Developing a Choice-Based Digital Fiction for Body Image Bibliotherapy

Abstract

Body dissatisfaction is so common in the western world that it has become the norm, especially among women and girls. Writing New Body Worlds is a transdisciplinary research-creation project that aims to address these issues by developing an interactive digital fiction for body image bibliotherapy. It is created with the critical co-design participation of a group of young women and non-binary individuals (aged 18–25) from diverse backgrounds, who are representative of its intended audience. This article discusses how our participant research influenced the creative development of the digital fiction, its characters and its novel ludonarrative or story-game design. It theorizes how the specific affordances of a choice-based interactive narrative, that situates the reader-player in the mind of the fictional protagonist, may lead to enhanced empathic identification and agency and, therefore, a more profoundly immersive and potentially transformative experience. This process of “diegetic enactment” is where we postulate the therapeutic value lies: an ontological oscillation between the reader-player’s mind and the fictional mind, which may induce the reader-player to reflect upon, and perhaps subtly alter, their own body image.

Paths to transformation across contemporary reading practices: The role of motivations and genre preferences.

“…Within digital fiction, the active role of the reader in shaping the story, can deepen the experience of effectively "trying on" other identities through fictional characters, which has already been theorized as a key function of reading fiction books on a more conceptual level (Slater et al, 2014). Furthermore, recent projects employ works of digital fiction to prompt climate change awareness (Rudd et al, 2020) and body image positivity (Wilks et al, 2022). Regarding Wattpad, we need to consider that its content is user-generated and therefore it effectively matches the interests of its plethora of readers (mostly young adult and female).…”