Okay, I confess that’s something of a clickbait title. I don’t actually think books are the most interactive form of media out there, but I do think they rank much higher than most people assume.
I’ve always loved interactive media. TV, movies, and music are nice, but they rarely captivate my spirit the same way my two true loves do: books and games. There’s a commonality between rolling dice at a table, picking up a controller, or losing yourself in the pages of a book that scratches a particular itch I just don’t get elsewhere. There’s a kind of friction to it, a resistance, a need to put in some of your own energy rather than sitting back and passively absorbing the experience.
The interactivity in games is obvious. Whether it’s sports, tabletop, or video games, the experience won’t progress until you make yourself an active participant. Sometimes, it forcibly resists you, asking you to put in substantial effort if you want a satisfying resolution.
With books, it isn’t this straightforward. On the surface, they’re not so different from movies or TV, but unlike audiovisual media, the production isn’t finished just because the words are printed on a page. That’s only the blueprint. It’s the picture those words paint in your head that constitutes the finished story, and for that to happen, you have to do some of the legwork yourself. You might have a script to work from (perhaps a very detailed one), but at the end of the day, the reader is the one responsible for the casting, wardrobe, set dressing, direction, and maybe even the sound design if your brain wants to take it that far.
Not everyone lives and breathes the reading experience so vividly. Some barely even give the characters faces. They spare little mind to the scenery. They don’t imagine sounds, smells, or strains of music like you’d expect from an audiovisual production. Some people even suffer from aphantasia, the limitation (or, in the most severe cases, complete inability) to “see” images in their head.
But even for those of us who do the bare minimum to gussy up our mental image of a writer’s words, I’m willing to bet everyone’s made a decision at least once that leaves their own personal mark on a story. How many times have you read a book, made an assumption about a setting detail or a character’s appearance, then tripped up when the writer contradicts you later on? How many times has the character you gave black hair turned out to be a brunette? How many times has a road you pictured on the left side of a house ended up on the right? How many times have you imagined a character with a specific voice, only for them to say something that just sounds weird in that tone?
This is the true interactivity of books: the personal picture the reader creates for themselves. You’re coming up with this stuff on your own, tapping into your unique well of creativity, shaping the narrative with the details you’d want to see, not necessarily the ones the author envisioned.
When I was growing up in the 90s, I remember watching the TV adaptations of Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels. The titular protagonist was played by Sean Bean, an illegally handsome man with fair hair and a Yorkshire accent. He became iconic in the role, so much so that Cornwell went on to incorporate elements of Bean’s performance into the character when he wrote subsequent novels.
A few years back, I read some of Cornwell’s early Sharpe novels during a historical fiction binge. It surprised me to discover that the man described in those books is decidedly not Sean Bean. The literary Sharpe is a scarred, dark-haired Londoner, routinely described as ageing and weathered; a stark contrast to the TV version. Despite the descriptions given in the books, I found myself mentally editing Sharpe’s canonical appearance, because the Sean Bean version was just too firmly etched into my mind’s eye.
I recast the main character based on the depiction I was familiar with.
I’m sure anyone who’s seen a lot of book adaptations has had a similar experience at one point or another. When I was at school, I had a teacher who refused to watch the Lord of the Rings movies because he didn’t want his mental image of the characters to be influenced by the new cast of actors.
This, to me, is one of the most interactive experiences you can have with a piece of fiction. You’re not sitting back and letting it wash over you. You’re not even pressing a button to advance the story or rolling a dice to determine an outcome. You’re creating the story in your mind, one that’s unique to you. The broad strokes might not change, but the details make it personal. It’s your story. Your own personal little version of Lord of the Rings that no one else will ever see.
I think there’s something beautifully ephemeral about that.
Kelly River 