Due to the complexity of the digital medium and the nascent state of the interactive property, many problems arise in both the design and the theory of a work of interactive fiction. How interactive can interactive fiction truly be at this stage of technological development? And what kinds of implications does the property of interactivity present to the concept of storytelling itself? These questions are very valid, and require much thought; in fact, I am not sure whether they can be fully answered at this point in the development of the digital medium. However, an attempt to confront the problems must be made, or else a solution will never be arrived upon. First we must determine the individual components which constitute a work of storytelling; then we may attempt to determine how interactivity affects each of them.

For stories to be deemed "good," they must have some impact on the reader at a cognitive level. This essentially requires that the tale should have well-developed story elements: plot, characterization, setting, and theme. If all of these exist, then the reader’s mind can potentially become fully immersed in the story. But for this potentiality to become actualized, the story elements must be technically rendered to the audience in such a way that they feel as though they are inside the story. Interactivity is a unique property of the digital medium in that it does not only serve as a sub-medium, or a new way to express or render the story to the audience; in addition, interactivity provides a completely different paradigm for the story and its elements. Hence interactivity affects both aspects of the work—the technical presentation aspect and the story-element aspect. The technical aspect of interactivity as a sub-medium will be confronted first, outside of the context of the story-element.

This technical aspect of storytelling exists in any medium and is expressed through the properties of the medium itself. For example, in literary works, if the words are well put-together then they will flow like water through the reader’s mind, sentences materializing themselves into a second reality in one’s own imagination. However, if the language is obscure or overstated then the reader will constantly be reminded of the fact that they are reading a book and not inside a world. As a medium becomes more complicated, it becomes harder to render story elements as realistically to the audience. This is because there are more properties of the medium to control; it is harder to orchestrate all of the aspects of the medium to the audience as something fluid, sensuous, and unitary. For example, when an audience sees a film, they should not sense the elements of camera and soundtrack as separate properties; rather they should see them as a single entity which is the atmosphere of the story itself, and it is this which allows then to be immersed completely into the story. In this way, an ideally rendered story should leave the audience completely unaware of the actual medium and its separate properties—for the audience should be too immersed in the world that is created by the medium to even notice.

The technical predicament of storytelling in the digital medium lies here. Because of the fact that the audience is the main character in a work of interactive fiction, the story must be able to meld so realistically and seamlessly with the actions of this character that the audience-actor will not even notice that he or she is using a machine. As stated above, they should be too immersed in the world that is created by the medium to notice. But if the audience-actor tries to do something that is restricted by a limit in the interactivity of the work, then the spell is broken: they will at once realize that they are not experiencing a world, but rather that they are using a digital artifice which is not letting them do what they want. Like a person reading through a bad work of fiction, one will be confused and irritated by the way the story is technically presented and this will at once return him or her back into reality. This effect is what breaks the spell of works like Cyan Interactive’s Myst. The audience may be mesmerized by the surreality of the work; but once they try to click on an object they want to manipulate and the interface limits them from doing it, they at once recognize that they are playing a computer game and not experiencing a world.

This much has been said, and the problem presented is understandable; but actually avoiding this problem is harder to confront. For how is a work of interactive fiction supposed to be truly interactive? If programmers were to attempt to create something like this with today’s technology they would soon find themselves attempting to recreate the world itself, for a virtually infinite number of actions would have to be accounted for.

The solution to this conundrum does not need to lie in advances in the art of programming. Instead, I believe that the answer lies in limiting the actor-audience to a limited set of actions. That is, if they are fully aware of every limitation of interactivity in the program, then they will ignore them as possible actions. In this way, the world still seems just as sensuous to them because the story is defining what kind of actions the audience can make, not the audience itself; and as long as the audience has full freedom in these particular abilities which are given to it, the spell will not be broken. So interactivity does not need to make the audience-actor capable of doing anything they want; it only needs to make the audience-actor capable of doing anything they want within a certain realm of action defined by the story-world.For example, if the only two actions the audience-actor could pursue in a work were to "get" and "use" different objects, and every object in the work was able to be "gotten" and "used" with any other object, then the technically interactive elements of the story would be rendered to their full extent. This is because the audience-actor has full freedom to use the actions or "senses" which it has been given, and thus the story is fully sensuous within its own definition of reality. Hence the solution is to invert the world: instead of letting the story be dictated by reality, let reality become dictated by the story. And if this occurs—if the story defines its own reality and actualizes it—the audience-actor can be completely immersed within the true form of the story-element.

This brings us to the second conundrum that is to be confronted, which regards interactivity in respect to the story-element. But for us to understand how interactivity affects the elements of a story, we must first understand how interactivity affects the very paradigm of storytelling itself.

Does not interactivity actually defy the word storytelling? For if one is part of the story, then it is not being told to him or her, but rather it is a two-way exchange of information between the individual and the story. In this way the audience is part of the story itself, not an observer. Here I believe that the solution lies not in denying interactive fiction as a form of storytelling, but rather in redefining storytelling itself. Thespis redefined storytelling by limiting it no longer to something that must be told from the perspective of the past, but alternatively as something that could be performed in the perspective of the present. Interactive fiction, in its most abstract and non-linear form, demands another redefinition of the term. This is because the story is no longer a static, linear form; it now dynamically changes in accordance with the infinite possibility of actions that the audience-protagonist has at his or her disposal. In this way, the nature of drama itself becomes something unique that cannot be expressed in the same way more than once. Thus interactive fiction provides us with an entirely new paradigm for the story itself—and the world of storytelling can become something abstract rather than linear.

The difference between these two kinds of stories could also be expressed mathematically. The linear fiction is the complete "flattening" of the work; it constrains the audience-actor to a static set of story elements, meaning that the theme and events taking place in the work will remain the same each time the work is experienced. In this way, the story can be seen as a one-dimensional line which the audience cannot stray from. But the interactivity present in abstract fiction adds another dimension of flexibility for the audience. They are no longer bound by a single line, but they are given an independence of action which enables the story to go in whatever direction they choose. Thus in abstract fiction, the story becomes more of a two-dimensional storyplane which the user can actively experience because they now have an axis of freedom provided by interactivity. By "actively experience" I mean that they essentially draw their own storyline, the form of which could be any line that could be drawn on a cartesian plane. And so the variety of actual storylines for an abstract story are infinite. Hence, in linear fiction, the story elements are properties of a line; but in abstract fiction, the story elements are properties of a plane.

But what exactly would this planar, abstract fiction constitute? An example is in order. Imagine an interactive version of Homer’s Iliad from the perspective of Achilles. If the audience-actor becomes Achilles, there are a variety of actions which the user could perform to change the outcome of the story entirely. They could choose to simply hand over the maiden Briseis to Agamemmnon at the very beginning of the work with no contest, thereby causing Achilles to stay in the Trojan war and defeat Ilium. Or they could refuse to let Patroklos join the battle against Troy, thereby preventing his death and giving Achilles no motivation to destroy Hector. An infinite variety of other decisions could be made in an abstract work of this kind, all of them deeply affecting not only the storyline of the work, but every other story element as well—including the very theme of the work itself. Achilles could, through the actions of the audience-actor, be turned into a valiant hero who cares only for the well-being of his own people and his duty towards them, disregarding his own honor. This would turn the Iliad into a pietas-driven story similar to Virgil’s Aeneid instead of a tale about the despair of the human condition. Consequently, the abstract fiction could have an infinite number of themes because the specific theme evoked is based upon the actions of the audience-actor; and through syllogism, since the audience’s possible actions are infinite, the variety of themes evoked are infinite.

Many critics would probably question the validity of abstract fiction as a form of storytelling. The old-fashioned, linear concept of storytelling views the story as a single author’s work of art, their personal vision of the world. Abstract fiction makes the story the audience-actor’s view of the world in a kind of way, since they are the protagonist and control his or her actions, which ultimately changes the theme of the work. This can seem somewhat inartistic to literary critics because it seems as though the message and meaning of the work is being determined by the reader and not the author. But is not the meaning that a reader extracts from a book based upon his or her interpretation of the book? For the author does not mentally "infuse" the thoughts within the reader’s brain. Rather, the words in a book are merely the fuel that provides a potential for the reader; through dianoia, or understanding, these words turn into thoughts and actions in the reader’s mind, which can be interpreted by the reader as they choose. This kind of effect is most prevalent in dramatic works, such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Many scholars and critics have several different views of the message of the play; some believe it to be the struggle of one sane man against an insane world, some believe him to be a reflection of the humanity. Still others have different interpretations. Because each reader has his or her own singular interpretation of the work, the work has a different meaning to each reader. In abstract fiction, this property is conflated with the story itself. As in any form of storytelling, the events taking place in the story serve as a fuel for the reader’s mind. But in abstract fiction, the audience-actor can at once not only process this fuel but actively react to it in the world of the story, executing their actions as the protagonist in accordance with their interpretation. The story, symbolizing the author’s vision of the world, then responds to these actions by changing its elements, serving as more fuel for the reader’s mind; and the two-way conversation goes on in this manner. In this way both linear and abstract works of storytelling are subject to the unique interpretation of the audience—only in abstract fiction, the interpretation of the audience is actively manifested in an intercourse with the dynamic story elements of the work.

This kind of abstractness and flexibility of story is very interesting and revolutionary, but obviously cannot be reached at this point in time because it would simply take too much work. I believe that the only way something like this can be achieved is when the author can infuse within the interactive medium a capability for the story itself to create and change the theme and other story elements in real-time, based upon the character of the audience-actor.

But this cannot yet happen. As a result, the authors of such a work are forced to make their creation lie somewhere on the line between linear and abstract interactive fiction. Both of these polarities have their own advantages and disadvantages. An abstract story will obviously provide more interactivity but less stable story elements since the artist will have to account for a variety of situations. In a linear work, because only one path can be taken by the audience, it is possible to create and develop very strong story elements for they will be the only story elements in the entire story. But this has the obvious disadvantage of limiting interactivity, and the audience will not really believe the story to be a work of interactive fiction if they cannot actually affect the elements of the story in different ways.

There exists a theoretical solution to this conundrum. In a more linear kind of interactive fiction, if the audience is brought to believe that it is their actions which are motivating the linear story, then the audience will be able to find insight in the story while still believing it to be a work of their own actions. That is, even if the story is constrained to a line that the audience-actor cannot stray from, if they think and feel that they are propelling themselves through the line rather than being propelled by the story (i.e., simply "following a script"), a state of true interactivity will be evoked. In this way, an abstract "feel" or artifice can be given to a linear story and the linear will appear planar, analogous to the projection of a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional plane.

This effect can be accomplished if certain aspects other than the major story elements are made planar and abstract. This will allow some less-significant aspects of the story to be fully malleable by the audience-actor. Such aspects might include optional subplots which the audience has a greater degree of control over, but the outcome of which does not affect the overall elements of the work. Or the audience could have the ability to fully control some aspects of the protagonist which do not affect other major elements. For example, in an interactive version of the Iliad the audience might have the ability to actively fight battles as Achilles and improve his prowess in fighting, or obtain different kinds of weapons and armor; if Achilles ever loses in combat, then the story is over, and if he wins, then the story is allowed to continue in its linear path. This would bestow an abstract artifice upon the linear story and make it seem more real, interactive, and sensuous to the audience-actor while still providing strong story elements. It also makes the interactive fiction something that can actually be accomplished by the artists at the present state of technology, since the abstractness of the work is limited to only a few aspects and the rest of the story is linear.

These linear and abstract aspects of the story should be welded together so intricately that the audience cannot tell when or whether they are experiencing either one. As with the case of combined media, they must be so engulfed by the atmosphere provided by the fusion of the two that they cannot notice the difference. For if the audience ever notices the distinction between the linear and abstract properties of the work they are experiencing, they will realize that they are being limited by a digital interface, and suddenly they will be shut-out from the world of the story and brought back into reality.

And so we have come full-circle, back to the technical aspect of storytelling. The interactive property has been shown to add a new kind of presence to every part of story, from its very concept to its presentation. Interactivity is like a kind of volatile glue; if used improperly or awkwardly, it can make the story an amorphous blob of mismatched parts. But if used with care, if the artist makes sure that the glue doesn’t bleed through the cracks but rather makes the cracks disappear, the glue can take both components—the technical presentation and the story-element—and fuse them together so elegantly, so powerfully, that the audience cannot tell whether they are experiencing reality or illusion. But interactivity is a special kind of glue, for its property does not merely connect these components of a story; it is also a part of each component, as has been proven above. In this way the technical components and the story-element components of the story are unified by interactivity, and they essentially become one through it. This makes it more complex and more difficult for the artist to manipulate the work as a whole—the problems of which have been outlined throughout this essay—but it also creates an immense potential for creativity, sensuousness, and intellectual insight.

Although there are some enigmas in the interactive property because it is in its elementary stages of development, they have been confronted in this essay, and hopefully the arguments and concerns presented have given a broader and more insightful outlook on the scope, power, and capacity for this new paradigm of drama. When readers experience the climax of the Divina Commedia they are so engulfed by the presence that Dante renders through his words that each sentence is not even interpreted as a string of words, or even as a thought or action; but instead each sentence becomes an ineffable expression of something so abstract that it can exist only in the mind itself. Perhaps one day, when the interactive property has been mastered as well as Dante mastered the power and beauty of his own language, the effect of abstract fiction on the psyche will be even more indescribably beautiful.