Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
The structure of chapters in April March - novel by Jorge Luis Borges
A similar notable example is that of
Hopscotch
, a novel by another Argentine genius,
Julio Cortázar
, originally published in 1963, featuring a very original concept. In this
topic, a reader may find 155 chapters, which can be considered as story blocks that
let him construct two different plots. The first one can be attained in the simplest
way by reading a portion of the chapters (from 1 to 56). The second one needs
some additional efforts because the author included a special table of instructions in
the beginning of the novel where a numbered sequence of chapters are displayed.
The most intriguing part is the look of the sequence because the numbers were not
chosen in a linear progression but by the author's special order creating an illusion of
a mysterious code: 73-1-2-116-3-84-4-71-5-81.... Therefore, the second plot is figur-
atively hidden and can be found only by using the special key. By reading this topic,
a reader will travel from chapter to chapter, collecting a piece of the story and form-
ing a whole picture of events.
Note
An interesting example of an experimental textual narrative is a topic called
Last
Love in Constantinople
(1994) by a Serbian novelist,
Milorad Pavić
, the author
of
Dictionary of the Khazars
. This topic was also made up of story blocks and
required tarot cards instead of a special code to determine the further direction
of the story and plot twists. Chapters had keys related to the cards since to con-
struct the story you need to play the card game.
Postmodernist experiments later transformed into a separate class of fiction known
as a gamebook, where readers could use their will (or good luck) to turn the direction
of the stories. One of the legendary and popular names in that domain is a series
of topics entitled
Choose Your Own Adventure
based on a concept developed by
an American writer,
Edward Packard
. In his novel,
Sugarcane Island
, he used some
sort of interactive narrative, the readers had some options that lead them to different
endings of the novel. The series was so popular among young readers that between
