Interactive Fiction
Interactive Fiction
"Read you a story? What fun would that be? I’ve got a better idea: let’s tell a story together.”
Brief
Interactive Fiction is a genre of game or electronic literature where users participate in the generation or exploration of a story world. In the early 1980s, text adventures like Zork and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy invited players to interact with their computers to explore fictional game worlds. Netflix has explored similar storytelling with its interactive film, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018). The tradition continues today with a diverse range of tools and an active community exploring all sorts of literary interactivity.
Learning Objectives
- Learn about the history and evolution of text adventures and interactive fiction
- Explore the different affordances of the various platforms available for producing interactive fiction
- Practice writing in an interactive format
Options and Variations
Broadly speaking, there are two types of interactive fiction you'll come across if you start exploring: parser-based games where users must type commands (like "go north", "get lamp", etc.), and choice-based works where users must click on links to explore different parts of a story or make decisions. Before attempting to make anything, spend some time exploring the IFDB, the sample works featured on the Twine homepage, and the entries for the latest IFComp to see which modality you prefer.
Then, using one of the tools listed below, try and make one (or several) of your own. Here are a few suggestions:
- Adapt a scene from a film or literary work that you know well
- Re-create a particularly vivid moment from your life
- Narrate a typical day
- Select a place on campus and treat it as a "hub" for several stories that may or may not intersect
Resources and Tools
