players did not use YouTube to interact and discuss.
Thus, a study of the comments show that very few comments (around 14 out
of 201) relate to the puzzles and the game, as most of them are comments
on the choice of an actor for a particular character or similar issues relating to the depiction of the universe. It appears that fans simply also checked
YouTube for videos related to the tv series, and some came across these
videos, knowing nothing about the game, as this comment and response
show: I imagine Jorah as older, but Im happy with the choice. Why are
these named as they are? [MalLionheart]. @MalLionheart: Theyre from
a promotional website hbo set up. You answer some riddles and solve some
puzzles, and receive a clip from the show as a reward.7
Meanwhile, sharing the videos on YouTube seems to be done in the
spirit of service to the fan community, which also appreciates the effort. One person commented: Thank you so much! I have no patience
for puzzles : ) . Arithine, one of the video posters, wrote: Sorry about
Game of Thrones

305

$OZD\VVKDUHG

6RPHWLPHVVKDUHG

1HYHUVKDUHG

Facebook
Twitter
GetGlue
Fig. 13.4. Sharing practices on Facebook, Twitter, and GetGlue.

the quality on this one. hbo had it locked down more then last time. I
needed to do a screen capture to get it, watch in hd [high definition] to
help get rid of some artifacts. Thus she showed that she really has cared
about what to present to the viewing audience.
In our survey, we explicitly asked the gamer respondents about their
sharing practices in relation to the social media websites that the game
producers promoted through the game (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, and
GetGlue). We asked them whether they always, sometimes, or never
shared material from the game on these sites and accordingly filtered the
following questions to find out which channel was most used for sharing. In practice, the filtering proved to be a bit confusing, so answers are
not always representative; nevertheless we believe that they are a good
indication of what was most common.
As we can see in figure 13.4, Facebook is the most popular channel, with more than 50 percent of the people sharing, while Twitter and
GetGlue are less popular. Still, it seems that a big number of participants
never or very rarely shared. We therefore included a free text question
about this issue in our survey and received some interesting answers regarding why they had not shared.
t
None of my friends or family have read the series. They probably
knew I was excited about the tv series coming, but giving them
details like this would have just bugged them (F, 28, US).
t
I dont spam my friends on social media. I hate it when people
do it to me (M, 47, US).
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Klastrup and Tosca

The game (maesterspath.com) also asked you to recruit some

novices (friends) to participate in the game. Please choose one of
WKHEHORZDQVZHUVWRGHVFULEH\RXUUHDFWLRQWRWKDW
1 I mostly tried to recruit
IULHQGVWKDWNQHZWKH
Game of Thrones univ...

2 I mostly tried to recruit

IULHQGVWKDWGLGQRWNQRZ
the Game of Thro...

3 I mostly tried to recruit

IULHQGVEHFDXVH,ZDQWHG
to get ahead in t...

7
3
8
2

4 I mostly tried to recruit

friends, because the
Game of Thrones unive...
5 I did not try to recruit
friends because I did not
ZDQWWRVSDPWKHP
6 I did not try to recruit
IULHQGVEHFDXVH,NQRZ
that none of them are...
7 I did not try to recruit
IULHQGVEHFDXVH,NQRZ
that none of them are...

 ,GLGQRWNQRZWKHUHZDV
a recruit friends option

Fig. 13.5. Reactions to the recruiting option.

t
I didnt want to spam my Twitter account because that is my

most heavily trafficked social media channel and a number of
people would have been annoyed (F, 24, US).
The same pattern can be observed in the responses regarding the recruitment of apprentices required in order to complete the game (see figure 13.5). Of the sixty-one people who answered this question, a bit fewer than half of them tried to recruit friends, but most chose friends who
knew the universe. Thirty-one would not recruit for various reasons, and
four were not aware of the option. Ten supplemented with free text answers such as this one: I dont like games that rely on forcing friends
to play to in order to unlock rewards. So I used made-up email accounts
for my novices instead, as a way to protest this system (F, 26, France).
Another wrote:
And ended up hating the people at hbo who decided to force me to
Spam my friends or to not complete the path. I chose the latter. Ive
Game of Thrones

307

been an evangelist for this series for ten years. I have purchased and
given away over a dozen copies of the first novel. But I will not spam
my friends. I will berate those who spam me and be disinclined to
anything that is forwarded by a spammer site like that stupid game
was. Of course, with my history with asoiaf [the book], nothing
was going to keep me from watching GoT. (M, 47, us)
Core Findings
When we started this research, we had two major research questions
in mind: how would a transmedial campaign such as this fit into our
previous tmw theoretical model, and how does a tmw fan community respond to social media marketing practices (a theoretically underexplored area)?
In regard to the first question, reception of the transmedial campaign
followed the same pattern as any other tmw instantiation that we have
observed for novels, films, computer games, and other products, with
the same worries about the integrity of the mythos, ethos, and topos reflected in the fan discussions and with the fans expressing the same
satisfaction about exploring their favorite tmw from a different angle.
Two-thirds of our respondents were enthusiastic about the campaign.8
Some comments we received were: Its great to see a book come alive
onscreen (F, 27, Switzerland). It was great that some of the books symbolism found its way into the game. The riddles were a challenge (M, 41
us). And even most of the fans who were critical appreciated the effort
that had been put into giving flesh to the tmw. Ultimately, the fan experience of visiting the tmw, interacting with and sharing the investigation process with others, was the biggest reward, and the video clips curiously lost their appeal as prizes as the premiere day approached.9
As for our general reception model, we can say that in contrast to computer game worlds, where playing the game can be a self-contained activity separated from any tmw actualizations, The Maesters Path campaign only made sense in the context of the tmw. It was true that players
who did not know the universe could play the gamethat is, they could
figure out the puzzlesand for those who could not, help was available
on blogs and forums. But the point is that people who had not read the
books would not play the game, as our empirical material supports, be308

Klastrup and Tosca

Transmedial world

Game

TV

series

Fig. 13.6. Interaction between transmedial world, tv series, and game.

cause they had no motivation to engage with it. This finding suggests
that the publicity benefits are generated not by the content of the game
per se but by the evangelist zeal of fans who would tell others about the
upcoming tv series and spread the news of their interaction with the
game through their social networks.10 It also means that a transmedial
marketing product is a much less independent entity than another tmw
instantiation, such as a book or film, and that we might be able to distinguish between degrees of independence of the products of a transmedial media ecology (see figure 13.6).
Our second interest area, the use of social media in relation to fan
practice, also reveals some interesting findings, mostly through analyzing the fans dilemma about sharing or not sharing their progress in the
game or recruiting apprentices in their social networksthe key to the
Game of Thrones

309

success of this kind of campaign. When trying to understand why fans

were bothered by the games asking them to share, it is worthwhile noting a point Green and Jenkins (2001) made concerning spreadable media:
Choosing to spread media involves a series of socially embedded decisions: that the content is worth watching; that it is worth sharing with
others; that the content might interest specific people we know; that the
best way to spread that content is through a specific channel of communication; and, often, that the content should be circulated with a particular message attached. However, even if no message is attached at all,
just receiving a piece of media content from someone we know gives the
text a range of new potential meanings (11314).
In other words, sharing content is not an easy decision, as it has
many dimensions. Cultural content, such as a message about a transmedial game you are playing, is always loaded. As Green and Jenkins
point out, fans do not live in a social vacuum where they assume that
something they like is automatically worthy of being noted by the people who know them. It might seem that an easy recommendation (simply push a button and have it directly published into the social media of
your choice) is not a high price to pay to be able to enjoy content about
your favorite tmw, but fans do not want to mix them. They love their
tmw, but they also appreciate the social capital they have built and refuse to spread content as it puts them in a vulnerable social situation. As
fan Bronn Stone puts it:
This particular style of social marketing will most likely kill social
marketing as an effective tool for creating a buzz for a new product. I dont spam my friends. My friends know this about me. They
know that when I do say something, it is because I am genuinely interested in it. Not because I am getting a Space Turnip in FarmVille
or 10,000 free chips in wpt [World Poker Tour] Poker. I am not
going to break that rule just to get extra preview commercials for
GoT. When I know that someone linking me to a site did it for some
cheesy reward, I am strongly disinclined toward the linked object
even if it might have interested me otherwise. (N. pag.)
Not all fans are as belligerent, but our respondents also pointed to the
problematic nature of the sharing scheme: the reward obtained by sharing robs the recommendation of its authenticity. For the majority of our
310

Klastrup and Tosca

TMW

game

ZLWKVRFLDODVSHFWV

fans social capital

Fans friends on
social network sites

Fans
enthusiasm

IULHQGVZKRPLJKWEH
enthusiasts/fans too
Fig. 13.7. Social aspects of The Maesters Path.

respondents, social media sharing should be free of any gain that turns
what should be a gift (a recommendation about something the sender thinks his or her friends will enjoy) into a transaction. A marketing
scheme that turns shares into currency is perceived as somehow corrupted. For some people, this antipathy extends to the announced product
so that the whole marketing scheme would backfire, and most would be
much more amenable to sharing (as they normally do with any kind of
online content they like) if it was not a requirement.
The problem is aggravated by the collapsed contexts dynamics described by Joshua Meyrowitz in relation to broadcast media and applied
by Danah Boyd to the study of networked publics. Social media sites (at
the time of the game) made it mostly impossible for users to maintain
distinct social contexts so that one share goes to all the acquaintances
and relations (of a very different nature) that the person maintains artificially united online (see figure 13.7).
A portion of the users friends might also be fans of the particular
promoted product (in this case A Song of Ice and Fire and its tv adapGame of Thrones

311

tation), but for most, to share it would be perceived as irrelevant and/or

strange. A campaign such as the one studied in this chapter wants to exploit the fans social capital and reach people who might otherwise not
have heard of the product. Paradoxically, that very group represents the
people whom the players we talked to want to protect, and it is in this
light that the sharing is perceived as an aggression in the form of spam.
This finding indicates that a great deal of underlying meanings and perceptions cluster around the act of sharing and that it is never a straightforward recommendation. Our research shows that even when the shared
content is perceived as valuable (when we asked, many of the fans would
like the people they like to be acquainted with the series), it is problematic that the sharing is part of a marketing scheme and not initiated by the
user as a private expression of interest or emotion. In this sense, the explicit persuasive intention of the apprentice-recruiting scheme is a problem for its effective spreading, and one can only wonder if the success of
the Game of Thrones campaign would have been even bigger had the persuasion remained implicit. It would also be interesting to research if fans
are more wary of sharing information in social networks about their favorite tmw than about other things (like a funny YouTube video)that
is, if increased protectiveness is one of the feelings related to tmw fandom. But this question will have to be explored in the next instantiation
of our ongoing research on transmedial worlds.

Notes
1. See Klastrup and Tosca, Transmedial Worlds; Klastrup and Tosca, mmogs;
Klastrup and Tosca, When Fans.
2. We found some examples of this reaction both in our previous studies and in
the fan activity surrounding the launch of the Game of Thrones series. In fact,
one of the main points that fans who had played The Maesters Path reported to
us in the questionnaire was that, in the words of one of the respondents: It did
a very good job of settling my fears that hbo might not do the series justice. The
game made it pretty clear that hbo understood what made the world so interesting (M, 28, US).
3. The Campfire video can be found at http://campfirenyc.com/work/hbo-game
-of-thrones/.
4. Several of our interviewees mentioned this puzzle as a satisfying example. One
said, I really liked the mini-game on the wall, it was cool to play the part of
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Klastrup and Tosca

5.

6.

7.
8.
9.
10.

a brother of the Nights Watch! That was my favorite part of the game (M, 19,
US).
WinterIsComing.net is a fan-driven website that shares news of all things related to the tv series. As far as we can establish, it also cooperates with hbo and
is considered one of the main news sources among got fans.
The final question in the survey focused on the experience of the tv series
compared to the book, and 159 respondents, or 8 fewer than for the previous
questions, replied to this question. As the experience of the game has been our
main interest, the statistics presented in the discussion are based on the 166
respondents.
From the comments to The Maesters Path, fourth reward, at http://www.you
tube.com/watch?v=AKPqafP-dEE.
Of those who had played the game.
As confirmed by our interview subject as well.
We borrow the use of the term evangelism in this sense from our interview
with Coulson.

Works Cited
Bechmann Pedersen, Anja. Crossmedia: Innovationsnetvrk for traditionelle
medieorganisationer. Diss. Aarhus University, 2009. Print.
Boyd, Danah Michelle. Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked
Publics. Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 2008. Print.
Campfire. The Maesters Path: Project Trailer for hbos Game of Thrones. 2011. Web.
Dena, Christy. Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional
World across Distinct Media and Environments. Diss. University of Sidney, 2009. Print.
Evans, Elizabeth. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media, and Daily Life.
New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.
Green, Joshua, and Henry Jenkins. Spreadable Media: How Audiences Create Value and
Meaning in a Networked Economy. The Handbook of Media Audiences. Ed. Virginia
Nightingale. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 10927. Print.
Klastrup, Lisbeth, and Susana Tosca. mmogs and the Ecology of Fiction:
Understanding lotro as a Transmedial World. digra 2009 Proceedings. digra,
London, 2009. Web. May 1, 2012.
. Transmedial WorldsRethinking Cyberworld Design. Proceedings
of the 2004 International Conference on Cyberworlds. Los Alamitos ca: ieeee
Computer Society, 2004. N. pag. pdf file. June 1, 2012.
. When Fans Become Players: lotro in a Transmedial World Perspective.
Ringbearers: The Lord of the Rings Online as Intertextual Narrative. Ed. Tanya
Krzywinska, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and Justin Parsler. Manchester, UK:
Manchester University Press, 2011. 4669. Print.
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Knoester, Matthew. Inquiry into Urban Adolescent Independent Reading Habits:

Can Gees Theory of Discourses Provide Insight? Journal of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy 52.8 (May 2009): n. pag. Print.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Dir. Peter Jackson. New Line
Cinema, 2001. Film.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Dir. Peter Jackson. New Line Cinema,
2003. Film.
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Dir. Peter Jackson. New Line Cinema, 2002.
Film.
Lund, Henriette Romme. Hvad skaber en lystlser? En undersgelse gennemfrt
i et samarbejde mellem Gentofte Bibliotekerne og Center for Brnelitteratur.
Gentofte: Center for Brnelitteratur, Danmarks Pdagogiske Bibliotek, 2007.
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Meyrowitz, Joshua. No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social
Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Print.
Stone, Bronn. A Forum of Ice and Fire. March 21, 2011. Web. June 1, 2011.
Tolkien, J. R. R. The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the
Rings. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Print.
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London: George Allen & Unwin, 1955. Print.
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George Allen & Unwin, 1954. Print.
Train, Briony. What Do You Like to Read? An Evaluation Report. Centre for the
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University of Sheffield, 2003. pdf file. May 1, 2012.
Wagner, Mitch. Marketing The Game of Thrones. The cmo site. June 2011. Web.
June 1, 2011.

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14

Transmedial Narration and Fan Fiction

The Storyworld of The Vampire Diaries
maria lindgren leavenworth

An ever-increasing number of Internet-published fan fictions (fanfic)

based on the transmedial storyworld of The Vampire Diaries (tvd) evidences a desire to present alternatives to the narrative or to fill in perceived gaps. In their stories, fanfic authors in subtle or profound ways
change conditions, plotlines, or characterizations, and in these ways they
contribute new associations and interpretations to the extended storyworld. Despite increased academic interest in fan activities, there are
still tendencies to see the relation between production and consumption as hierarchical. While the sanctioned products, in fanfic vernacular referred to as canon, inspires a desire for interaction, the resulting
fan products are not necessarily perceived as on par with the original
or incorporated into processes of meaning making. The term canon
works in relation to fanon, or the fan-produced, unsanctioned developments of plot and character that over time acquire legitimacy within the
fan community even though they may contest or be incompatible with
canon elements. In what follows, it is argued that the concept of storyworld holds great potential for allowing a leveling of hierarchies between
sanctioned and unsanctioned products. To rethink different contributions, especially in light of the contemporary stress on audience participation, is productive when seeing fan fiction as part of a larger archive.
Rather than presenting logically consistent, essentially compatible
narratives along the lines of a traditionally defined storyworld, tvd illustrates alternative narrative developments and characterizations in its
transmedial instantiations, the novels written by L. J. Smith and the tv
series produced by Kevin Williamson and Julie Plec, that in some ways
may seem to complicate the notion of tvd as one cohesive storyworld.1
Adding the variations, alternatives, and sometimes critical commen315

tary found in fan fiction further suggests the possibility of a collapse of

any inherent logical narrative consistency. However, both the openness
of tvd in terms of fan investment and general tendencies in global convergence culture that encourage audience participation would seem to
point at the necessity of a more encompassing notion of storyworld. As
Bronwen Thomas argues, storyworlds are generated and experienced
within specific social and cultural environments that are subject to constant change (6). Considering the specificities of tvd in terms of origin
and fan participation, contradictions and incompatibilities are bound
to surface and rise to the point where they become intrinsic to the storyworld itself.
Although the storyworld is in a state of flux, on a concrete level fan fiction is still a fairly static text form, which in this case is based on likewise
fairly static text forms such as written novels and a tv series. Interest thus
further lies in what affordances and limitations the concepts of interactivity have and in what aspects specific to tvd need to be taken into account to better understand what goes on between authorized, sanctioned
products and fan responses. Finally, four fan fictions are analyzed; two
of which are connected to the storyworlds written instantiations, and
two of which take the tv series as their starting point (all published in
2011). At focus are the ways in which the fanfic authors negotiate assignations and portrayals of good and evil and how they criticize cultural norms influencing contemporary romance, all adding new interpretations and new associations to an ever-expanding storyworld archive.
The Transmedial tvd Storyworld
tvd is designated as transmedial here in accordance with the simplest
possible definition: the narrative is dispersed across different media
forms. However, it is not a cohesive storyworld in which each instantiation contributes pieces to the overall puzzle, contains exactly the same
characters, or presents identical ontologies. In Henry Jenkinss definition of an ideal storyworld, the Wachowski siblings The Matrix trilogy
is used as an example of how, in addition to multiple media platforms
[...] each new text [should make] a distinctive and valuable contribution
to the whole and how [r]eading across media theoretically can result
in a full understanding (Convergence 9596). The instantiations in tvd,
rather than contributing to the whole, veer off in different directions.
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Viewers of the cw Television Networks tv series cannot turn to L. J.

Smiths novels to find answers to all questions (although they can get answers to some) and vice versa.2 Differences are, however, likely the result
of a conscious transmedial strategy to present a story evolving in different directions rather than merely offering the tv series as an adaptation.
The transmedial strategy is also visible in encouraged early fan involvement, which illustrates a particular kind of accessibility. Kimberley
McMahon-Coleman notes that fans were invited to take part in the
creation of the storyworld via the website Vampire-diaries.net, which
predate[s] the existence of the actual show, and to offer commentary
and suggestions via social media (170). The initial posts on the website
concern Smiths novels and establish that the tv series does take its inspiration from them, but it is progressively made clear that the visual text
will take a slightly different route. McMahon-Coleman envisions the result as three locations, sprawling in different directions: Fells Church
(the fictional setting in the novels), Mystic Falls (the setting in the tv
series), and cyberspace [which becomes] a third and intermediated location [and which] has facilitated direct conversations between writers, producers, actors and fans (170). The possibilities for communication and influence suggest that there was no desire on the part of the tv
producers to maintain a narratively cohesive storyworld. Instead, alternative paths were imagined, encouraged, and finally realized. The creativity of many individuals thus influences the directions the narrative
takes. These sometimes conflicting paths result in a number of differences between written and visual instantiations, some of which have no
real bearing on the narrative itself, such as characters names and physical appearance, and some of which are more profound, with connections to ontologies and the main characters functions.
The novels feature a vast host of supernatural creatures and depict
different fantastical realms between which the characters move, and the
main protagonist, Elena, undergoes multiple transformations. At the
end of The Struggle she drowns but, having previously ingested vampire
blood, comes back as undead in the next novel, The Fury. This novel too
ends with Elenas death as she sacrifices herself in order to kill the evil
vampire Katherine, but again she makes a comeback, this time as a ghost
or angelic presence. These transformations, the vampires, the other supernatural creatures, and the different realms are kept hidden from the
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citizens of Fells Church, and Elena herself has to remain hidden from
her immediate family (an aunt and a baby sister) since they believe she
is dead. Elena provides an initial possibility for audience identification,
and the use of the diary format gives the reader ample opportunity to
gradually come to terms with the changing circumstances. Elena is initially unwilling to accept anything unnatural until her meeting with her
soul mate, the vampire Stefan, forces her to do otherwise, but she is then
progressively made other not only to the readers but also to her human
friends. The destabilization of the initially realistic premise is furthered
in The Return trilogy, where not only Elena is superhuman but also her
hitherto human friend Meredith is revealed to be a hunter-slayer. The
threats directed at the community of Fells Church are unrelated to the
main vampire charactersStefan and his brother, Damonand seem to
amass because of specificities of the towns geographical location.
Where Elena is concerned, the TV series initially represented more
stability, keeping Elena human. The fourth season, however, revolves
around her struggle in accepting that she has involuntarily been turned
into a vampire. As in the novels, Elena is orphaned, but her guardian,
Aunt Jenna, who only tenuously represents parental authority (until she
is killed toward the end of the second season), is significantly younger
than her novel counterpart, and baby Margaret has been replaced with
a brooding and drug-abusing brother named Jeremy. The change in familial relationships means increased opportunities for romantic subplots and might be read as a strategy to attract a slightly different and
slightly older audience than the novels did. Although family members
and friends are for a long time kept in the dark regarding vampire activity, the community has a secret society that is aware of vampires and has
quite a few gadgets to assist in their destruction. As opposed to the novels, where Damon Salvatore and Stefan Salvatore are made vampires in
late fifteenth-century Italy, in the tv series they are local boys who were
turned in Civil War times. They have periodically returned to Mystic
Falls and are vaguely familiar to the townsfolk. In contrast to the novels,
then, where Elena needs to stay hidden because the town presumes she
is dead, it is the vampires who might be objects of suspicion and need to
keep a low profile. The main threats of each season are in various ways
connected to Elena and the Salvatore brothers rather than to geography.
The antagonists in the main story lines invariably are also variations on
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the vampire trope, making issues of good and evil vampirism more central to the tv series than to the novels.
So far, differences may seem to point at two separate storyworlds rather than one, but two central themes unite the written novels and the tv
seriesthe romantic love between Stefan and Elena and the animosity
between the Salvatore brothers. These themes underpin each major narrative event and are intertwined since Damons advances toward Elena
feed into the sibling feud. Another motif in both the novels and the show
is the question of what constitutes evil where vampires are concerned,
and Damon, the initially evil vampire, becomes progressively more humanized and vulnerable as the motif is woven with the romantic theme.
The romantic love, the sibling rivalry, and the questions about good and
evil are also chief aspects in tvd fanfic, thus working toward the argument that despite differences, tvd can be conceived of as one (albeit not
cohesive) storyworld.
Interactivity and Archontic Texts
Interactivity is a key term in many discussions about digital or new
media, but the written novels and the tv series cannot always be equated with the types of storyworlds that are most often mentionedthat
is, interactive fictions, databases, games, and hypertextsas they do not
respond to physical interaction. Both text forms, however, elicit interactive responses from fans. In a discussion about television fandom, Sara
Gwenllian Jones notes that [t]he television text itself [...] has no facility for material intervention [however] the fiction that it generates, and
which vastly exceeds containment by any discrete text, is a different matter (Web Wars 167). Fan fiction, as one expression, illustrates the authors desire to interact with the canon texts, and it is not the material affordances of the medium that enable interaction but the excess of
meaning. As Gwenllian Jones puts it: Interactivity here occurs not as a
material process involving physical interventions but as an imaginative
one (Web Wars 167). However, fan fiction can still be seen in relation
to more overarching discussions about interactivityfor example, as in
Marie-Laure Ryans refinement of the concept. She makes two main distinctions, which are divided into dichotomous pairs: internal versus external involvement and exploratory versus ontological involvement (339).
The ontological aspect of the second binary is of particular relevance to
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fan fiction. Ryan maintains that in this kind of involvement the decisions of the user send the history of the virtual world on different forking paths. These decisions are ontological in the sense that they determine which possible world, and consequently which story, will develop
from the situation in which the choice presents itself (339).
The fanfic category au (Alternate Universe) represents these kinds of
ontological alterations as au fanfics answer the What If? question (see
also chapter 11, Mittells contribution in this volume). The canon texts in
the storyworld do not provide links to possible other worlds in any manifest way, but gaps and discrepancies do. Situations that are not explored
fully, characters who are not developed, and tensions that are unsatisfactorily resolved provide the fanfic author with possibilities to take the
story imaginatively in another direction and subtly or profoundly destabilize the ontology of the storyworld.
Say that a fanfic author asks, what if Elena was never attracted to
Stefan in the first place? The love story between Elena and Stefan guides
virtually every plot and character development in tvd, and upsetting or
canceling it would radically change the storyworlds ontology. The question may stem from the fanfic authors sense that the characters attraction to each other is not sufficiently explained in the canon, leaving an
imaginative gap. It may be based on the authors detection of a discrepancy: a century-old vampire and a seventeen-year-old girl are incompatible
on several levels. It may simply come from the authors individual opinion that Elena would be better off paired with someone else. The resulting hypothetical fanfic in which Elena meets Stefan, says thanks but no
thanks, resumes the relationship with her high school sweetheart, Matt,
and has no further run-ins with vampires and other supernatural creatures would contribute new associations and create a new possible world.
Fan fiction, and then particularly the category au, thus shares traits
with forms of interactivity in which clicking on a particular link or choosing a specific pathway evidence material media affordances. Lisbeth
Klastrup and Susana Tosca identify three core features of the interactive
transmedial storyworld: mythos, topos, and ethos. Put simply, the terms
signify, respectively, the backstory, or the central knowledge one needs
to have in order to interact with or interpret events in the world accordingly; the setting and with it knowing what is to be expected from the
physics and navigation in the world; and the ethics of the storyworld, or
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the knowledge required in order to know how to behave in the world

(Klastrup and Tosca n. pag., original emphases). Interaction, navigation, and behavior are all terms that draw attention both to active, physical choices made when transversing the storyworld and to the fact that
the interface has to allow these choices to be made and have consequences.
In a discussion about fan activity in the Xenaverse, Gwenllian Jones
lists stages of knowledge and interpretation that in various ways coincide with Klastrup and Toscas terms but also allow for a focus on
less material interactions (Starring 17). Sharing affinities with mythos,
Background Hard Data signifies the facts about [Xenas] background,
family, relationships and experiences emerging through the extended
diegesis of the show, whereas Real-Time Hard Data is constituted by
the accumulation of information in each episode (Starring 18). A certain amount of fidelity to the canons hard data is necessary in fan fiction as readers of the story otherwise would not know how to interpret it.
In tvd, as indicated, the differences between instantiations means that
the author needs to specify what mythos, or hard data, he or she has in
mind. The easiest way to signal this data is to file the fanfic according
to the instantiation on which it is based.3 In stories relying on real-time
data, and then particularly in those connected to the tv series, it is common for fanfic authors to specify precisely where in the narrative arc the
stories are placed (e.g., set after 1.14).
Gwenllian Joness next stage is Competencies, which determine
[the characters] range of possible actions and reactions (Starring 18).
Competencies are based on individual characters personalities, or their
weaknesses and strengths; and to depict actions and reactions too far removed from what is plausible, given the canon competencies, may result in fan fiction with Out of Character (ooc) characters.4 Themes and
Motifs, Gwenllian Jones further claims, extend far beyond the limits
of the diegesis; they are reiterated and explored in different forms of
fan expressions (Starring 18). In the case of tvd, the central romance
is an example of such a theme, which is visible in stories about characters who are not romantically linked in the canon, and the good versus
evil motif is similarly reiterated in ways that move beyond events in the
canon and put a different spin on things.
Behaviour, Ethics, and Psychology also have strong affinities with
Klastrup and Toscas ethos, and [i]t is in this area, Gwenllian Jones
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maintains, that fan engagement and speculation is at its most intense

(Starring 18). The psychological gaps in the diegetic story can be filled
in in fanfics that develop the perspective of minor characters or offer
alternative readings of major characters. Fanfic authors may also profoundly destabilize the storyworlds ethics by removing aspects that are
arguably essential to the very ontology. Fanfics based on vampire storyworlds and categorized as All Human or au-human do away with
the vampire element altogether and are examples of such destabilization.
The pre-formed knowledge of how characters (and readers) are to react
to and imaginatively behave in this type of story is canceled along with
the supernatural element.5
The final item of Gwenllian Joness list is Erotics (Starring 19).
Whereas the storyworld at the center of her analysis consciously plays with
the characters sexual identities and desires, tvd is fairly heteronormative.
However, fan responses to the erotics of a storyworld can take a number
of forms, and the fanfic category slash, denoting a same-sex pairing between characters who are not a couple in the canon, is by no means nonexistent because of the lack of homoeroticism in the storyworld.
In contemporary popular culture where storyworlds are not confined
to isolated media and where audiences are asked to participate in the
meaning-making process, interaction thus occurs on both literal and
figurative levels. When regarding fan fiction as one form of interaction,
it is profitable to see the storyworld comprising not only sanctioned instantiations but also the fans interpretations. Abigail Derechos suggestion is to designate this type of text world as archontic literature, and
she argues that the archontic texts archive is not identical to the text
but is a virtual construct surrounding the text, including it and all the
texts related to it (65). Thus each addition to the archive influences it
and supplies new associations and interpretations that subsequent authors then can be inspired by or relate to. To view a storyworld along
these archontic lines can be liberating because fan-deposited material is
put on par with sanctioned products rather than being regarded in terms
of lineage and derivation.
The excess of meaning concomitant with complex transmedial storyworlds illustrates the creators encyclopedic ambitions (Jenkins,
Transmedia sec. 19) but also triggers an encyclopedic drive in fans. As
Jenkins notes: None of us can know everything; each of us knows some322

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thing; and we can put the pieces together if we pool our resources and
combine our skills (Convergence 4). Derecho notes a similar drive, but
in line with her aim to equalize creators and fans, she ascribes it to the
archive itself: the drive within an archive that seeks to produce more archive, to enlarge itself (64). When viewed as a site of interaction, then,
each fanfic story deposited in the tvd archontic text enlarges it by suggesting slight or profound differences.
Good, Evil, and Romance in the tvd Archive
Vampire storyworlds commonly hinge on a tension between good and
evil with the vampire figured as some kind of threat to humans or
symbolizing aspects of human fears. As Nina Auerbach has famously claimed, [e]very age embraces the vampire it needs (145), and each
age has its own fears and desires. Whereas what Milly Williamson has
termed the sympathetic vampire is not exclusive to contemporary narratives but rather has ties to the Romantic vampire figures in the works
of Lord Byron and John Polidori, it is nevertheless the case that the vampire is no longer predominantly a figure of fear in Western popular culture (29). Rather, the otherness of contemporary vampires enable them
to elide normative constructions and give rise to new possible forms of
positive identification, and they constitute a particular attraction. tvds
Stefan is no exception. He is figured as a romantic outsider, in close contact with his emotions, and as offering Elena a companionship her human peers cannot. His goodness is periodically offset in contrast to the
evil of other vampires and more consistently in relation to his brothers
wicked ways. Both the novels and the tv series suggest that it is not simply vampirism that is evil but the extent to which human emotions are
repressed, and when outside threats are introduced, Stefans good and
Damons evil roles become relative, often with Damon stepping up to
offer protection for the humans. Good and evil are further relativized
in the tv series when it is revealed that Stefan originally embraced his
turning and forced a reluctant Damon to join him in the undead state.
Discussing his past with Elena, she reflects that it sounds like you were
Damon, to which Stefan answers, I was worse (The Dinner Party).
The backstory and these admissions progressively shift associations to
Stefan being good and make Damons actions in terms of vengeance more
understandable and his evil more nuanced.6
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If turning off human emotion is one element that signals evil and otherness, the most common sign of monstrosity in vampire storyworlds is
unquestionably the sucking of human blood. The vampires invasion of
anothers bodily space through the bite has traditionally been figured as
particularly evil since it carries with it the threat of transforming the human victim into a monster. When the vampire text falls into the romance
genre, this transformation is not always constructed as negative, however, since it also ensures everlasting togetherness. In the novels, Damon
repeatedly asks Elena to allow this transformation. She never willingly accepts the offer to be turned, but the central issue of blood taking is
consistently figured as an intimate encounter rather than as evil behavior. Even when Elena first learns the truth about Stefans real nature, the
initial shock gives way to an embrace, and the kiss turns to a bite. The
initial pain is replaced by a feeling of pleasure that made her tremble
(Smith, The Awakening 186). It is not only Stefan who feeds off Elena but
Damon too, and this act exacerbates the ongoing feud between the brothers and heightens Elenas attraction to them both.
In the tv series, Stefan, in accordance with human morals, abstains
from human blood for a long time. Damon, meanwhile, initially embraces his status as superior: he sees humans as a food source, lives without regard for moral consequences, and continuously taunts Stefan, arguing that his little brother does not feed properly(The Night of the
Comet). As a sign of his own increasing humanity, however, Damon
progressively abandons his hunting practices and subsists on a basement stash of supplies pilfered from a blood bank. In scenes depicting the taking of human blood, there is no mutual pleasure or signs of
minds meeting through the intermingling of blood; instead, most situations are visualized along traditional lines with the vampire as predator and the human as prey.
The question is, of course, if the taking of human blood really is evil,
where vampires are concerned, or if it is merely natural behavior, barely
repressed by the veneer of humanity in good and emotional vampires.
Several of the studied fanfic authors question a vampires true nature,
and blood is a crucial ingredient in bogwitchs Blood, the Tooth and the
Claw. The story warns that it contains plot spoilers for the last episode in
the second season of the tv series and adds an internal view of the hunger for blood to the tvd archive. In the fanfic the evil Klaus has captured
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Stefan and forced him to drink human blood. When Stefan wakes up, he
has a screaming hunger inside him and a desperate need to rend, to
rip and to kill (n. pag., original emphases). Stefan has repressed these
invading primal emotions and demands, it is suggested, for a long time
as he has maintained his human morals. Hes been starving for decades
and hes never even known, bogwitch writes, and he has lived a half life
of shadow (n. pag.). In the canon tv episode we see only Stefans struggle and his self-loathing, but the fanfic rather suggests that his dietary
choices have caused him to starve, if not physically then on the level of
his nature. Stefans punishment at the hands of Klaus here is used as a
wake-up call and as a reminder of Stefans true nature, one with which
he is not comfortable. Repeatedly, he tries to convince himself of his other, human side, thus creating ties to the canon episode, but the story represents the struggle from an inside perspective. The craving for blood is
stronger than his desperate negotiations, however, and the short story
ends with Stefan giving into it again and forever.
Blood fills another and more symbolically nurturing function in
MimiRose113s A Bit of Give and Too Much Take, which is set during
the final installment of the novel series. In Midnight, the human characters take turns feeding a famished Stefan, who has been rescued after a
long period of imprisonment and starvation. At the end of the previous
novel, Shadow Souls, Damon has unexpectedly been re-turned (made
human), and MimiRose113 uses this canon element for Stefan to feed
on his brother. Damon has agreed to this sacrifice since his basic view
of humans as having value only as a food source still holds true. The intimate nature of bloodsucking establishes close ties to the way it is figured as mutually pleasurable in the canon and is intensified as the brothers can sense each others thoughts. In the fanfic, Stefan reflects, [O]ur
emotions flow[ed] into one another [and] he received my intense pleasure and appreciation of the blood I was guzzling from him, with the
subtle undertones of feelings of nurture and being cared for (n. pag.).
While the long animosity between the brothers in the canon has not prevented them from periodically protecting each other, the vulnerability that surfaces in A Bit of Give and Too Much Take lifts this protection, care, and nurturing to another level. Damon tastes different than
the humans do, Stefan notices, because he carries in his blood the blood
of individuals he has killed in the past. The taking of blood means anTransmedial Narration and Fan Fiction

325

other chance to be reacquainted with the brother [Stefan] hadnt been

this close to in years (n. pag.), with all that entails of both past sins and
present redemption.
The motif of two feuding brothers is doubled in the tvd tv series
through the depiction of the ancient vampires Elijah and Klaus. In contrast to Stefan and Damon they do not slide as easily into antithetical
roles as they both present major threats to the protagonists and their
evil is a matter of degree rather than kind. Elijah and Klaus are featured in Sandrine Shaws fanfic Barefoot on Broken Glass (One Step at
a Time), which also reiterates a suggestion brought up in many fanfics:
Elena could have a relationship with two brothers at once. Whereas the
majority of fanfics depicting this motif have Damon and Stefan as central characters and thus start from a relatively benign position where
Elena is desired and adored, Barefoot on Broken Glass starts with Klaus
piercing Elenas heart with a dagger. Waking up as a vampire, hunger
drives her to kill a woman brought in as prey. As do many fanfic authors,
Sandrine Shaw uses an inside perspective to elicit sympathy for the monster through Elenas repeated references to her own weakness and her
struggle with bloodlust. Her humanity is still close, and she judges her
actions against it, deeply aware that she has turned monstrous. She also
recognizes the irony in being once again caught between two warring
brothers, too much in love with one of them and too attracted, however unhealthily, to the other to step away (n. pag.). But whereas human
morals in the canon seem to prevent Elena from acting on her desire for
both brothers, her vampire existence in the fanfic gives her new freedom. Embraced by both Elijah and Klaus, for the first time since she
woke up a vampire, [she] feels that its going to be okay (n. pag.). This
fanfic, which was published in 2011, adds alternative depictions of the
three characters to the tvd archive, with the foremost, naturally, being a new Elena since her existence as a vampire had not yet been explored in the tv series. On the thematic level and connected to the previous theme of feuding brothers and the three-way attraction, the fanfic
importantly also shifts associations, suggesting that many of the tensions
in the canon triggered by human jealousy and stress on exclusive relationships can be resolved in a less normative construction.
As suggested, the main contemporary attraction of the popular culture vampire lies in the realms of romance, and in the tvd storyworld,
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any threats to the seemingly fated love between Elena and Stefan can be
perceived as evil.7 In fan fiction, changing the conditions or substituting
one member of the fated pair is not always viewed as a sign of evil directed at the central romance. Rather fanfics of this type demonstrate a desire to play with the given conditions and to see what happens if Stefan
or Elena is paired with someone else. But authors also demonstrate an
awareness of the unhealthy focus in contemporary romance on sacrifice and unequal relationships. In the story notes preceding the fanfic
The Most Impulsive Thing, author Piper writes that the story is born
out of my kind of intense hate for something thats running rampant
in the Vampire fandom given the rise of the Twilight series: the female
whos willing to give up everything for her vampire boyfriend (n. pag.).8
Like Elena, the human protagonist Bella in Stephenie Meyers Twilight
novels is a teenager who is immediately drawn to the handsome vampire Edward. Similar to Stefan, Edward has experiences and strengths
that render the relationship with Bella unequal. Discussions of Meyers
novels have emphasized Bellas restricted agency and Edwards monitoring of her actions and have criticized the portrayal of the sacrifices Bella
makes to be with the vampire she loves (see, e.g., Isaksson and Lindgren
Leavenworth 2011).
The Most Impulsive Thing is based on the tvd novels in which
Elena has a rather different function than being merely a submissive
girlfriend, but which do repeatedly stress that she and Stefan are fated to be together and that she will (literally) go to hell and back to save
him. Piper sets her story almost a decade after the novels story arc and
uses Bonnie, one of Elenas friends, as a thoughtful and critical protagonist. Here, Bonnie is in a relationship with Damon, who wants to turn
her into a vampire but is patient and considerate of her wishes. Damon
is depicted as also loving Bonnie for being human. Thinking back on the
years after high school, she has made a life for herself while Elena left
for Europe with Stefan, bypassing college completely, not to mention life
altogether (n. pag.). Thus the fated love has not only made Elena give
up pretentions of a life of her own but has also made her consent to being turned. Bonnie, meanwhile, has great plans for her lifeto see the
sights of the world and be alive when she does. Although in love with
Damon, she says, This isnt some romance novel, you know? Im not going to swoon into your incredibly handsome arms and present my pale,
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virgin neck to you. Those girls apparently dont have anything to do with
their lives (n. pag.).
This in-text nod to romance novels stresses the inhumanity of expecting a young woman to put her life on hold (or canceling it altogether) in favor of abiding by her lovers wishes. Whereas it may be unfair
to expect supernatural vampire storyworlds to be realistic, the criticism
is directed toward the unreasonable choices made by those who arguably could represent realismnamely, the humans. Pipers depiction of
Bonnie relies on years having passed between canon and fanfic so that a
mature woman rather than a teenager says to her loved one, I love you.
Im not ready to change everything I am for you. Im not ready to die for
you. The addition of an older, less naive protagonist to the tvd archive
makes possible readings of the canon material that are at least open for
a more critical view of unquestioning sacrifices and the stress on exclusive, all-consuming romantic relationships.
The links between storyworld and fan fiction go in both directions, and
when seen as parts of the archive, each text holds the possibility of influencing how others are interpreted. Derecho argues that [t]he prior text
is available and remains in the mind even as one reads the new version.
The two texts resonate together in both the new text and the old one (73).
The tvd canon is a prerequisite for tvd fan fiction in the first place, and
authors are careful about signaling from what specific point in the canons narrative arc their stories should be approached. That is, the canon
is ever present, resonating in the fan fictions. But fanfic additions to the
tvd archive may similarly complement the canon and supply shifting associations to elements in it. Alternative depictions of characters, romance,
good and evil, and human and vampire nature are deposited into the archive and hold the possibility of influencing each readers and viewers
reading of the canon material. In a contemporary media climate that encourages audience participation in meaning-making processes, it seems
worthwhile to stress the importance of seeing texts on par with each other rather than in hierarchical terms of original and copy, derivation and
influence. While terms such as canon and storyworld are useful to denote the material that invites such interaction in the first place, the meaning of the latter term can profitably be enlarged, especially if we want to
include fan expressions as contributing to its mythos, topos, and ethos.
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Notes
1. A fully expanded definition of storyworld naturally encompasses expressions
such as production details, interviews and merchandise, and, in the case of
tvd, computer games and webisodes, which contribute more straightforwardly
narrative details. However, the vast majority of tvd fanfic (based on the initial
survey it can be argued all of it) is based on either the novels or the tv series,
and the analyses here center on the narrative as it develops in these media
forms.
2. There is a temporal lag between Smiths original novel quartet, published in
1991, and the trilogy with the series title The Return that roughly coincided with
the airing of the first two seasons of the tv series (2009 and 2011). The tv series in October 2013 moved into its fifth season. The fan fictions analyzed later
in this chapter are based on either Smiths novels or the first two seasons of the
series.
3. The stories analyzed here are taken from sites that provide the fanfic author
with the option of filing either under tvd the book series or tvd the show.
4. It should be noted that the creation of an ooc character may at times be a
fanfic authors expressed desire. This type of character may, however, give rise
to deriding comments from readers who do not wish to see a removal too far
from canon behavior.
5. All Human or au-human fanfics have not yet gained popularity in the tvd storyworld, but as an example from another fandom, the Twilight-specific website
Twilighted.net has a filing option labeled au-human, containing, at present,
close to twenty-seven hundred fanfics, more than in any other section at the
site (see Categories).
6. The backstory is fleshed out in Stefans Diaries, the ghost-authored novel spinoffs of the tv series.
7. It should be noted that the notion of Elenas fated love for Stefan is radically undermined in the fourth season of the TV series, as she (as vampire) is instead
romantically paired with Damon.
8. See Isaksson and Lindgren Leavenworth (5667) for a longer discussion about
Pipers fanfic.

Works Cited
Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995. Print.
bogwitch. Blood, the Tooth and the Claw. Archive of Our Own. May 31, 2011. Web.
June 17, 2011.
Categories. Twilighted. Web. June 17, 2011.
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The Dinner Party. The Vampire Diaries. Season 2, episode 15. Warner Home
Video, 2011. dvd.
Derecho, Abigail. Archontic Literature: A Definition, a History, and Several
Theories of Fan Fiction. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the
Internet. Ed. Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. Jefferson nc: McFarland, 2006.
6178. Print.
Gwenllian Jones, Sara. Starring Lucy Lawless? Continuum: Journal of Media &
Cultural Studies 14:1 (2000): 922. Print.
. Web Wars: Resistance, Online Fandom and Studio Censorship. Quality
Popular Television. Ed. Mark Jancovich and James Lyons. London: British Film
Institute, 2003. 16377. Print.
Isaksson, Malin, and Maria Lindgren Leavenworth. Gazing, Initiating, Desiring:
Alternative Constructions of Agency and Sex in Twifics. Interdisciplinary
Approaches to Twilight: Studies in Fiction, Media, and a Contemporary Cultural
Experience. Ed. Mariah Larsson and Ann Steiner. Lund, Sweden: Nordic
Academic Press, 2011. 12742. Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York:
New York University Press, 2006. Print.
. Transmedia Storytelling 101. Confessions of an Aca-Fan. March 22, 2007. Web.
June 17, 2011.
Klastrup, Lisbeth, and Susana Tosca. Transmedial WorldsRethinking Cyberworld
Design. Proceedings of the 2004 International Conference on Cyberworlds. Los
Alamitos ca: ieeee Computer Society, 2004. N. pag. pdf file. June 1, 2012.
Lindgren Leavenworth, Maria, and Malin Isaksson. Fanged Fan Fiction: Variations
on Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries. Jefferson nc: McFarland,
2013.
McMahon-Coleman, Kimberley. Mystic Falls Meets the World Wide Web: Where
Is The Vampire Diaries Located? Fanpires: Audience Consumption of the Modern
Vampire. Ed. Gareth Schott and Kirstine Moffat. Washington dc: New Academia
Publishing, 2011. 16986. Print.
MimiRose113. A Bit of Give and Too Much Take. FanFiction.net. May 4, 2011. Web.
June 17, 2011.
The Night of the Comet. The Vampire Diaries. Season 1, episode 2. Warner Home
Video, 2011. dvd.
Piper. The Most Impulsive Thing. Archive of Our Own. January 1, 2011. Web. June
17, 2011.
Ryan, Marie-Laure. Will New Media Produce New Narratives? Narrative across
Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Ed. Marie-Laure Ryan. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2004. 33759. Print.
Sandrine Shaw. Barefoot on Broken Glass (One Step at a Time). Archive of Our
Own. May 21, 2011. Web. June 17, 2011.
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Smith, L. J. The Awakening & The Struggle. 1991. London: Hodder Childrens Books,
2009. Print.
. The Fury & The Reunion. 1991. London: Hodder Childrens Books, 2009.
Print.
. The Return: Midnight. London: Hodder Childrens Books, 2011. Print.
. The Return: Nightfall. 2009. London: Hodder Childrens Books, 2010. Print.
. The Return: Shadow Souls. 2009. London: Hodder Childrens Books, 2010.
Print.
Thomas, Bronwen. What Is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice
Things about It? Storyworlds 3 (2011): 124. Print.
The Vampire Diaries. Season 1. Warner Home Video, 2010. dvd.
The Vampire Diaries. Season 2. Warner Home Video, 2011. dvd.
The Vampire Diaries. Season 3. Warner Home Video, 2012. dvd.
The Vampire Diaries. Season 4. Warner Home Video, 2013. dvd.
Williamson, Milly. The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram
Stoker to Buffy. London: Wallflower Press, 2005. Print.

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15

The Developing Storyworld of H. P. Lovecraft

van leavenworth

This chapter investigates the storyworld that has developed out of terror
tropes presented in the fiction of American Gothic writer H. P. Lovecraft
(18901937). The Lovecraft storyworld is elicited by textual fiction, interactive fiction, short and feature-length films, fan art, comics, music,
board games, role-playing games, computer games, and interactive environments in Second Life, to name a few examples. Specifically, I explore
the poetics of the Lovecraft storyworlds development, its transmedial
adaptability, and its cultural significance for both contemporary audiences and Lovecrafts legacy.
The Lovecraft storyworld is different from other storyworlds in that it
is not unified by a specific story or stories. Although there is no accepted definition across disciplinary boundaries, in narrative theory storyworlds are frequently defined as worlds evoked by narratives, which
means that narratives act as blueprints for world-creation (Herman
vii). For example, a readers mental construction of the environment,
characters, and actions presented in Margaret Atwoods A Handmaids
Tale is a storyworld, as is the more comprehensive world of characters
and events fostered by reading J. R. R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings
trilogy. In this definition, the logical consistency of a story or interrelated stories is central; Offred always experiences painful subjugation in
the Handmaids Tale storyworld and Frodo always bears the ring in the
Lord of the Rings storyworld. But fictional practice is not always narratively consistent, particularly when several different authors and producers engage with a storyworlds original blueprint narrative(s) over
a long period of time. In such a case, the storyworld may develop contradictions or lose narrative consistency altogether. However, such alterations do not discount the possibility of a storyworld, as is demonstrated
by the multiverse of parallel storyworlds used to logically account for
narrative contradictions in long-running superhero comics (Kukkonen
332

40). The Lovecraft storyworld provides a further example of how narrative inconsistencies may be accommodated. Rather than rely on story, the Lovecraft storyworld is logically consistent due to factors that derive from the original blueprint narrative(s) but are not dependent upon
their presence.
The Lovecraft storyworld is a shared mental model of an indistinct
world that is unified by a specific thematic focus. Conceiving of this denarrativized storyworld involves imagining the fuzzy idea of a world
created when audiences collectively share their experiences of it.1 Lisbeth
Klastrup and Susana Toscas notion of transmedial worlds, although
used primarily to discuss authorized cyberworld design, provides a helpful lens for examining the Lovecraft storyworld. Transmedial worlds
are abstract content systems from which a repertoire of fictional stories and characters can be actualized or derived across a variety of media forms. What characterises a transmedial world is that audience and
designers share a mental image of the worldness (a number of distinguishing features of its universe). The idea of a specific worlds worldness mostly originates from the first version of the world presented, but
can be elaborated and changed over time (n. pag.). This definition helpfully avoids the comprehensive uniformity and narrative consistency
that the term world might suggest. Audiences and creators share an
idea of worldness, of things that contribute to a sense of a world, rather than a distinct image of a world, and this world-like image has the
potential to develop with each new aesthetic work that evokes it. In the
Lovecraft storyworld, recurring scenarios feature human characters in
realistic settings who discover coexisting cosmic realities and the unspeakably scary beings that inhabit them. These realities appear to rupture natural laws and cannot be conceived of by human minds, and so
the encounters produce terror, eternal unease, and/or mental instability
in the protagonists. The characters are left with a sense of the insignificance of humanity in the cosmos. These unifying elements provide the
thematic foundation of the Lovecraft storyworlds worldnessnamely,
its logical consistency.
Although the theme of humanitys hopeless encounter with an indifferent cosmic reality is the cornerstone of the Lovecraft storyworld,
recurring beings, locations, and occult tomes may help to conjure it.
Examples include not only minor creatures such as Byakhees and MiDeveloping Storyworld of Lovecraft

333

gos but also inconceivable, masterful, alien entities such as Cthulhu,

Hastur, or Azathoth; such locations as decaying towns or settlements
in New England; and the Necronomicon, the most famous occult tome.2
However, works that feature these well-known elements without employing the unifying themes do not evoke the storyworld but merely allude
to details in Lovecrafts fictional legacy. For example, Cthulhu has been
depicted as a cute, childish figure and is even a hero in the 2010 Xbox
Live independent game Cthulhu Saves the World. Such re-envisionings
of Cthulhu are parodies of but do not develop the Lovecraft storyworld.
Klastrup and Toscas concept of transmedial worlds helps explain the potential but not required use of certain elements in Lovecraft storyworld
works. They claim that three core features define a transmedial worlds
worldness: the topos represents the setting and physical laws of the world,
the ethos includes character ethics and codes of behavior, and the mythos
is the implied underlying understanding of how things should play out
or, as they put it, the central knowledge one needs to have in order to
interact with or interpret events in the world (n. pag., original emphasis). Within this schema, works that contribute to the Lovecraft storyworld may or may not employ commonly used settings (topos) and follow the few rules of character conduct that exist (ethos), but they always
engage with the theme of humanitys troubling contact with a cosmic
reality (mythos).3
The development of the Lovecraft storyworld prompts several questions. What is alluring about it and why has it developed so extensively? As the Lovecraft storyworlds growth is supported by a variety of art
forms in different media, how do works engage with its mythos in familiar yet media-specific ways? Finally, how has the Lovecraft storyworld
contributed to pulp writer Lovecrafts elevation into the American literary canon? In the first section of this chapter, I argue that its allure is
attributable to the spiritual appeal of mythos themes, the satisfaction
derived from hunting for knowledge, and the desire for aesthetic fulfillment. In the second section, I demonstrate how media-specific limitations engender central mythos themes. Last, I explore how the circle of influence between popular and critical developments has changed
Lovecrafts status. The scope and influence of the unique Lovecraft storyworld suggest that it exemplifies the powerful position that storyworlds
may occupy in our contemporary media ecology.
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Allure
The allure of the Lovecraft storyworld derives from the valued but unsettled nature of knowledge at its mythic core. Many people are spiritually
and intellectually drawn to the epistemological rupture produced by human contact with a cosmic reality, some to the extent that Lovecraftian
concepts are employed religiously. In a more secular fashion, many find
cosmic elements intriguing enough to hunt for more information about
them in successive works. The majority of the Lovecraft storyworld audience is likely to appreciate the number and diversity of works available, as each has the potential to provide a fulfilling aesthetic experience.
A fundamental appeal of the Lovecraft storyworld is the nearly religious sense of what Lovecraft referred to as cosmic fear. In his essay
Supernatural Horror in Literature, he presents cosmic fear as a mixture of terror, wonder, and curiosity. To create this effect in a story, [a]
certain atmosphere of breathless and unexplainable dread of outer, unknown forces must be present; and there must be a hint, expressed with
a seriousness and portentousness becoming its subject, of that most terrible conception of the human braina malign and particular suspension or defeat of those fixed laws of Nature which are our only safeguard
against the assaults of chaos and the daemons of unplumbed space (426).
Cosmic fear derives from suspicion or evidence of unknown forces,
such as so-called Old Ones, including Cthulhu, whose very existence ruptures the systems of knowledge that humanity uses to make sense of the
world. Nol Carroll aligns cosmic fear with religious belief, describing
it as responding to a primordial or instinctual human intuition about
the world, including a visionary dimension which is said to be keenly felt and vital (163). In other words, cosmic fear has a transcendent
element, a quality the majority of Lovecraft storyworld works strive to
achieve for explorers.4 At the same time, the insignificance of humanity within the trope of cosmic fear suggests a humility that is also akin
to religious belief as it provides a healthy perspective on humanitys
actions. Humanity cannot afford to be arrogant, selfish, and shortsighted when more powerful beings in the universe regard it as irrelevant.
The Lovecraft storyworld is thus appealing for the quasi-religious mixture of transcendent knowledge and humility that it espouses through
the theme of cosmic fear.
Developing Storyworld of Lovecraft

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An extreme example of the spiritual appeal of cosmic fear is found

in contemporary occult practice. In The Influence of H. P. Lovecraft on
Occultism, K. R. Bolton examines several cults that have incorporated
Lovecrafts ideas into their beliefs and rituals in similar ways.5 Lovecraft is
considered to have gained genuine occult knowledge in his dreams and
unwittingly conveyed it through his fiction, which may be contextualized
into an occult tradition dating back to Sumerian writings (n. pag.). The
cults also share the attitude that the Old Ones, such as Cthulhu, are real
and should be brought back to Earth. However, while some occult practitioners view them as morally ambiguous or even evil, Kenneth Grant of
the Typhonian Cultus, Michael Aquino of the Church of Satan, and others feel that Lovecrafts interpretation of these beings was faulty; the Old
Ones are not evil and may even be regarded as benevolent. Significantly,
despite the cults focus on Lovecraft as an unwitting prophet, Bolton demonstrates that they draw from the Lovecraft storyworld mythos generally
and so mistakenly attribute to him details, such as the Old One GnophHek or the star-shaped Elder Sign, that come from other authors.6 The
inclusion of aspects of the cosmic reality in alternative religious practices
emphasizes the intellectual and spiritual allure of ideas in the storyworld.
Another reason for the appeal of the Lovecraft storyworld is the fulfillment derived from hunting for knowledge about specific elements of the
cosmic reality. For example, Hastur is commonly regarded as an Old One,
but he only receives a vague mention in Lovecrafts tale The Whisperer
in Darkness (215). Looking for more information about Hastur may lead
an explorer to find references in the board game Arkham Horror (where
the Old One is linked to Byakhees), in an Ambrose Bierce story (where
Hastur is a god of shepherds), in Robert W. Chamberss short story collection The King in Yellow (where Hastur seems to be both a character and a
place), and the trail continues. Henry Jenkins notes that hunting for information is a common practice for communities built around collective consumption and shared knowledge (95, 9899). Klastrup and Tosca
hints at the benefits of this activity when they claim that by encountering one of the worlds actualizations [...], the imaginary construct of
the world is evoked in the participants imagination, and each simple act
gains a much wider meaning (n. pag.). This assertion suggests that subsequent encounters with a storyworld enrich the participants imaginary
construct, creating an increasing sense of investment and expertise. In
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the Lovecraft storyworld, this behavior places the explorer in the same
position as human characters in many narratives who attempt to piece
together details about the cosmic reality. Like such characters, what begins as a curiosity-driven endeavor may develop into an addictive need
to know, justified by a growing sense of authority and understanding.7
As the hunt for Hastur example demonstrates, the knowledge gaps and
unfulfilled expectations in many Lovecraft storyworld works encourage
further exploration. Lovecraft laid the foundations for these traits with
incomplete and inconsistent hints at cosmic elements in his tales (see
Joshi 144, Price 239). Recurring clues and details pepper his fiction and
the fiction of several of his contemporaries, all of whom borrowed from
each other as a means of creating verisimilitude (see Dziemianowicz 21).
Narrative gaps are, of course, inherent effects of the difference between
events in a story and how they are narrated, as Wolfgang Iser and Meir
Sternberg have demonstrated (see Abbott 44), but the gaps in Lovecrafts
fiction and the work by others that he has inspired by others also function as the Gothic conventions of fragmentation at key revelatory moments and story-within-a-story layering. These puzzle-like gaps are likely
to encourage what Marie-Laure Ryan calls epistemic immersion or the
desire to know, which is one of the pleasures incumbent to imaginative
engagement with a mystery narrative or narrative-generating work (55).
Ironically, the explorers quest to learn things about the Lovecraft storyworld may also derive from a lack of storytelling skill in many works.
Lovecrafts occasionally monotonous narration may keep readers from
fully appreciating the intriguing ideas in his stories, creating a motivation to read more in search of a better experience. To paraphrase Iser,
Lovecrafts writing style sometimes hinders the coming together of text
and imagination so that there is only a limited fulfillment of the potential, unexpressed reality of the text (279). For example, consider the
following passage: Out of the unimaginable blackness beyond the gangrenous glare of that cold flame, out of the Tartarean leagues through
which that oily river rolled uncanny, unheard, and unsuspected, there
flopped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things
that no sound eye could ever wholly grasp, or sound brain ever wholly
remember (The Festival 116). This sentence indicates Lovecrafts penchant for description, drama-dampening phrasing, and inclination to
tell (rather than show) the reader about subverted natural laws. In homDeveloping Storyworld of Lovecraft

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age to Lovecraft or not, many works evoking the storyworld are of similar questionable quality and so encourage further exploration. Creatively
minded individuals, of course, may address this concern through their
own artistic production. As testament to this effort, one need only look
at the Internet Movie Database, which lists nearly eighty titles based on
or inspired by Lovecraft in the last two decades (H. P. Lovecraft).
Taken together, the quasi-religious character of the Lovecraft storyworld themes, the gap-filling quest for knowledge, and the desire for a
satisfying aesthetic experience lead to a cycle of increasing consumption and production.
Thematic Media Specificity
Creative efforts in many different media forms demonstrate the Lovecraft
storyworlds transmedial adaptability. Surprisingly, the limitations of the
media forms are often used to enable mythos concepts. This enabling limitation is evident in the silent film The Call of Cthulhu: The Celebrated
Story by H. P. Lovecraft (2005) from the H. P. Lovecraft Historical
Society (hplhs); Chaosiums role-playing game Call of Cthulhu: Horror
Roleplaying in the Worlds of H. P. Lovecraft (1981present), authored by
Sandy Petersen and Lynn Willis; and Michael S. Gentrys text-based interactive fiction Anchorhead: An Interactive Gothic (1998). These works
use two Lovecraft storyworld mythos concepts uniquelythe loss of control that occurs when human characters encounter knowledge of the cosmic reality and the inability of any human communication to express this
knowledge. These themes are exemplified in Lovecrafts short story The
Call of Cthulhu when a group of sailors encounter Cthulhu on Rlyeh, a
strange island newly risen from the sea. Immediately upon spying the Old
One, two sailors perish of pure fright and the remaining sailors frantically try to escape (167). Cthulhu is not comprehensively portrayed because
the Thing cannot be describedthere is no language for such abysms of
shrieking and immemorial lunacy, such eldritch contradictions of all matter, force, and cosmic order (165). Cthulhus indescribability symbolizes
not only that the narrative format breaks down or fragments in a suitably
Gothic manner but also that language is ineffectual, and by extension the
cognitive processes that have produced language are insufficient, when
it comes to understanding the cosmic reality (see Leavenworth 97, 98).
As previously noted, one expression of the allure of the Lovecraft sto338

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ryworld is the desire to produce aesthetically fulfilling works. The blackand-white silent film The Call of Cthulhu, released directly to dvd, is a
result of this motivation. Coproducer and writer Sean Branney explains
that we wanted to make a movie that was a real, serious, sincere [...]
truthful adaptation of one of Lovecrafts works; thus he implies his belief
that few such adaptations exist (Hearing The Call). The film is faithful in a number of ways. Shot using techniques available in the 1920s
the decade that saw the original publication of The Call of Cthulhu
and concluded major silent film production in Americait uses no color, no synchronized sound, no audible dialogue, and no computer animation (see hplhs, The Call of Cthulhu). Such fidelity is logical and
stylistically in keeping with Lovecrafts old-fashioned writing style, and
the choice to render the story as a silent film in the twenty-first century
foregrounds the viewers loss of control and the narratives inability to
express cosmic knowledge. In our contemporary media ecology where
color images, advanced sound technologies, and computer-generated effects are ubiquitous, the black-and-white silent film is a curio of limited
expression. The viewer does not encounter the common cinematic features that drive a narrative and so most likely experiences a loss of cognitive control in the sense that he or she must interpret more from less.
The already constrained expressiveness of the film is reduced even
further when the sailors find Cthulhus home on Rlyeh. The techniques
used in this sequence foster a loss of cognitive control for the viewer and
symbolize a failure to communicate cosmic knowledge. While title cards
that display dialogue or narration appear at regular intervals throughout the forty-seven-minute film before and after the climactic scenes on
Rlyeh, they are absent throughout the approximately eight minutes it
takes to depict the horrifying events on the island, despite several instances of character dialogue or exclamation. Removing the title cards
in the most crucial sequence simulates a loss of control for the viewer,
particularly as some of the words that the sailors shout are not easily deciphered by lip reading.
Alongside this loss of control, the film is unable to portray the full significance of the cosmic reality with its representation of Cthulhu. While
Cthulhus mountainous size, frightening form, and devastating effects
on the crew are apparent, the viewer is not likely to have a fearful reaction to the Old One, as Cthulhu is rendered in clay and animated via
Developing Storyworld of Lovecraft

339

Fig. 15.1. Photo of Cthulhu. Courtesy H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society,

hplhs, Inc., 2005.

stop-motion filming techniques. This old-fashioned method creates a

naive, token image of the Old One and all it represents, demonstrating
the films inability to show the unshowable.
The tabletop role-playing game Call of Cthulhu (CoC) engages with
Lovecrafts writing and other elements in the Lovecraft storyworld via a
ludic, narrative-generating framework that prioritizes the hunt for cosmic knowledge. Gameplay involves social interaction between players
who act to resolve a mysterious situation, usually one in which strange
things occur as a prelude to encountering a supernatural phenomenon
or entity, such as an Old One. Although the scenarios or adventures vary
widely, the conceptual, rule-governing foundations of the game emphasize the quest for information. The characters most players control are
called investigators because that label reflects what they spend their
time doing, a practice cemented by the standardized mystery format of
most published scenarios (Petersen and Willis 24, Hite 32). One player
acts as the Keeper of Arcane Lore and leads the investigators through
a scenario by describing scenes, portraying characters whom the inves340

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tigators meet, and ensuring the rules are followed (Petersen and Willis
2425). Accumulating information is such a major pastime for investigators that the rulebook provides a surprising number of recommendations for how to do it, beginning with the advice of going to the library,
continuing with the importance of visiting historical and municipal organizations, and ending, four paragraphs of further suggestions later,
with a recommendation to interview relevant individuals (26). This focus on research remediates both the characters actions in Lovecraft storyworld narratives and the explorers hunt for knowledge.
CoC ensures that over the course of several scenarios players will
eventually lose control over their characters and, as a consequence, their
ability to play strategically. Scenario designer Keith Herber explains that
while other role-playing games offer tangible rewards to encourage
player participation, CoC play is driven by curiosity about the cosmic
reality, so [i]nvestigators usually finish adventures in worse shape than
they began, with less money, less sanity, and possibly a lowered social
standing (41). As this downward spiral is most often continued in each
successive adventure, investigators move toward unavoidable destruction (Hite 35). Through their failing investigators, players experience an
increasing loss of control, which simulates the most common situation
for characters in stories that evoke the Lovecraft storyworld.
The CoC rules assert the danger of cosmic knowledge through a game
mechanic that, as in Lovecrafts short story, fails to communicate such
knowledge. The threat to humanitys worldview is addressed by the sanity rules. Sanity represents an investigators flexibility and resilience to
emotional trauma, and so a high number of sanity points allow an investigator to cognitively deal with horrific events whereas a low sanity level
makes the investigator unreliable in threatening situations (Petersen and
Willis 75). While any personal shock can cause sanity loss, several things
guarantee it, and a significant drop in sanity points in a short amount
of game time makes an investigator insane (76, 83). Serious shocks then
produce permanent sanity loss. An extremely insane investigator illustrates the role-playing games inability to express the ramifications of
the cosmic reality. Role-playing is a combination of playing and acting.
A player with a permanently insane investigator is very limited in terms
of play (i.e., his or her investigator is strategically ineffective as a game
agent) but may act out the investigators instabilities. Unlike other situDeveloping Storyworld of Lovecraft

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ations in which the keeper may provide narrative support for an investigators personal experience, the rulebook makes it clear that players are
to interpret madness as they see fit (8486). In this sense, the player occupies a similar position to that of the Lovecraft reader who must creatively imagine the indescribable Cthulhu. But in role-playing such individual interpretation is part of the process; so only if a player becomes
too authentic in his or her performance does the game break down. If a
player tries to act out too many elements of his investigators insanity,
it may disturb the other players, and the keeper is encouraged to quash
the interruption (86). In other words, a player who tries to fully express
the effects of cosmic knowledge has the potential to disrupt the game.
Like Lovecrafts narrative, CoC is symbolically unable to communicate
the ramifications of contact with the cosmic reality.
The interactive fiction (if) Anchorhead encapsulates many Lovecraft
storyworld themes and has been praised for being consistently both
scary and playable (Stevens n. pag.).8 As with most contemporary ifs,
Anchorhead is wholly text based and proceeds in alternating steps of textual output from the software (describing a location, event, character, and
so forth) and short commands input by the player (such as take key,
examine book, talk to Michael). The players commands govern the
player character, a focalizing agent that the player uses to investigate the
town of Anchorhead. A typical exchange follows, with the player character addressed via the second person you in descriptions and with player commands written in capitals after the prompt (>):
Study
This smaller room adjoining the library seems comfortable
enough, although it is dusty and cluttered from having not been
lived in for the better part of a year. Aside from the desk and the
chair and the empty shelves, the only real feature of the room is the
large, ornate fireplace in the southern wall. [...]

> L O OK

AT

FIR EPL AC E

The fireplace is carved from beautiful, dark-veined marble, a

strange shade that is not quite a deep, forest green and not quite a
murky, dusty red. The mantelpiece is flanked by a pair of polished
brass spheres.
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> E X A M IN E

SPH E R E

You see the room behind you in distorted miniature, and your
own face swelling and stretching comically as you peer into the
spheres reflective surface.
Looking closely, you notice some smudges on the otherwise immaculately polished brass.

>TUR N

SPH E R E

The sphere twists clockwise a few degrees, there is a barely audible click, and the sphere snaps back into its original position.
Suddenly, the entire fireplace slides about eighteen inches to the
left with a hollow grinding sound, revealing a narrow corridor in
the southwest wall.9
As this progression demonstrates, play involves reading textual output
carefully for clues as to what to interact with, and as there is no time limit
for inputting commands, the player may spend time considering the details both within the context of an exchange and in the wider context of
other elements encountered in the if. In Anchorhead, the female player
character has recently moved to the New England town of Anchorhead
with her husband, Michael, in order to inherit the estate of a distant, mysterious branch of Michaels family. While exploring the town, the player learns of and must deal with many strange and sinister clues, revelations, and events involving Michaels family and the citizenry.
In situations where the player character is indirectly threatened by
some aspect of the cosmic reality, her depicted loss of control is simulated for the player. For example, at one point the character discovers
an old slaughterhouse. The ground inside the slaughterhouse is covered
in strange footprints, a childs drawing is found depicting what is described as [a]n octopus on human legs, maybe, and the dried-up well
next to the slaughterhouse is found to be knee-deep in childrens bones
(Crumbled Ruin, In the Well).10 When the player directs the player character to leave this gruesome area by backtracking the way she came, this
action prompts the following: You are about to step back through the
eastern wall when a noise makes you stop. In the woods outside, to the
eastsomething is there. Something breathing. Something huge. [...]
A branch cracks sharply; and another. Its coming this way (Crumbled
Developing Storyworld of Lovecraft

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Ruin). With each successive command the software produces a more

frantic description of the things approach. Since the player does not
know how quickly the creature will arrive, each command suddenly takes
on immense importance as an integral step in keeping the player character from harm.11 As this scenario occurs late in the if and the player
has not previously experienced a direct correlation between individual
commands and timed events in the game, the surprise and stress of the
player characters situation are simulated for the player.
The players loss of control is even greater when the player character
directly encounters an unspeakable being. The way this confrontation
is enacted also indicates the ifs inability to convey the epistemological
rupture of cosmic knowledge. In the previous scenario, the player may
hide the player character under the pile of childrens bones in the well.
Once the player enters the final allowable command, something unusual happens to the software interface. The typical procedure is that commands are input and text is output at the bottom of the screen, creating
a script of the player characters actions that scrolls up the screen. When
the creature reaches the well, however, the players final command unexpectedly shoots to the top of the interface, producing an empty screen,
absent of the record of events. Without this record the brief output text
below the players last command becomes the only event that matters,
particularly as it describes the player characters encounter with an unspeakable being: [T]he circle of light above you is blotted out by a shape
so utterly, blasphemously hideous that it is all you can do to remain
conscious. Two grotesquely blue and childlike eyes blink down into the
darkness of the well, searching... (In the Well). At this point the player cannot enter a command but may only press a key to move on to the
next screen, a reduction in agency from player to reader. Pressing a key
produces a new blank screen, but the output text is once again down at
the bottom and followed by the command prompt, signaling a return to
normal operating procedure. The player character has lost consciousness for a while, and the creature is gone (In the Well). These blank
screens reflect the player characters unconscious state, and this loss of
agency is simulated for the player via the loss of text and an inability to
enter a command. Blank screens also gesture toward the media forms
inability to portray an interaction with a cosmic horror beyond human
understanding.
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I have previously argued that affecting the players illusion of control is central to the development of Gothic effects in interactive fictions
such as Anchorhead (see Leavenworth 18385). While this claim is arguably generalizable when it comes to horror games, the works investigated here demonstrate the broad adaptability of this conceit.12 Together,
the illusion of control and the failure to express cosmic knowledge in
these Lovecraft storyworld works indicate the value of media limitations, rather than allowances, when bringing together mythos content
and form for explorers.
Canonization
The most explicit indication of Lovecrafts changed status from xenophobic pulp writer to literary author are the recently published scholarly editions of his writings. Examples of these include 2000s Tales of H.
P. Lovecraft, with an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates; three Penguin
Classics anthologies of his prose fiction, edited by S. T. Joshi (1999, 2001,
2004); and a 2005 Library of America volume that establishes the author
as a peer to Gothic writers such as Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson.
The extent to which Lovecrafts reputation has changed among scholars, the general public, and publishers begs the question: what has happened to bring about this change? In providing a plausible answer to this
question, I illuminate the potential cultural impact of storyworlds in the
twenty-first century. The authors canonization is owing to an interplay
between trends in contemporary scholarship and the cultural capital
generated by the Lovecraft storyworld.
In the last few decades a number of shifts have occurred in literary
studies and related analytical fields that have enabled fresh perspectives
on Lovecrafts fiction. Cultural studies, media studies, and several sociopolitical critical perspectives have led to a revaluing of popular culture artifacts (i.e., texts, games, films, and such). One result, visible at
the level of genre, is that the Gothic has now been established as a significant space for the interplay of cultural meanings. The formulaic, essentialist analyses carried out on Gothic fiction several decades ago have
given way to criticism sensitive to how the idea of the human is constituted historically and ideologically and how the portrayal of figures
excluded from dominant cultural discourses allows for a reconsideration of the institutions that support prevailing values (Botting and
Developing Storyworld of Lovecraft

345

Townshend 1516). Freed from previous critical disdain, Lovecrafts fiction may now be examined in sophisticated ways as part of the American
Gothic tradition. He is seen to have evolved the grotesque, hybrid beings of fin de sicle British Gothic in a new pulp form (see Hurley 13739,
142; Luckhurst xv, xxxi). His conception of cosmic fear has been linked
to Julia Kristevas notion of self-abjection (see Ralickas 38891) and to
Edmund Burkes and Immanuel Kants conceptions of the sublime (see
Nelson; Will; Leavenworth 8283). His writing has also been employed
as a means of exploring Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattaris philosophy
of becoming (see MacCormack). These examples suggest that Lovecraft
studies are on the rise and helping to cement his place in the canon.
At the same time, the authors legacy is gaining popular cultural value via the Lovecraft storyworld. Works that evoke it typically reference
Lovecrafts name, so that it functions similar to a brand name and initiates in the knowledgeable customer a set of expectations and associations that influence a desire for the product. This familiar stamp signals the promise of fulfilling what Oates refers to as the tacit contract
between consumers of genre fiction and the producer, a contract where
consumers expect familiar formulas but appreciate experiencing them
in new and unique ways (xiii). In short, Lovecrafts name takes on what
Pierre Bourdieu describes as cultural capital (243). In his investigation
of the circulation of cultural value surrounding prize-winning literature,
James F. English notes that for Bourdieu, capital is not merely understood in its narrow economic sense [...] but rather is used to designate
anything that registers as an asset, and can be put profitably to work, in
one or another domain of human endeavor (9). An objects capital (its
value and meaning) is specific to particular groups and changes in accordance with the fluctuating terms of valuation and exchange generated by the interaction of group members (9; see Bourdieu 247). Thus,
among Lovecraft storyworld explorers the name Lovecraft on a work
signals the promise of familiar enjoyment and investment, among occult
practitioners the name is linked to spiritual enlightenment, and among
fans of the historical romance the name may not signal any capital at
all. However, the growth of the Lovecraft storyworld ensures that the
Lovecraft brand is increasingly likely to represent some form of capital
for the general public because ubiquity is linked to the creation of cultural meaning. According to Stefan Dziemianowicz, the Lovecraft legacy
346

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will become evident to a younger generation raised on graphic novels,

manga, computer games, YouTube clips, and Twitter feeds because they
will encounter mythos ideas there that may foster a lasting interest (20).
Lovecrafts canonization may explicitly be due to his significant literary
achievements, both as an author and as an influence on countless other
authors, but the Lovecraft storyworld has undoubtedly played a part in
this process by demonstrating the lasting popular relevance of his ideas.
In a contemporary media ecology where authorized transmedial production is increasingly becoming the creative (and marketable) norm, the
Lovecraft storyworld stands out as a culturally important example of unauthorized, denarrativized storyworld development. Evoked by a variety
of different media forms, the Lovecraft storyworld embodies a model of
the shared participatory wisdom implicit in contemporary paradigms of
information flow, knowledge use, and convergence. The Lovecraft storyworlds allure, transmedial adaptability, and cultural impact assert the
value of organic and thematic storyworld growth for contemporary audiences and producers.

Notes
1. The collective consumption and shared knowledge inherent to storyworld development is emphasized in Jenkinss conception of how audiences respond to
transmedia storytelling (34), a phenomenon that is distinct from storyworld
engagement but shares certain aspects with it.
2. Although a few returning human characters exist, most are forgettable and
merely symbolize humanity.
3. Throughout this chapter I use the term mythos in this manner and not to refer to the Cthulhu Mythos, a problematic term that may be defined in several
ways. For an overview of debates surrounding the Cthulhu Mythos, see Joshi
(129). Alternate conceptions of the term have been suggested by Smith (2526)
and Lowell (47).
4. To avoid privileging any one media form I use the term explorer to denote
the player, reader, viewer, participant, user, audience member, and others who
engage with any work that evokes the storyworld.
5. Evans also considers Lovecrafts influence on occult thinking in The History of
British Magic after Crowley.
6. Both details are the creations of August Derleth, Lovecrafts literary executor.
7. This endeavor is not unique to storyworlds. Thorne and Bruner describe the
Developing Storyworld of Lovecraft

347

8.
9.

10.
11.
12.

investment-expertise development as typical of devoted fans in many knowledge spheres: fiction, sports, music, and so on (58).
My arguments pertaining to Anchorhead derive partly from the second chapter
of my doctoral dissertation, The Gothic in Contemporary Interactive Fictions.
Since there is no fixed sequence of events in much of the interactive fiction,
rooms where particular exchanges occur are the primary means of referencing
play. Room names, like the Study, will thus be used to provide specific information in Anchorhead.
Rooms may be indoor or outdoor locations.
Replaying the scene indicates that four commands are allowed before the creature finds the player character.
See Krzywinskas similar arguments about visual computer games in the horror
genre (21617) or Ryans discussion of how taking control away from the user
may be used to create suspense in a game that provides narrative immersion (55).

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Contributors

Marco Caracciolo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Arts, Culture, and Media

Department of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. While working
on his dissertation in comparative literature at the University of Bologna, he
was also a visiting scholar at the Ohio State University (Project Narrative) and
at the University of Hamburg (Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology). He is
mainly interested in cognitive approaches to literature and in literary aesthetics. His work has been published in journals such as Poetics Today, Storyworlds,
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, and Partial Answers. He has also
coauthored (with Marco Bernini) an introduction to cognitive literary studies
in Italian (Carocci, 2013). Caracciolos book-length study of how literary texts
figure the quality or texture of conscious experience is currently under review
for De Gruyter.
Jared Gardner is a professor of English and film at the Ohio State University,
where he also directs the Popular Culture Studies Program. He is the author
most recently of Projections: Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century
Storytelling (Stanford University Press, 2011) and The Rise and Fall of Early
American Magazine Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2012), and is coeditor
of the ongoing complete collection of Percy Crosbys Skippy for the Library of
American Comics.
Wolfgang Hallet is a professor for teaching English as a foreign language, a
member of the executive board of the International Graduate Centre for the
Study of Culture (gcsc), and head of its Teaching Centre at Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany. He is coeditor of a series of handbooks on teaching
literature and culture: the Giessen Contributions to Foreign Language Research
(Narr), the Giessen Contributions to the Study of Culture (wvt), and Concepts
for the Study of Culture (De Gruyter). His research and publications, including
several monographs, cover studies of culture-based theories of teaching literature and culture, cognition and literature, the methodology of the contextualization of literary texts, contemporary novels, and narratology.

351

Colin B. Harvey is a fiction writer, narrative designer, and academic specializing in shared storyworlds, licensed fiction, and transmedia storytelling. Harvey
is the author of Dead Kelly, set in the Afterblight shared world and published
by Abaddon Books (forthcoming). He also wrote Love and Hate, a Highlander
audio book starring Adrian Paul and produced by the British company Big Finish under license from mgm and Davis-Panzer. He contributed to Big Finishs
official Doctor Who line, published under license from the bbc, and won the inaugural Pulp Idol award, jointly conferred by sfx magazine and Gollancz Publishing. He has written numerous video game story design documents for Sony.
His academic writing uses memory theory to analyze his own creative writing,
Neil Gaimans comics, the BBCs Sherlock, The Green Hornet comic, Doctor Who,
and Battlestar Galactica. Harvey authored Grand Theft Auto: Motion-Emotion
(Ludologica, 2005) and is currently writing Understanding Transmedia Storytelling: Fantasy, Memory, Play for Palgrave Macmillan. He is an adjunct associate
professor at the University of Western Sydney but is based in London.
Patrick Colm Hogan is a professor of English in the Department of English at
the University of Connecticut, where he is also on the faculties of the Program
in Cognitive Science, the Program in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, and the Program in India Studies. He is the author of sixteen books, including How Authors Minds Make Stories (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and
Ulysses and the Poetics of Cognition (Routledge, forthcoming). Conversations on
Cognitive Cultural Studies, a series of discussions between Hogan and Frederick
Aldama, is also forthcoming in 2014 (Ohio State University Press).
Jesper Juul has been working with the development of video game theory since
the late 1990s. He is an associate professor at the Danish Design School but has
previously worked at the New York University Game Center, the Singapore
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (mit) gambit Lab at mit, and at the itUniversity in Copenhagen. His books include Half-Real: Video Games between
Real Rules and Fictional Worlds on video game theory (mit Press, 2005) and The
Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games (mit Press, 2013).
He maintains the blog The Ludologist on game research and other important
things. For more information, see his webpage, http://www.jesperjuul.net.
Lisbeth Klastrup is an associate professor at the it-University in Copenhagen
and leader of the Digital Culture Research Group there. Klastrup studies the
interplay between design, sociality, and content production online and the
mundane and professional uses of social media formats such as Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube, and weblogs, including looking at the relation between these
352

Contributors

media forms and other media platforms. Her research interests also encompass
digital storytelling and the study of game worlds as worlds. She has published
several articles and papers on all these subjects and is coeditor of the International Handbook of Internet Research (Springer, 2010). She is currently working
on a book on social network sites.
Maria Lindgren Leavenworth is a senior lecturer at the Department of
Language Studies, Ume University, Sweden. Her previous research focused
on travel literature, particularly on contemporary works utilizing nineteenthcentury travelogues as maps, and on images of Scandinavia in travel texts by
Selina Bunbury, S. H. Kent, and Bayard Taylor. Previous publications also include articles on the intermediated moves between Virginia Woolf s Mrs Dalloway and Michael Cunninghams novel and Stephen Daldrys film The Hours, as
well as on novels in the horror and science fiction genresDan Simmonss The
Terror and Ursula K. Le Guins The Left Hand of Darkness, respectively. Lindgren Leavenworth is currently working with fan practices, with an emphasis on
fan fiction. Work in the project FAN(G)S: Fan Fiction and the Vampire Trope,
funded by the Swedish Research Council, has resulted in numerous articles and
anthology chapters, and in the monograph Fanged Fan Fiction: Variations on
Twilight, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries (McFarland, 2013).
Van Leavenworth is an assistant professor of English literature at the Department of Language Studies, Ume University, Sweden. He teaches contemporary
literature, cultural studies, and composition. His doctoral dissertation, The
Gothic in Contemporary Interactive Fictions (Ume University, 2010), explores
digital mediations of literary Gothic conventions. He has published articles on
science fiction, the Gothic (in diverse media forms), and conceptions of otherness in narrative storyworlds.
Jason Mittell is a professor of film and media culture and American studies
at Middlebury College in Vermont. He is the author of Genre and Television:
From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture (Routledge, 2004), Television
and American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2009), and Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (New York University
Press, forthcoming), and is the coeditor of How to Watch Television (New York
University Press, 2013). He writes the blog Just tv.
Marie-Laure Ryan is an independent scholar. In 201011 she was a Johannes
Gutenberg Fellow at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany,
where she researched the phenomenon of narrative distributed across various
Contributors

353

media. She is the author of Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory (University of Indiana Press, 1991); Narrative as Virtual Reality:
Immersion and Interactivity in Literature and Electronic Media (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001); and Avatars of Story (University of Minnesota Press,
2006), and more than a hundred articles on narratology and digital media. She
has also edited a number of books, among them the Routledge Encyclopedia of
Narrative Theory (2005), together with David Herman and Manfred Jahn, and
the Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media (2014) with Lori Emerson and Benjamin Robertson. Her scholarly work has earned her the Prize for Independent
Scholars and the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literature,
both from the Modern Language Association, and she has been the recipient of
Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities followships.
Jan-Nol Thon is a research associate at the Department of Media Studies of
the University of Tbingen, Germany. His current research interests include
transmedial narratology, comics studies, film theory, game studies, sound studies, transmedial characters, and convergent media culture. He has published
widely in these areas and has coedited Computer/Spiel/Rume: Materialien zur
Einfhrung in die Computer Game Studies (Computer/Game/Spaces: Introduction to Computer Game Studies [imk, 2007, with Klaus Bartels]); Probleme
filmischen Erzhlens (Problems of Film Narration [lit, 2009, with Hannah
Birr and Maike Sarah Reinerth]); Poetik der Oberflche: Die deutschsprachige
Popliteratur der 1990er Jahre (Poetics of the Surface: German Pop Literature of
the 1990s [De Gruyter, 2011, with Olaf Grabienski and Till Huber]); and From
Comic Strips to Graphic Novels: Contributions to the Theory and History of
Graphic Narrative (De Gruyter, 2013, with Daniel Stein).
Jeff Thoss teaches English at the Free University of Berlin. He wrote his PhD
thesis on metalepsis in popular fiction, film, and comics at the University of
Graz and has given talks and published papers on topics relating to narrative
theory, intermediality, popular culture, and comics studies. In addition, he
collaborated with Werner Wolf and Katharina Bantleon on two collections of
essaysMetareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies (Rodopi, 2009)
and The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation (Rodopi, 2011). Currently, Jeff is working on his
habilitation thesis, which traces media rivalry in English literary history.
Susana Tosca is an associate professor at the it-University of Copenhagen.
Her PhD thesis, a poetics of hypertext literature, was awarded the summa cum
laude distinction. She has worked for many years on electronic literature, the
354

Contributors

storytelling potential of computer games, and complex reception processes,

with a side interest in fan activity and the distributed aesthetic formats of the
Web 2 era. Her last book is the second edition of Understanding Videogames:
The Essential Introduction with Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen and Jonas Heide
Smith (Routledge, 2013).
Werner Wolf is a professor and chair of English and general literature at the
University of Graz in Austria. His main areas of research are literary theory
(aesthetic illusion, narratology, and metafiction/metareference in particular),
functions of literature, eighteenth- to twenty-first-century English fiction, and
intermediality studies (relations and comparisons between literature and other
media, notably music and the visual arts). Besides numerous essays, reviews,
and contributions to literary encyclopedias, his publications include the
monographs sthetische Illusion und Illusionsdurchbrechung in der Erzhlkunst
(Aesthetic Illusion and the Breaking of Illusion in Fiction [Niemeyer, 1993]) and
The Musicalization of Fiction: A Study in the Theory and History of Intermediality (Rodopi, 1999). Furthermore, he is the editor of Metareference across Media:
Theory and Case Studies (Rodopi, 2009) and The Metareferential Turn in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation (Rodopi,
2011), as well as the coeditor of various volumes in the book series Studies in
Intermediality and Word and Music Studies (both published by Rodopi).
Frank Zipfel is a senior lecturer (Akademischer Oberrat) at the Department of
Comparative Literature (Institut fr Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft) of the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. His main
research topics include theory of fiction, narratology, genre theory, European
drama, intercultural studies, and intermedial studies. Publications include
Fiktion, Fiktivitt, Fiktionalitt: Analysen zur Fiktion in der Literatur und zum
Fiktionsbegriff in der Literaturwissenschaft (Fiction, Fictivity, Fictionality: Analyses Regarding Fiction in Literature and the Concept of Fiction in Literary Criticism [Erich Schmidt, 2001]); Literatur@Internet (Literature@Internet [Aisthesis,
2006, coedited with Axel Dunker]); Ecriture Migrante/Migrant Writing (Georg
Olms, 2008, coedited with Danielle Dumontet); and Tragikomdien: Kombinationsformen von Tragik und Komik im europischen Drama des 19. und 20.
Jahrhunderts (Tragicomedies: Combinations of the Tragic and the Comic in 19th
and 20th Century European Drama [forthcoming]). He also published numerous articles on literary theory, German modern literature, literature and digital
media, and intercultural studies.

Contributors

355

Index

Aarseth, Espen, 218

abstraction. See video games
action figures and toys, 280
adaptation, 1, 10, 195, 205, 21112, 217,
22223, 281, 317, 339
Adorno, Theodor, 205
Afternoon (hypertext fiction, Michael
Joyce), 41
Alber, Jan, 230
Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll), 40
alternate reality games (args), 254, 263,
26668, 278
analytic philosophy, 31, 110
Anchorhead: An Interactive Gothic (interactive fiction, Michael S. Gentry),
19, 338, 34245
archontic texts, 18, 31923
Aspergers syndrome, 10, 153
audience participation. See participation
Auerbach, Nina, 323
Austerlitz (novel, W. G. Sebald), 151
autism, 10, 153
The Babysitter (short story, Robert
Coover), 41
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 33
Bateson, Gregor, 25
Batman (comic-based franchise), 1
Batman: Arkham Asylum (video game),
8790
beat-em-up games, 21417

A Beautiful Mind (film, Ron Howard),

7374, 75
Bentley, Eric, 112
Blair Witch Project (film, Daniel Myrick
and Eduardo Snchez), 38
Bolter, Jay David, 21112
book: as material support of text, 132; as
tie-in to tv serials, 257
Bordwell, David, 117; with Janet Staiger
and Kristin Thompson, 195
Borges, Jorge Luis, 25, 28, 113
boundary crossing, 161
Bourdieu, Pierre, 346
Branigan, Edward, 6971, 73, 76
Breaking Bad (tv series), 15, 26972
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (tv series),
258, 260
Bukatman, Scott, 2023
Butterfly Effect, The (film, Eric Bress
and J. Mackye Gruber), 41
Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game), 19,
34042
The Call of Cthulhu (film, Andrew Leman), 338
Call of Duty (video game), 8687
canon, 288, 315, 321; and fanon, 315
Carroll, Nol, 53, 107, 112, 115, 335
cartography. See maps
character: as basic element of narrative,
256; and games, 2661; and transmedia storytelling, 26970;
357

character (cont.)
psychological depth of, 217; representation of experience, 231, 23746
Chatman, Seymour, 117
Chute, Hillary, 207
cinema of complexity, 206
cognitive framing. See narrative framing
Cohn, Dorrit, 105, 110
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 133
comedy, 21819, 270
comics, 2728, 39, 7884; and eye
movement, 208; and film, 12, 2016;
digital, 20710; and reading practices, 2034, 206
computer games. See video games
consciousness. See representation of
subjectivity
convergent storytelling. See transmedia
storytelling
Cooking Mama (video game), 173, 174
cultural capital, 346
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the
Night-Time (novel, Mark Haddon),
151, 153
Currie, Gregory, 110, 114, 11617
cut-scenes, 14, 84, 217, 232, 244
Deleuze, Gilles, 346
Dena, Christy, 41, 296; typology of
transmedia storytelling, 280, 287, 297
Dennett, Daniel, 186
Derecho, Abigail, 32223
description, 177
dialogue, 14
Dinehart, Stephen, 278, 290, 291
Doctor Who (transmedia series), 16, 257,
279, 28387, 296
documentary, 115
Doleel, Lubomr, 31
Don Quixote (novel, Cervantes), 40
Doom (video game), 86
358

Index

Dragnet (transmedia series), 254

drama, 56, 37, 5064. See also emplotting devices
dream sequence, 14, 84, 232, 24245
dvd, 1996; vs. streaming video, 200, 205
Easter eggs, 198, 200, 264
Eco, Umberto, 31, 105
Eder, Jens, 70, 82, 235
Ellestrm, Lars, 29
embodied cognition, 233
empathy, 64, 231, 242
emplotting devices, 5064; interruption,
52, 56, 63; parallelism, 5152, 59, 63;
triplication, 55
emulation, 218, 223
ergodic texts, 218
events, 36, 161, 256
experiential background, 23336, 245
experientiality, 93n3, 230, 236
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (novel, Jonathan Safran Foer), 151, 154
fan culture, 17, 18, 265, 273, 275, 295, 296;
forensic, 268
fan fiction, 17, 31520; as alternate universe, 320; as form of interactivity,
319; and romance novel, 328
fanon, 315
fanzines, 205
fiction 3334; and film, 115; and literature, 109; and narrative, 109; and
theater, 111; as deviation from reality,
105; as institution 8, 118, 198; multilayered account, 1039; mediumspecific aspects, 118; as transmedial
phenomenon, 8
fictional worlds, 11, 1045; in games,
17390; incompleteness, 177;
medium-specific aspects of 118; vs.
storyworlds, 111

Fight Club (film, David Fincher), 7576

film: and make-believe, 116; and theater
performance, 116; comic-based, 202
3; economy and distribution, 197201
first-person shooters, 8687, 185
Flatland (novel, Edwin Abbott), 42
Fludernik, Monika, 114, 137, 230
focalization, 69; internal, 14
folk psychology, 70
Forster, E. M., 35
framing. See narrative framing
Frankenstein (novel, Mary Shelley), 15,
254; and tv series, 1617, 295312

A Handmaids Tale (novel, Margaret

Atwood), 332
Harry Potter (novel series, J. K. Rowling), 41
Heidegger, Martin, 231
Herber, Keith, 341
Herman, David, 3, 31, 32, 43, 230, 332;
and Ruth Page, 169
Highlander (tv series), 16, 279, 28789
The History of Tom Jones (novel, Henry
Fielding), 133
Hollywood cinema, 19597
holodeck, 183
House of Leaves (novel, Mark Z. Danielewski), 151
Hhn, Peter, 133, 161
Huizinga, Johan, 190
Hutcheon, Linda, 211
hypermediacy, 227
hypertextuality, 157

Gaps (Leerstellen), 144, 178, 213, 337

Gaudreault, Andr, 117
Genette, Grard, 46n1, 69, 70, 93n5,
94n9, 96n19, 110
genre, as frame, 9; in video games,
17981
genre painting, and narrativity, 13940
Germinal (novel, mile Zola), 23537
Gerrig, Richard, 31, 43
Gibbons, Alison, 155, 163
Gibson, John, 105
Goodman, Nelson, 10, 153, 164, 166
Gorman, David, 108
gothic genre, 34546
graphic novels. See comics
Green, Joshua, 310
Grusin, Richard, 21112
Guattari, Flix, 346
Gunning, Tom, 117
Gwenllian Jones, Sara, 319, 32122

The Illiad, 130

illusionism, 212
illustrations, 40, 156
Indiana Jones (movie-based franchise), 1
intellectual property, 280
intentional stance, 186
interactivity, 14, 84, 240, 244, 281, 316,
319, 322
intermediality, 10, 214; intermedial reference, 221; intermedial relationships, 13
intradiegetic vs. extradiegetic elements,
37
Iser, Wolfgang, 144, 212, 337

Hallett, Wolfgang, 193; and Christine

Riding, 142, 143
hallucination. See perception, distorted
Hamburger, Kte, 111
Hamilton, James, 113, 114
Hamlet, 6, 5164

Jenkins, Henry, 1415, 19, 30, 41, 208, 255,

256, 257, 260, 262, 273, 275, 278, 289,
316, 322, 336; and Joshua Green, 310
The Job (novel, William S. Burroughs),
240
Jost, Franois, 117
Index

359

kinetoscope, 195
Klastrup, Lisbeth, 320, 321, 333, 336
Koten, Jri, 31
Kress, Gnter, 169; and Theo van Leeuwen, 1, 28, 152
Kristeva, Julia, 346
Lamarque, Peter, 108
language vs. image, 42
Laocon (Lessing), 9, 212
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
(graphic novel, Alan Moore), 7982
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 9, 141, 212
Levinson, Jerrold, 39
Lewis, David, 35
licensing, 282
linearity, 244
live performance, 194
The Lord of the Rings (novel trilogy,
J. R. R. Tolkien), 1, 41, 261, 296, 332
The Lord of the Rings Online (video
game), 297
Lorentzian wormholes, 160, 164
Lost (tv series), 15, 255, 26369
The Lost Experience (arg), 26668
Lostpedia, 264
Lotman, Jurij M., 161
Lovecraft, H. P., 18, 33247; on horror,
335; lack of storytelling skills, 337;
and literary canon, 334, 34547; and
popular culture, 346
Lovecraft storyworld, 33247; cosmic
theme, 33339; films inspired by, 338;
as Gothic, 34546; horror, 335; as
interactive fiction, 34245; occultism,
336; as table-top role-playing game,
34042; thematic media specificity,
33845; transmedial adaptability, 347
The Maesters Path (online game), 296,
299
360

Index

magic circle, 190

make-believe, 8, 10, 106, 111; active vs.
passive, 114
many-worlds texts, 40
maps: and intermedial relationship, 13;
and type of signs (symbol, index,
icon), 157
marketing, 16
The Matrix (transmedia franchise), 262,
273, 316
Max Payne (video game), 14, 86, 232,
24045; comic book sequence in,
241, 243, 246
McLuhan, Marshall, 2
McMahon-Coleman, Kimberley, 317
media: archaeology, 27; cultural dimension, 30; defined, 2531; rivalry, 212
27; simulating other media, 21927;
as technologies, 27; transparency, 225
Memento (film, Christopher Nolan),
200, 206
memory, and transmedia storytelling,
279, 286, 291, 292
metalepsis, 96n17
metaphor, 14
mimesis, 21213
mind-reading, 69
miniature worlds, 183
minimal departure, 11, 35, 42, 105, 234
mise en abyme, 142
Mitchell, W. J. T., 26, 169
modes: vs. media, 28; verbal vs. visual,
155
mothership (in transmedia storytelling), 255, 256
Mrs Dalloway (novel, Virginia Woolf), 36
multimediality, 10
multimodality, 12, 40, 15169, 193209;
and cognition, 169; vs. illustration,
156, 193; and reader, 166, 168; and
self-reference, 11; and semiotic re-

sources, 152; in theater and opera,

194; and types of signs, 168
Murray, Janet, 182
mutual belief principle, 105

Osipovich, David, 112

Outside Over There (childrens book,
Maurice Sendak), 40
overhearing (in drama), 52

Naked Lunch (novel, William S. Burroughs), 231, 232, 23740, 246

narrating-I vs. experiencing-I, 38
narration, theatrical, 114
narrative: cognitive processing, 43; and
digital media, 254; medium-specific,
232; possibilities, 275; text-based, 109;
time-span covered by, 36. See also
multimodality
narrative framing, 8, 12646; direct vs.
indirect, 128; homomedial vs. heteromedial, 128; intracompositional vs.
extracompositional, 13233; in literature, 13136; and paratext, 12, 141
narrativity, 127, 129; and lyric poetry, 9;
and media, 3; in pictorial arts, 136
43, 145; in poetry, 13334; and written
language, 166
narratology: transmedial and media
conscious, 4, 19, 30, 67, 68, 73, 9192,
93n2
narrator, 45, 3640, 109; embedded,
53; filmic, 117; homodiegetic, 78, 79;
omniscient, 60; unreliable, 60
Neitzel, Britta, 86
novel: multimodal, 15169
novelization, 25758, 284

Page, Ruth, 194; and Bronwen Thomas,

30; and David Herman, 169
Palmer, Alan, 69
paratext, 194, 198, 255, 275. See also narrative framing
Parnassian poetry, 213, 216
participation, 17, 282
Pavel, Thomas, 31, 177
Peirce, Charles Sanders, 157, 168
perception, distorted (dreams, hallucinations, etc.), 76, 78, 82, 232, 23746
performance, 212, 218
Persson, Per, 70
pictorial art: and narrativity, 13643
Pleasantville (film, Gary Ross), 43
plot: causal vs. emotional structure, 52;
types (revenge, romantic, seduction,
heroic), 53, 59, 219
poetry: and narrativity, 13334
poetry as lie (Plato), 109
point-of-view sequence, 72, 73; spatial,
73, 78, 79, 86; (quasi-)perceptual, 74,
75, 78, 79, 82, 87, 89
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
(novel, James Joyce), 135
possible worlds, 31
Pratt, Mary Louise, 141
Prince, Gerald, 129
principle of minimal departure. See
minimal departure
Psychonauts (video game), 9091

Olsen, Stein Haugom, 108

On Chesil Beach (novel, Ian McEwan),
23435
Ong, Walter, 30
online games, 298
Only Joking (novel, Gabriel Josipovici),
135
oral storytelling, 28

qualia, 7, 93n3
Rajewsky, Irina, 10, 214, 216, 220
realism, in film, 202
Index

361

reality principle, 35
religious painting: and narrativity, 13738
remediation, 21112
representation of subjectivity, 7, 6792;
in feature film, 7178; in graphic
novels, 7884; intersubjective, 79;
objective, 71; and point-of-view,
perspective, and focalization, 68;
vs. subjective representation, 68;
in video games, 8492; as (quasi-)
perceptual overlay, 7576, 78, 79,
82, 83, 8789. See also point-of-view
sequence
representational arts, 104
Richardson, Brian, 50
Riding, Christine, 142, 143
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (poem,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge), 13334
Road to Respect (game tie-in to The Sopranos), 261
rules of games, 12
Run Lola Run (film, Tom Tykver), 41
Ryan, Marie-Laure, 1, 75, 105, 126, 166,
168, 230, 234, 319, 337
Saltz, David, 112, 114
The Sandman (graphic novel series, Neil
Gaiman), 84
The Sarah Jane Adventures (tv series),
283, 284, 285
Saving Private Ryan (film, Steven Spielberg), 38
Schaeffer, Jean-Marie, 105
Scott Pilgrim (comic series, film), 13,
21127
Scruton, Roger, 107
Searle, John, 111, 112, 232, 234
Second Life (online world), 18, 332
The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet (novel,
Reif Larsen), 40
self-referentiality, 11
362

Index

serial drama. See television series

setting, 256
Se7en (film, David Fincher), 200
Shakespeare, William: construal techniques, 5264
Sherlock Holmes (stories, Arthur Conan
Doyle), 13, 254
The Sims (video game), 18687, 189
simulation: of medium, 220, 22425; of
character experience, 235; cognitive,
236
Sin City (graphic novel series, Frank
Miller), 82
social media, 17, 3012, 306, 31012;
sharing in, 3048, 31112
soliloquy, 58
A Song of Ice and Fire (novel series,
George R. R. Martin), 1, 17, 295
soundtrack, 39
space, in video games, 18889
Spiderman (comic-based franchise), 1
Staiger, Janet, 195
Star Trek (tv series) 257, 258
Star War (transmedia franchise), 1, 41,
264, 283
Sternberg, Meir, 54, 230, 337
storytelling: centrifugal vs. centripetal,
264; spatial, 260
Storyworlds, 23, 3143, 71, 220, 227,
256, 315; as abstract content systems,
296, 333; awareness, 296; canonical,
257; consistency, 316; deemphasized,
270; encyclopedic character, 274,
322; factual domain, 76; vs. fictional
worlds, 32; and immersion, 260,
274; logical vs. imaginative, 4; and
media, 2, 322; as mental constructs,
297; multimodal construction, 168;
as mythos, topos and ethos, 297, 320,
328, 334; in a state of flux, 316. See
also Lovecraft storyworld

subjectivity. See representation of subjectivity

suppositional imagination, 114, 117

Urtext, 279, 284, 28688, 291

The Usual Suspects (film, Bryan Singer),
73

Tan, Ed, 54
television: and audience engagement,
258; and books and video games, 257;
series, 198, 25376, 295; transmedia,
15, 25376
tellability, 141
temporal vs. spatial art forms, 212
theatrical performance, 112
Thomas, Bronwen, 30, 316
Thompson, Kristin, 195
time-travel, 285
Tintin (comic books, Herg), 4243
To Helen (poem, Edgar Allan Poe),
130
Tomb Raiders (video game), 86
Torchwood (tv series), 283, 284, 285
Tosca, Susana, 320, 321, 333, 336
transmedia franchise, 16, 278; marketing schemes, 299312;
transmediality, 3, 14, 194, 316
transmedia storytelling, 15, 195, 201, 253
76, 27892; and bible, 281; and characters, 26970; digital vs. analogue,
280, 291; emergent, 283; hunting for
information in, 336; and intellectual
property, 280; and legal matters, 282,
291; taxonomy of, 27892. See also
What Is vs. What If? transmedia
Tron (film), 16, 28991
Twelve Monkeys (film, Terry Gilliam),
76, 84
Twilight (novels, Stephenie Meyer), 327
Twin Peaks (tv series), 259

Vampire Diaries (novel series tv series,

fan fiction), 17, 31528
van Leeuwen, Theo, 1, 28, 152
video games, 39, 41, 8492, 24045, 296;
abstraction 17690; conventions,
216; genres, 179; multimodality, 240;
and remediation, 21427; representational, 182; rules, 17390; space,
18889; stories, 189; task relevant vs.
task-redundant information, 186;
and technological advancements,
184; tie-ins to other media, 259; and
virtual reality, 18285
virtual reality. See video games
Walton, Kendall, 35, 103, 1057, 114, 116
Warning, Rainer, 218
Watchmen (graphic novel and film adaptation), 2056, 207
Werth, Paul, 31, 32
Wertham, Frederic, 2045
What Is vs. What If? transmedia,
2776, 27376, 320
Wilson, George, 71, 73, 76
Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 27
Wolf, Werner, 30, 230
Wolsterstorff, Nicholas, 112
World of Warcraft (video game), 1, 86,
187
YouTube, 267, 3045
Zunshine, Lisa, 69

Index

363

in the frontiers of narrative series:

Useful Fictions:
Evolution, Anxiety, and the
Origins of Literature
by Michael Austin

Spaces of the Mind:

Narrative and Community
in the American West
by Elaine A. Jahner

Stories and Minds:

Cognitive Approaches to
Literary Narrative
edited by Lars Bernaerts, Dirk
De Geest, Luc Herman, and Bart
Vervaeck

Talk Fiction:
Literature and the Talk Explosion
by Irene Kacandes

Telling Childrens Stories:

Narrative Theory and
Childrens Literature
edited by Mike Cadden
Coincidence and Counterfactuality:
Plotting Time and Space in
Narrative Fiction
by Hilary P. Dannenberg
The Emergence of Mind:
Representations of Consciousness
in Narrative Discourse in English
edited by David Herman

Ethos and Narrative Interpretation:

The Negotiation of Values in Fiction
by Liesbeth Korthals Altes
Contemporary Comics Storytelling
by Karin Kukkonen
The Imagined Moment:
Time, Narrative, and Computation
by Inderjeet Mani
Storying Domestic Violence:
Constructions and Stereotypes of
Abuse in the Discourse of General
Practitioners
by Jarmila Mildorf

Story Logic:
Problems and Possibilities
of Narrative
by David Herman

New Narratives:
Stories and Storytelling
in the Digital Age
edited by Ruth Page and
Bronwen Thomas

Handbook of Narrative Analysis

by Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck

Fictional Minds
by Alan Palmer

Affective Narratology:
The Emotional Structure of Stories
by Patrick Colm Hogan

Writing at the Limit:

The Novel in the New Media Ecology
by Daniel Punday

Storyworlds across Media:

Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology
edited by Marie-Laure Ryan
and Jan-Nol Thon
Narrative Beginnings:
Theories and Practices
edited by Brian Richardson

Narrative across Media:

The Languages of Storytelling
edited by Marie-Laure Ryan
Fictional Dialogue:
Speech and Conversation in the
Modern and Postmodern Novel
by Bronwen Thomas

To order or obtain more information on these or other University of Nebraska

Press titles, visit nebraskapress.unl.edu.