Why Online Fiction is the Future of Fiction - Reason #1: Layout

Layout in most fiction is, I must say, boring. For the most part, the most visually exciting layout in our fiction books is the cover; even then, many of these covers don't reflect the story accurately, because the author was not involved in deciding on the look of the cover - the first indication of bad decision making in layout. It's worse after one starts flipping the pages, because monotony invariably sets in: each page (of almost every single book out there!) is made up of the book title on top, the text content in the middle, and the page number at the bottom. Boring, boring, boring.

(And why is this so? I suspect it has got to do with the costs of customization - tweaking the production process to accommodate for unconventional layout is just too expensive and not worth the effort.)

I can almost hear publishers protesting here: but the meat of a novel is in its words! What's the point of adding pictures or styling the text? It only gets in the way of reading!

That's only half true. Layout comprises of everything that is on a page, and that extends to the typography as well. I'm pretty sure many of the authors out there will be happy to be involved in deciding the layout of their book - if only they get to be involved. Kafka, for example, apparently asked his publisher to increase the font size of his book, because he was aware of its positive effect on reading, especially for long flowing passages like his; Lewis Caroll not only asked an illustrator to illustrate Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but had some of the text paragraphs laid out in curious ways. (Check out the playful 'tail' paragraph above.)

In the world of conventional fiction, though (and that applies to independent publishing with Amazon as well, though to a lesser extent), the publisher has the final say as to the format and layout. The result is a never-ending series of monotonous layouts that best serves the publisher's interest, rather than that of the author or the reader's.

As opposed to conventional fiction, online fiction has a greater potential for more visually intriguing layout. This is largely thanks to the technologies that support the browser in the first place, which allow for the inclusion of colors and images. The result is a page layout that includes not only the title and the text content, but also pictures to complement the story, stylized fonts for emphasis and decoration, and the potential for a visually uniform layout that enriches the reading experience.

When quoting an example to demonstrate just how layout can be manipulated for the sake of fiction, I always like to refer to The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely. A rather popular online fiction, The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely is what I'd call an excellent example of design + fiction. Notice how the author has designed his website so that it is reminiscent of the 1800s. The spotted brown background to the webpage, the fancy letters, the postage stamp and the sepia effect on the old photographs - all these work together to complement the narrative by immersing readers in the setting of England in the Victorian era.

In the previous example, the structure of a typical webpage is retained while the CSS styling gives it a look similar to that of a newspaper. In Minimal English, though, the entire structure was overthrown. Instead of having sections of content in the sidebars that complements the main content, in this curious layout the entire page is trimmed down to six visible sections, and the result is a layout that is unique and quirky at the same time.

The two examples above has shown clearly just how far layout can go with online fiction - i.e. as far as its author's imagination can go. With e-books, though, layout is relatively rigid and the only control authors can have over the text is its typography. While it is true that with increased capability of e-readers this might change, the openness of the standards behind the browser ensures that online fiction (which uses the browser as its main media) will always stay one step ahead of e-books.

Even more importantly, the readers of the Internet age have been spoiled by the array of colorful, engaging designs on the Web; once these readers discover online fiction, they are not going to settle for anything less.