ABSTRACT
One of the features which are particular to digital publication contexts is readers’ ability to comment on and participate in an unfolding narrative. This chapter starts with a theoretical section discussing the question of why authors and readers alike would even want to enter a participatory space, using Walter Benjamin’s “The Storyteller”, Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author”, and related works to approach the idea of intersubjective communication. The core of this chapter applies and adapts Gérard Genette’s concept of paratext to a digital setting through a case study of the horror storytelling subreddit /r/nosleep, where participation is expressed through comments on the narrative level: readers perform as peripheral characters within the storyworld, and their comments are visible to other, future readers as paratext. Here, narrative authority is dependent upon reader loyalty, therefore much of the continuous negotiation of control, authority, and narrative trajectory is conducted through social rather than autocratic means, which produces an intricate web of communication on different narrative levels. In the context of this participatory storytelling subreddit, this chapter analyses strategies used by authors and readers alike to balance narrative control and intersubjective exchange and resonance.
