I've been watching a lot of TED.com these last weeks. And as was rather predictable, I quickly got inspired. If you want to see one of the core talks that got me thinking, see Scott McCloud on Comics.

To give an overview of what I'm about to talk now, I quickly whipped up this chart: [Link]. And as a word of warning: this is for all those of you who want to tell stories, are interested in new ideas or new media.

The upper, black part of the chart illustrates where we are now, and how we got there. We combined text and images to form print comics, then evolved them into webcomics (which are - looking strictly from a story-telling point of view - in every way superior to print comics) which can use infinite canvas and all that jazz. If you have never read an infinite canvas webcomic, check out Estancia for example.
So we tell stories with books and webcomics, and despite being a novelist I was always intrigued by the things I couldn't do due to the absence of images. I know exactly why I could read the EGS archives for a hundred times, even though I knew every single speech-bubble by heart already. It were the emotions, conveyed by the pictures. Mimic and gesture are the parts, where a picture really is worth more than a thousand words. But it's a thousand words read very quickly, which will be an important point further down the line.
Still, comics lack in certain areas. While they engage our imagination between panels, they do not do so in a single panel. We envision what we see before us, in exactly the level of detail that we see it. Books do not have that problem. A paragraph describing a mountain landscape can evoke a picture in our heads that has more details than the paragraph has single words.
So what is marked down as "new medium" in the chart, would be an effort to combine the best of both worlds, so to speak. An effort to maximize the level of credibility, by keeping it up to the reader.

Now for the other two possible steps, respectively called "v2". These efforts go in a completely different direction than the "new medium" and follow the same principle: selectivity.
On the subject of books (which is slightly easier to explain) that means: there is more text, than any reader will read in order to "get" the story. There will be extra paragraphs, containing extra descriptions, extra gestures, extra details, maybe even extra jokes in a dramatic scene. All this text is not directly embedded into the reading flow, but slightly separate. Books v2 could either give the reader subconscious clues on which paragraphs to read and which to skip by small, colored lines on the side of the text, subtle changes in font color or many other possibilities. Or there is something deciding what the reader wants, depending on his reactions. This might be faster scrolling or a webcam registering reactions on the eye's pupil of the reader. Yes, this won't work with normal books, but probably eBook-readers. Subtle clues for our subconsciousness can be printed in completely normal books, of course. In fact, we already work with such clues. Every reader may get distracted from time to time and notice his eyes scrolling down the paragraph without taking anything in. This is a triggered response form our brain which just got bored. By providing more clues for our brain directly with the book, a more goal-oriented reading is possible, enabling us to read a thousand words very quickly, if that would be better for us - as mentioned above. A style of reading which can automatically personalize a story for each reader individually.

Now for what I marked down as "Webcomics v2". Following the same principle, I would try to put more information in the comic, than is necessary. The viewer can decide (by mouse) what he wants more info about.
However, my vision of this is rather hard to convey as it leaves a lot of defaults of today's webcomics behind. There need to be no more pages, no more single panels, weaving into a page. Rather, the layout of the page would shift dynamically with the story. This would include a lot more programming, than today's comics of course (in fact, 100% more, duh!), but new building sets could easily be available to speed up that process. The whole thing is still vague, as it's possibilities are virtually endless.
What is concrete about it, is the level of interactivity. Naturally, there must not be too much, or a sense of false freedom would become tempting to the viewer, only for him or her to run into a well where the creators did not supplement additional material.
What one might ask now is: what extra material would you supply into a webcomic? My first answer would then be: an omniscient narrator, but that's just one idea! Additional, unnecessary details in text or graphic form can be delivered to the interested, making it automatically adjusting to each one's preferred pacing.

Of course, whenever you provide selectivity, you will put more work into it. However, when we compare these methods of story telling to a movie being made, I think it is obvious that there are very big margins to be exploited here. Webcomics are already a a work or collaboration - books rarely are, if you don't count editors. And while I don't think that will change to quickly I am still very sure that means will be found to use these new dimensions of story telling which can now be opened to us. After all, the writing of a book produces way more over the final 500 pages, which make it into the final version, anyway! And since a webcomic can very easily be a work of many, there are equally many possibilities.



I will likely write more about this topic, sooner or later. If you got any thoughts, questions or ideas on the topic, feel free to chime in.