Editor/publisher Victoria Blake (Underland Press), along with programmer Jesse Pollack, is the force behind a new literary form: the online serial novel, or wovel; NPR describes it as “Choose your Own Adventure meets Wikipedia.” A self-confessed blog addict who loves reading frequently-updated online content, Blake thought it would be great to have opportunities to read literature online in a serial form, a la Dickens (and more recently Chabon), and to have that experience be interactive.
Here is Underland’s official description of the wovel (from their website):
Every week, the author posts an installment. Installment length hits the sweet-spot of online reading—long enough to get interested, short enough to read in the cubicle at work. At the end of every installment, the author writes in a plot branch point. Does the heroine kill her lover? Will the zombies catch the soldier? Is the box empty, or is it filled with bees?
THE READERS DECIDE.
On Monday, the post goes up. Voting is open through Thursday. The author writes Thursday and Friday. The editors edit Friday and Saturday. The post goes back up on Monday. Part literature, part exquisite corpse. The pace of print journalism, the imagination of fiction, the spark of reader participation.
Check out the current wovel-in-progress, Firstworld by Jemiah Jefferson, and vote on what happens next…
Reader participation in novels is a curious concept. Sometimes I think novels:readers::vegetables:kids–what readers *want* isn’t necessarily what makes the best story. Nevertheless, still a really neat idea, and I’ll definitely be checking to see how it turns out.
I think it’s interesting, too, though I also think Celeste is on to something with her veggies.
I also think that seven pages (the length of the current installment) is outside my cubicle sweet-spot. Maybe I just work for hard-asses.
Yes, the reader participation part is less appealing to me than the serial form… and the process itself (weekly update) is a little too slow to deliver the kind of payoff you get from Gawker and other sites that really do update frequently. It would almost be better to get a page a day instead of seven pages all at once…