The Loft was built in LinguaMOO partially as a creative response to a technical assignment and partially as a literary experiment to determine if the MOO could be utilized to create a fiction in which the plot was driven almost entirely by setting. Although the terms have been used interchangeably throughout this lexia and others related to it, Janet Burroway draws a distinction between the two in Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. "A story is a series of events recorded in their chronological order. A plot is a series of events deliberately arranged so as to reveal their dramatic, thematic, and emotional significance" (13). Her definition implies a carefully considered approach to organization. The MOO, when utilized to its full potential, defies this type of authorial control.
MOO space mimics our physical reality. While a visitor to an apartment may first encounter a living room, he or she may choose to ignore this space and proceed directly to the kitchen. The visitor's choices are not mandated. In fact, the visitor may choose to enter by an entirely different doorway if that option is available. Although any MOO space can be programmed to force a guided, linear order (which may be appropriate depending on the environment's purpose), many spaces (including the Loft) provide alternatives. Additionally, use of the @go command allows a visitor to move instantaneously from one location to another.
Stephen Minot offers a similar definition in Three Genres: The Writing of Poetry, Fiction and Drama. He argues that people remember events or "episodes" rather than an exact chronological archive of their history. He adds that our "life" is actually a recollection of some sequence of these episodes (141). According to Minot fiction writers should realize several key points:
First, we often identify [episodes] by where they occurred — the setting. Second, we recall who was there — the characters. Third, such episodes remain clear long after we have forgotten what came just before and just afterward. Those unstructured periods of time that merely link one episode with the next (walking, waiting, driving, watching television, sleeping) tend to blend together and blur quickly. (142)
Further, he acknowledges that we may not recall these episodes chronologically. For example, he explains that students complaining about bad teachers are not likely to start with kindergarten and a man recalling his love for a girlfriend may not start with the day the two met (142). For Minot, fiction "tends to imitate these patterns. What we call episodes in life become scenes in fictions. These are the basic units. And their arrangement is what we call plot" (142). In the MOO, these episodes may be analogous to the events that transpire in any given room.
Both Burroway and Minot define some regimented sense of order into evaluation of a codex plot. And although Minot acknowledges that the sequence need not be chronological, neither writer allows that a non-linear approach to the events or episodes may result in a "plot." They ignore (or are unaware of) the eventuality that the reader may also function as author. But that is likely a limitation of their codex framework. George P. Landow, however, embraces this possibility and provides other, more technology-inclusive definitions of plot.
[Hayden] White, for example, defines plot as "a structure of relationships by which the events contained in the account are endowed with a meaning by being identified as parts of an integrated whole." [Paul] Ricouer similarly defines plot, "on the most formal level, as an integrating dynamism that draws a unified and complete story from a variety of incidents, in other words, that transforms variety into a unified and complete story. (196)
Ricouer and White leave the realm of temporal and/or predetermined organization and emphasize plot as the web of connections generated by the reader. Landow argues in Hypertext 2.0 that a hypertextual approach, despite it's "digitality," need not be constrained to linearity or a binary opposition (23). Multiple paths and outcomes are viable. He concludes that "in a hypertext environment a lack of linearity does not destroy narrative. In fact, since readers always, but particularly in this environment, fabricate their own structures, sequences, and meanings, they have surprisingly little trouble reading a story or reading for a story" (197). Landow further allows that readers may even take leaps (sometimes based on incomplete or incorrect information) in this interactive literature just as they do in real life (194).
Landow reports (in part via an argument from Ricouer) that the reader utilizes a process of "predicative assimilation" in which the he or she integrates multiple, scattered events into a complete story "'thereby schematizing the illegible signification attached to the narrative taken as a whole.' To this observation I would add, with Miller, that as readers we find ourselves forced to fabricate a whole story out of separate parts" (196). These conjectures would seem to hold true for our MOO-based fiction as well.
Both of our beta-testers (Madeline Yonkers and Collin Brooke) were able to give fairly succinct and accurate plot summarizations after their individual explorations of the Loft. Their time spent "reading" varied (approximately two hours for Madeline and approximately one hour for Collin) and each provided a different level of familiarity with the nuances of the story. Collin admitted to being unsure about what had transpired on the balcony of the Loft while Madeline was able to supply those details.(*) At this point it is unclear if those differences in detail are attributable to variations in reading style, time spent in the site, or some other, yet-to-be-determined, factor.
It is also interesting to note that each visitor toured the Loft with either Dean or myself as a (more-or-less) passive observer. The only other character involved was a MOO robot programmed to reveal minor clues depending upon its interaction with the reader-player. This would seem to support both Minot's contention that setting is of primary importance in episodic recall and that our goal to create a setting-driven plot was at least partially successful.
Mark Bernstein of Eastgate Systems agrees in his online HypertextNow article "No Mystery" that non-linearity is not a particular obstacle for a hypertext mystery. He adds that it is quite common to begin mysteries with a solution; a situation that he believes frees the author to develop the story in "other directions."
He explains the field of hypertext fiction has seen the creation of few mysteries. He speculates that this may be true in part because of what he perceives as point-of-view limitations. "Most of the computer games and interactive videos that attempt to emulate the mystery story are relentlessly first person: the reader is the protagonist, the reader's actions drive the story, the reader is the center of everything. That's rarely a good strategy for mystery stories: Sherlock Holmes is made possible by Watson." Experience with the Loft as a MOO-based collaborative mystery story may disprove this theory.
Bernstein goes on to eschew the "game" aspect in mysteries. He argues:
The mystery is not a story about solving crimes, about deduction or detection. Mysteries are about healing: a peaceful (or, at any rate normal) world is torn apart, and the mystery recounts our hero's effort to make things right again. The process may include puzzles and procedures, but then again it might not. Juggling alibis and timetables, bits of cigar ash and traces of exotic mud may sometimes occupy the characters, but such matters rarely enthrall the reader and they are rarely central to the tale. First person detective puzzles that promise the chance to let you solve the mystery can be entertaining, but they aren't mysteries (*).
This position seems overly restrictive. It is my contention that a MOO-based narrative, in particular may serve as both game and literature; and in fact may need to be both. Similarly, I believe he makes a statement later in his article that only underscores the need for a game element when this practicing this genre in the MOO.
A more serious problem [than non-linearity], though, is posed by a formal constraint central to modern drama: resolution must be earned. The answer must not seem to fall from the sky, nor may our heroine be saved in the final scene by a god's miraculous (and unmotivated) intervention. A linear narrative can ensure that its resolution is motivated by all that has gone before; a hypertext must work harder to ensure that resolutions, whenever they occur, emerge from the preceding action.
Dynamic links, such as Storyspace guard fields, are often crucial to creating narratives that don't cheat (*).
Short of using an elaborate system of @lock commands to protect rooms, such "guards" do not seem readily available in the MOO. Given this lack, the game element — the necessity for deductively-solvable roadblocks — appears necessary. In the Loft, this function is fulfilled by hidden computer files which require filenames and passwords to be discovered and a safe that may only be opened with the appropriate combination. These challenges seemed to provide intermediary goals for reader-players that furthered the narrative. Additionally, this utilization of the "game" drives readers to more actively explore the Loft and may even encourage them to add to the work.
Another major concern, in addition to the problems inherent in non-linearity, is how to deliver a sense of closure to the reader-player.