Wednesday 17 April 2013

A taste of interactive fiction 9:05

Play a classic of IF, 9:05 here courtesy of the Interactive Fiction Database .

We won't have time the session but everyone should play Photopia, that's right, EVERYBODY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.

Mapping our stories

Today we're going to be using a free online flowchart generator to plan some longer form hypertext fiction.



You will need to create an account so you can save.

My example is here

Wednesday 10 April 2013

The strange case of the disappearing book, Agrippa.
Hypercard and Hypertext Fiction

Today we're going to be looking at the hypercard and hypertext fiction, neither of which really exist anymore.


If you want to read more about Hypercard you can do it here. Because of the nature of the medium most of the games were either strategy (especially kingdom sims) or adventure games; the most famous adventure to come from the early Hypercard scene was Myst.

We're going to be looking at Alter Ego. Warning: depending on the choices you make there are some upsetting scenes.

Hypertext is still with us, it's what allows me to link to the web but is less used for games or fiction. We're going to be exploring Luminous Airplanes.

We're going to use the bookmarking and hyperlink features of MS Word to create our own hypertext fiction. See this short example: Hypertext fiction in Word (internal link).

You can see our group's first attempts at hypertext fiction here:

You will need to open these up in Word (not the preview) and enable editing. Press CTRL to click on the links.

This was my example, A Late Night

And this is what the group came up with:

"You Die!" by Adam

"Village Boy" by Jack

"The Problem with Groups" by Pippa

"You Quest" by Sam

Let us know what you think.

We are planning to create some more complex stories using the same techniques in the coming weeks, watch this space.






Flash Fiction.

Flash fiction is very short fiction, typically either under 500-1000 words long.

We're going to post some of our flash fiction here but in the meantime you can see what we mean by visiting http://flashfictiononline.com/main/

Flash fiction differs from a word sketch or vignette because it must be a self contained story that comes to a satisfying conclusion; in other words it needs a beginning, middle and end.

For many, me included the first piece of flash fiction preceded the digital world. This story is usually attributed to Ernest Hemingway 'For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn'. See also Drabble.
Digital Fiction at LFATSF

Digitial Fiction is one of a number of enrichment activities offered to all students on a Wednesday afternoon at Landau Forte Academy Tamworth Sixth Form.

What is Digital Fiction?

For me digital fiction is any form of storytelling which embraces the possibilities of the digital format. So most e-books wouldn't qualify because they are simply books presented in a digital format.

We've already looked at flash fiction and in the coming weeks will be exploring hypertext and interactive fictions.