The Sisyphean Times June 2014 | Page 6

6

making prose playable

interactive storytelling:

making prose playable

For my generation, "choose your own adventure" books were a part of our childhood.

Twine is an open source tool that allows anyone to create interact-ive works, whether they are stories, games, or something in-between.

I wanted to explore new ways of writing (in part, to get over my writers block) and that's how I discovered Twine.

Twine can be used to create:

text adventures

paced poetry

non-linear fiction

and more

Anyone can create a twine game. The basics can be learned in 10 minutes. For those who want more custom-izaton, you can also include variables, conditional logic, images, CSS, and JavaScript.

The advantage of a hypertext game is that the author has ultimate control over the pace of the story's progression. This is used to greatest effect with poetry.