Interactive narratives have many orders in which they can be read coherently.

One of the great potential uses of hypertext is writing and reading a multilinear narrative - a narrative that has many routes through it instead of a single one, as in print narratives. Another great potential use, though, is something like Leishman's "red riding hood" or Loyer's Chroma. These are narratives that are multilinear in elements separate from narrative, and whose central narratives have a basic beginning, middle, and end (with some tangents here and there). Chroma's chapter numbers give it (what Douglas would call) a "privileged order," one that has precedence over others. "red riding hood" allows the reader to follow tangents off of the main plotline (a modern adaptation of the fairy tale), but the key events in the tale are never told out of order. Perhaps the problematic part of this characteristic is Douglas's use of the term "interactive narrative," since it implies that the reader interacts with the narrative and not the other elements of the text.