During my time in the M.A. Program, I was exposed to online life’s unknown territory numerous times. When I reached my second semester, I took an Electronic Literature (E-Lit) class. E-Lit is reading a story or poem through online activities such as games, hypertext, or in my case, interactive storytelling. We focused on the new digital way of telling a story on the rise in our culture and academic settings. For our final project, we had to create our E-Lit piece. I was intimidated because there other graduate students in the class who knew more about this topic. My professor told us to create something that meant something to us. At the time, my significant other and I were in a long-distance relationship. I wanted to tell the story of our journey in a way that only I could tell.
By using images, audio, video, music, and text, I created the online world of a long-distance relationship. I had over 120 path points, where the reader could view this story in two ways: One being linear. They could click the next arrow on their keyboard and read the story “in order.” Two being interactive. The reader could click anywhere on the screen and start where they please. If they wanted to read the “Journal/Diary” first and then look at “Pictures,” then they can do so without feeling as if they are not reading in order. I did this because although there is a “beginning and ending,” there are also “Easter Eggs” throughout the story. There are highlighted nuggets hidden in the story that connects to another part. There is a lot to read and enjoy that made this hypertext story an interesting one.
This was created under my pen name: Lillian Stephens (Lilly S.). Click the link to see!
Cherry Blossoms: An Interactive Romance Story Link
"YouSoundBlack..." 