What is Electronic Literature?
When I first heard about the concept of electronic literature I just figured it was like a book on the internet, or reading using a Kindle. But after reading and hearing about the subject I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong, electronic literature is more a type of literature that uses the interactivity which is possible in the digital world as a element of the storytelling. This contrasts to the aformentioned Kindle, or traditional books that have been posted online, where the digital aspect of the literature is often just limited to a button which takes you to the next page.
Electronic Literature can be divided into several different genres, some of them being locative narrative, generative text and interactive fiction.
Interactive fiction is a type of storytelling where the reader has an effect on the story being told through various inputs. Something like a story where the reader can chose which path to go, kind of like old school adventure books which used the same approach to storytelling.
Locative fiction is a type of fiction where the location of the reader is taken into acount. This can be achieved with a mobile phone which displays a text in a specific place based on your location.
Generative text is a type of text where the writer isn’t the one writing the text, but rather someone who writes a script that generates text itself based on a set of rules. The text itself is made by a computer but according to rules set by a human.
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