The Riderly Text: The Joy of Networked Improv Literatur

This essay aims to discuss literary pleasure, new media literacy, and the Networked Improv Literature (Netprov). In particular, the author will discuss the challenges of “close-reading” the Speidishow, a Netprov enacted via Twitter (and a constellation of supplementary web-based media) over a period of several weeks. In the process of trying to understand the dynamics of reading on Twitter, the author of this essay created a Twitter account, @BrutusCorbin, and consulted with the writers about the plot structure. Through active engagement with the fictional world, Corbin quickly became embroiled in a sub-plot. Seeking distance from the active plots which Corbin was involved in, his author created two new characters, @FelixMPastor and @FrannyCheshire, to explore different aspects of the fictional world. Pastor and Cheshire were subsequently dragged into the story, as well.

This piece will dig into the concept of the “readerly” and “writerly”

text as identified by Roland Barthes in S/Z and The Pleasure of the Text and settle on a third term: “the riderly text.”

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