Something I found particularly interesting from the symposium this week was the idea that authors loose control over their work when they move it to an electronic platform in terms of story order, as traditional (physical) media dictates form in a stricter manner. I never considered the various things such as genre effecting the format of a media text (eg. soap operas work within a very repetitive narrative; songs repeat choruses and use rhyming), however when it comes to books I feel there is a lot of freedom. I don’t really grasp how electronically, control is given up over story order. I understand that a person can jump around the text, but they can do the same with a tangible book. People understand what a book is, how it works and how its shape/make-up dictate how its used and hence how stories are written. This is something that has stuck though. It’s embedded in us, that this is how a story works. I’m not sure it does just come down to the form effecting this pattern, it’s just logic (“but where does this logic stem from?” I know, I know. But I still don’t agree that the only reason we read a story start to finish is because a book, through its physical form, promotes this method).
