Earlier on Twitter, Kat Meyer passed on a news item about Harlequin JP and DS, like so:
RT @KatMeyer Japanese Harlequin Nintendo DS HQN books include ‘concierge’ to navigate stories by mood/type of heroine http://bit.ly/cDg0l6
I was intrigued, then I remembered a US publisher was publishing interactive fiction for romance readers, but couldn’t remember which publisher. I knew Quirk Books has published two CYOA novels: Escape From Fire Island! (a “hilarious SF parody”) and Night of a Thousand Boyfriends (“an interactive version of Sex and the City or Bridget Jones’s Diary, this romantic comedy”), but it’s not them I was thinking of. So I put out a SOS on Twitter.
Author Carolyn Jewel suggested HCI and when I didn’t recognise HCI, she clarified:
@cjewel They’re the publisher that’s doing to Choose your own romance stories. I’m pretty sure. http://bit.ly/c0pthk Is this it?
While it’s not what I had in mind, I found it interesting because while it’s interactive fiction, it’s a type I never liked when “interactive stories” were a popular internet trend (a newer example here: Fire!). It’s basically revolved around the explore-an-universe concept. It’s voyeurism, if you like. Okay, it’s for inquisitive readers who want to learn the back-story of certain incidents or words, as seen in Fire! above.
Anyroad, I finally discovered it’s @CarinaPress‘s Interactive Fiction with Multiple/Alternate Endings, which says:
Do you have a 21st century way of telling a story that allows the reader to interact with the book and choose their own path through the story, with multiple endings available?
Considering Carina Press is a publisher that publishes ebooks, I wondered about how could it work as an interactive book on, say, an ebook reading device. A typical Choose Your Own Adventure book has page numbers, as described here at Wikipedia, but it was there I discovered that some Choose Your Own Adventure books have been published for Amazon’s ebook reader, Kindle:
In November 2009, some of the books in the series were released for the Amazon Kindle. The interface works by having links instead of page turns for the choices.
Ah, hyperlinks. Of course. I then realise this means it’s not the visual form of Interactive Fiction, e.g. Visual Novel, which Japanese Harlequin Nintendo DS books (both romance and pulp fiction) basically are (better images of the HQN rom game book here).
Then I realise there is one coming up: Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box, a casual game adaptation of Marjorie M. Liu’s debut paranormal romance novel, Tiger Eye, at PassionFruit Games. Marjorie M. Liu was nice enough to ask if I’d like to take part as a beta tester of this work-in-progress game when PassionFruit was recruiting beta testers at the time. Being a nerdy gamer and a lover of romance novels, I accepted. It’s basically an interactive book with mostly plot-driven puzzles (see screenshots here).
It’s better than most casual games I’ve played including a trial run of Harlequin and BigFish’s Harlequin Presents: Hidden Object of Desire. I’m sorry but my god, The Hidden Desire of Object is awful! I thought of giving it another chance by purchasing a full game, but my contempt for the trial run stopped me. (Having said that, I enjoyed BigFish’s Shutter Island, based on Dennis Lehane’s psychological drama/suspense novel, which was recently released as a film adaptation starring Leonardo DiCaprio.) Either way, I still prefer adventure games to casual games (because of the repetitiveness of mini puzzle games that a casual game tends to have).
Anyhow, it does bring up a question: under which category does an interactive book fall? Gaming or Fiction? I think it depends on how much a reader could interact with an interactive book.
If the interaction is passive, such as just clicking on a hyperlinked word without affecting the story narrative, then it’s Fiction. Because it’s no different from a print reader looking up a word on Google or similar to find out what a word means or where a certain location is.
If the interaction is active, such as requiring a reader to make a decision that could influence a character’s mood, decision or path which may affect the story narrative, then it’s Gaming. It’s not that much different from a gamer playing a text or graphical adventure game (casual game or point-and-click game).
Therefore, I thought, there are four major types of Interactive Fiction –
- Interactive Book (text only with hyperlinks that doesn’t affect the narrative)
- Visual Novel (illustrated book with hyperlinks and limited choices that affects the narrative)
- Choose Your Own Path books (text only with limited choices that affects the narrative, like Choose Your Own Romance (Mac OX only))
- Interactive Game (text-based plot-driven puzzles that doesn’t affect the narrative)
- Adventure Game (graphic-based plot-driven puzzles that doesn’t affect the narrative)
That was when I realised the list is flawed because while an adventure game requires heavy interaction from its player, its narrative cannot quite be affected. There are some adventure games that have alternate endings (this type is rarely popular with adventure gamers who – like many genre readers – don’t like unexpected endings or death*), but the story itself is usually told in a linear structure. Dang.
[*There were always howls of protest when adventure gamers discovered Hero could die if a player makes a mistake or bad decision. So much that game companies learnt not to include 'Death' option in adventure games. This was when people recognised the difference between adventure games and action/RPG games. People (e.g. Hero/ines) rarely die in adventure games, basically.]
I’m sorry this is such a ramble, but all this leads to what I really want to ask: what makes a good romantic interactive novel? This is something I want to explore. Game play, interaction, text, structure, and other game theories. I think I’ll have a ponder and blog about it later.
Regardless, this is one area that romance authors and publishers could explore, such as adapting existing romance novels as games. Especially if romance novels are action- or suspense-driven.
What if, say, Tess Gerritsen’s early romantic suspense novel was adapted into a romantic mystery game? How about adapting Meljean Brook’s Guardian series to make it an interactive universe where a player can explore through choices and puzzles? How about adapting a historical romance into an interactive graphic novel with hyperlinks or linked pop-up boxes of brief info blurbs about objects, incidents, laws and the etymology of words?
It can apply to all sub-genres of Romance, ranging from paranormal romance novels to gay romances and from a rom novel set in an under-used time period or setting to a futuristic setting? It could solve authors’ dilemmas – too many details can put some readers off, but too few details can put some other readers off. This way, readers have a choice: click if they want more or fewer details.
So many possibilities.
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