Pausing the Reading Process

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Interactive Fiction vs. the Pause That Distresses: How Computer-Based Literature Interrupts the Reading Process Without Stopping the Fun

The Pause Problem

My seventh grade class and I are reading aloud, in Chapter 9 of Catherine Patterson's famous young adult novel, Lyddie. Most of the students in the class don't especially like to read, but, for now at least, the group seems quite caught up in the narrative, as the main character goes to visit her new friend, who, according to her housemates, is a notorious labor agitator. Around the middle of the chapter, the class encounters the word, "phrenologist," complete with sufficient context to enable the students to make a very reasonable guess at its meaning. I know that, according to recent high-stakes, high-profile statewide testing, students in my school are not especially good at determining meaning from context; and so I am tempted to interrupt the reading process here to do a little direct teaching, or perhaps just to remind students to use techniques that they already know to glean the meaning of the unfamiliar word. If I don't stop now, I know that I'll lose an opportunity to do some good teaching--the occasion just won't be as fresh if I wait until we reach the end of the chapter. But, of course, if I stop the process now, when the students are enjoying a real aesthetic encounter with the printed word, I may lose in motivation more than I gain in skill-building.

"Wouldn't it be great," I muse, "if the author of this story had built into the story's design lots of good stopping places--places that occur frequently, not just at the end of chapters, and places that work aesthetically, not just pedagogically?" But, of course, novels are not built that way.

I decide to take the phrenology pause. The kids are pretty patient and attentive, and I manage a bit of clear, direct teaching, but nobody likes breaking the story up this way, and the rest of the chapter is just not as powerful, though I keep subsequent interruptions to a minimum.

The next day, the same class is reading a passage in Arthur: the Quest for Excalibur (1989), a novel-length work of computer-based interactive fiction by Bob Bates. As the main character, the youthful, pre-coronation Arthur, approaches a peasant's cottage, he finds something called a "slean." Does the class pause in its reading process to figure out what a slean is? In the context of interactive fiction, the question is absurd. Of course we have to figure out what a slean is. If we don't, we probably won't be able to continue reading the story at all, at least not for very long. Unlike the Lyddie class, this group doesn't mind the pause at all. Indeed, the author, in constructing his story, has made an aesthetic judgment that just such a pause belongs at this point in the tale.

Pausing In Interactive Fiction

An important advantage of IF in the classroom, then, is its way of providing--and, indeed, forcing--aesthtically valid pauses in the reading process. Of course, not all interactive fiction works equally well in offering the pedagogically best pausing points. In truth, many early, and, in some ways, primitive works of IF, such as a well-known series by Scott Adams (not the cartoonist) offer little evidence that the author has made literary calculations about the placement of pauses for puzzles. In these stories, there are no extended passages of text to interrupt, just a series of interrelated problems, connected with a tight little plot; and the reader soon comes to expect that the solution to one puzzle will lead immediately to the next problem-solving exercise. Several of these pieces, such as Pirate Adventure and Adventureland (1978), can certainly engage and entertain a puzzle-loving reader, but they offer little in the way of theme and character development.

But works of interactive fiction in its more mature variations offer a dramatically different set of opportunities for literature teachers. Some of these, such as Adam Cadre's brilliant interactive short story "Photopia," (1998) move away from lengthy problem-solving altogether. The reader must still pause often, sometimes briefly and occasionally at greater length, to decide on what action a character should take, but the appeal of the tale stems almost entirely from conventional literary elements, especially an intricately woven plot and highly engaging characters. In one scene, for example, a father and his precocious little daughter look up at the sky outside their garage and talk about one of their common interests, astronomy. The reader has no real problems to solve, but must stop to make some choices about what one of the characters, in this case the father, will say, and these pauses offer a literature teachers some remarkably teachable moments. Gradually, the thoughtful student reader, with the right kind of help, comes to see that the astronomical concepts that emerge from the a touching father-daughter dialogue illuminate another subplot of the story, one in which the daughter, some years later, weaves a tale of space travel for a younger girl who idolizes her.

Other mature IF stories, however, such as Arthur: the Quest for Excallibur and Once and Future (by Kevin Wilson, 1998) take a different approach, maintaining an extensive puzzle-solving dimension, but adding rich narrative elements. Often, in these stories, some of the puzzles are far less mechanical than those in the earliest IF, depending more on a good, clear sense of plot, character, and theme. At one point in Arthur, for instance, the reader, in the role of the title character, encounters a knight who challenges the young Arthur to a joust. Before the combat begins, the knight shows a gentlemanly sense of fairness, insisting, for instance, that Arthur wear the appropriate protective equipment ("Knight in shining armor and all that, don't you know?"). But, as the mock combat progresses, the knight feints in a way that suggests that he may be about to cheat. If the reader accepts the feint as sufficient evidence of duplicity, the knight will always win the joust. If the reader understands the knight's character well enough to see that he would probably not cheat, Arthur will win, gaining fighting skill and a useful trophy. Here, once again, the teacher has an excellent opportunity to guide students in the operation of an important literary element, with the help of a pause that the author has structured into his narrative.