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narrative for a second time. Once read, text disappears, to be retrieved only with
difficulty and some active memorizing has to take place.
While writing technology makes a non-linear arrangement possible, it also encourages
long linear arguments and traditional beginning - (complex and long) development - end
plot narratives, .because of the spatial presence of a text and the possibility always to go
back and reread. Orality does not favour such an arrangement, instead it favours an
episodic structure as the natural way to tell a lengthy story, ifonly because the experience
ofreal life is more like a string ofepisodes than it is like a Freytag pyramid (of exposition,
climax and solution). Walter Ong has argued for a strong link between developments of
printing technology and the rise of the novel format: "The print world gave birth to the
novel, which eventually made the definite break with episodic structure.?"
Hypertext goes back to an episodic structure, favoured not only because of its affinity to
(postrmodem ideas of fragmented and multilayered life and an absence of grand
narratives for the expression ofwhich the novel no longer seems appropriate, but also
because of its parallels to oral (episodic) text in which only a short portion of the text is
directly present in the moment ofnarration / on the screen.
Interactive Storytelling
In an article that asks the very pertinent question as to whether it could be that
"storytelling doesn't work very well ifthe user can interfere with it" and looks critically at
new so-called interactive artforms, Charles Platt gives an example of the open­
endedness and flexibility that can be so appealing about oral narratives:
As Barbara Hayes-Roth has pointed out, any parent who has made up a story for a
child knows that the child likes to have some control over it. The parent begins:
"Once upon a time, there was a rabbit." "His name was Thomas!" says the child
(whose name happens to be Thomas). "Yes, his name was Thomas. And he lived in
a burrow » "In a field? Was it in a field?" "A big green field. And he had a friend ­
do you know what the friend's name was?" "Urn - Samantha." "All right. One day,
Thomas and Samantha went of to gather blackberries." ''But rabbits don't eat
blackberries. Rabbits eat grass." "Most rabbits eat grass, but these were special
rabbits." In this way, parent and child collaborate, and the story evolves interactively."
13Walter Ong, OralityandLiteracy (London and New York: Methuen.rcdz), P.149.
14 Charles Platt, "Interactive Entertainment: Who writes it? Who Reads it? Who Need it?", Wired,
vol.j, 00.9 (September 1995), 145-149,195-197 (P.147).
Chapter 3 -page 95