This chapter offers an assessment of the challenges that interactive forms of digital literature pose to print-based assumptions about narrative. The assertions of critics such as Espen Aarseth, Janet Murray, and Bolter and Landow – that the interactivity of digital texts invalidates such core assumptions as the distinction between fabula and syuzhet as well as author, reader, and character – have tended to lose their force as the genres they regarded as transformative – hypertext fiction and text-based interactive fiction (IF) – have receded from public view. Yet, as Emily Short argues here, these genres are far from “dead.” Speaking from her perspective as one of contemporary literature’s most highly regarded authors of interactive and choice-based literature, Short shows that interactive fiction has not disappeared, but rather become so thoroughly ingrained in contemporary artistic practice as to become nearly invisible – not only in hypertextual forms like the popular videogames authored in the Twine platform, but also in contemporary print-based literary fiction. In thus penetrating the mainstream of literary production, both digital and analog, interactive forms have subtly but powerfully revised our core assumptions about literary narrative.

The material properties of platform and medium figure prominently in Scott Rettberg’s examination of digital fiction as literary engagements with computer code, video gaming, hypertext, audio and visual plug-ins, and virtual reality. Narratives with multiple or interactive pathways, role-playing and perspectival shifts, and mass authorship reconceptualize postmodern and contemporary literary themes and techniques within digital textualities.

This chapter provides an overview of the ways in which the boom of digital technologies has affected the novel. The Internet and especially social media are now recurrent themes in print fiction, which also often reflect the changes in our experience of space and time through new structures and styles. Beyond such thematic manifestations, however, the novel has seen more fundamental innovations that stretch its traditional boundaries. We can discern three main areas of evolution. First, the emergence of new modes of publication, including digital publishing, self-publishing, and writing platforms such as Wattpad have democratized the access to audiences and incited amateurs to write fiction. Secondly, the new modes of communication facilitate the exchange between authors and readers, while also bringing about the rise of the ‘influencers’, who are taking over the role of trend-setting from professional critics. Lastly, new modes of storytelling have emerged that rely on digital networks: interactive fictions that break up the linearity of the text and give agency to the reader, and blogs, websites, and social media experiments that play with temporality, form, and modes of interaction with the audiences.