Reading and authoring young adult transmedia storyworlds

Abstract

Since the proliferation of the Internet in the early nineties and mobile technology in the early noughties, reading and authoring have become networked, intersubjective practices that take place across multimedia storyworlds that are open-ended and connected. Taking the fantasy genre as a case study, this article shows that in the digital age readers do not simply replay or subvert fixed codes of meaning-making established by authors and publishing/production houses. Rather, they engage with metaleptic strategies of reading. They use transliteracy skills to produce creative interpretations of the storyworld. The result of this deeper engagement shifts the cultural function of reading back to a performative and social one. It also obliges authors and publishers to consider processes normally associated with production and curation as integral to their work.