Melissa Ford - Writing Interactive Fiction with Twine

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Melissa Ford

800 East 96th Street,
Indianapolis, Indiana 46240 USA

Writing Interactive Fiction with Twine

Copyright 2016 by Melissa Ford

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This publication is protected by copyright, and permission must be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. For information regarding permissions, request forms, and the appropriate contacts within the Pearson Education Global Rights & Permissions Department, please visit www.pearsoned.com/permissions/. No patent liability is assumed with respect to the use of the information contained herein. Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume no responsibility for errors or omissions. Nor is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

ISBN-13: 978-0-7897-5664-0
ISBN-10: 0-7897-5664-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015956273

First Printing: May 2016

Editor-in-Chief
Greg Wiegand

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Works Publishing

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Bronkella Publishing

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Some people set out to change the world when they build something new. I didnt. I built the first versions of what would become Twine with an audience of one in mind: myself. I had experimented with writing traditional interactive fiction (IF), the kind exemplified by games like Zork, that ask the reader to explore a world by typing commands. I wanted to try experimenting with IF in a different way, to create something that ran lighter on puzzle solving and heavier on storytelling.

The best reference point I had was an immensely popular series of books I had devoured when I was in elementary school, Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA). Though many of the stories they told were haphazard and madcap, there was something inescapably intriguing to me about stories that have no fixed plot, whose content is changed by the process of reading them.

Of course, this ideawhich wed now think of as a branch of the hypertext mediumhas a history that stretches back much further than the CYOA series. It runs back nearly a century, in fact. But just as I had no great ambitions when I first started with Twine, I also had no great knowledge of the medium. My thoughts were humble. I saw a hill and wondered what was past it. Twine was the walking-stick I built to help myself get there.

Twine has grown and grown since then, to my delight. What Im most proud of is how many people have used Twine to write their first interactive story. Some of these people only know the medium of interactive fiction in the same terms I did, with examples like CYOA and Zork. Many more, I suspect, come to the medium completely fresh. Whoever you are, its truly a privilege to be able to offer a first glimpse of this territory. I hope youll fall in love just as I did.

But there are hazards to exploration. False trails and dead ends abound. A wise explorer draws on every resource availableand this book, though there are no maps printed in its pages nor any descriptions of flora or fauna, is an excellent guidebook to have at your side on your first foray.

Chris Klimas, creator of Twine

Melissa Ford is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. She has been a huge interactive fiction fan since 1982, when her dad gave her a copy of Zork to help her become a better speller. She is the blogging and social media editor at BlogHer, a contributor at GeekDad, and the Twine mentor at her local computer club. She is also the author of the award-winning blog Stirrup Queens. She earned her MFA from University of MassachusettsAmherst.

For my Dad, who brought home Zork and said, Play this.

First and foremost, a huge thank you to the Que team for all of your hard work: Rick, Todd, Tonya, Laura, Sandra, Seth, Cindy, Mark, Michelle, Greg, and Kitty. A shout-out to Charlotte Kughen, who helped with the middle of the book, and an enormous separate thank you to Rick Kughen for believing in this project when I wrote him, So I have this idea for a book... and he brought me into the Que family. I have never had so much fun working on a book.

Thank you to James Floyd Kelly, who held my hand when I needed to jump and made sure I landed somewhere good. And an enormous thank you to Chris Klimas for jumping with me. I would not have done this without you.