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9 - The Interactive Letter : Co-Authorship and Interactive Media in Emily Short’s First Draft of the Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 June 2023

Catherine Fowler
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
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Summary

Abstract

This chapter discusses the writing and transmitting of letters in Emily Short's 2012 interactive epistolary work, First Draft of the Revolution. It argues how interactivity commentates on the letter's processes of becoming, specifically through the reader as co-author in a triangulation of reading, writing, and interactivity. This triangulation upends epistolary confidentiality and the tension between private and public in terms of the writing process. The chapter also examines the letter's crossing of space and time in how its transmission contributes to its meaning as a communication medium. Through this two-pronged exploration of ‘epistolary interactivity’, the chapter interrogates the nature of media itself, and how interactivity shapes letters as media in terms of being, becoming, change, and potential for change.

Keywords: interactive; First Draft of the Revolution; letter-writing; transmission; confidentiality; change

Introduction

Juliette has been banished for the summer to a village above Grenoble: a few Alpine houses, a deep lake, blue sky, and no society. Now she writes daily to her husband. First Draft of the Revolution

This chapter discusses the writing and transmitting of letters in Emily Short's award-winning 2012 interactive work, First Draft of the Revolution, self-described as ‘an interactive epistolary story’. Hosted and played on a dedicated website, (https://www.inklestudios.com/firstdraft/), First Draft is a story told almost entirely through letters written by and sent amongst a crew of characters set in eighteenth-century revolutionary France. It begins with a correspondence by the protagonist, Juliette, to her husband, Henri, who has banished her from Paris to ‘a village above Grenoble’ in the Dauphiné countryside. The work also features letters by Henri; Henri's sister, Alise, who does not like Juliette and approves of her being sent away; and Mother Catherine-Agnes, Juliette's Mother Superior at an unnamed convent where Juliette grew up before getting married. Together, their correspondences reveal Juliette's discovery of a plot by the friar in the country village to manipulate Henri's recently found illegitimate son (also at the same village!) in an effort to overthrow the Lavori, an order of magic-using noblemen to which Henri belongs.

First Draft is by no means unique as an interactive epistolary story. There are many examples of interactive letters used to advance gameplay and narrative particularly in recent years.

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Chapter
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Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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