“Will you read me a story?”
“Read you a story? What fun would that be? I’ve got a better idea: let’s tell a story together.”
— Adam Cadre, “Photopia”
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. That tradition continues today with a diverse range of tools that make possible all sorts of literary interactivity. The links below will help you scratch the surface of the worlds upon worlds of interactive fiction.
Goals
- 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
Platforms
Other Resources
- Browse hundreds of IF at the IFDB (Interactive Fiction DataBase)
- View Anna Anthropy’s “How to make Games with Twine”
- Read Mark C. Marino and Jeremy Douglass’s “Create your own Writing Adventure (an exercise for kids)”
- Read this Introduction to [text adventure-style] IF
- Read advice and stories: “Writing Interactive Fiction in 5,000 Words (or Fewer)”
Suggested Tasks
- Make a story in whatever platform you like best
- Adapt a scene from a literary work that you know well
- Re-create a particularly vivid moment from your life
- Tell the same story across multiple platforms at the same time
