by Nathan Ousey~

In most works of fiction, the audience acts as a spectator, viewing the events of a story– usually through the perspective of a narrator– without themselves having any impact on how these events play out. No matter how a narrative is structured, the reader is only along for the ride. This works for many authors and readers, but some people enjoy another kind of storytelling: interactive fiction.

Simply put, interactive fiction involves stories that can split off into many different paths depending on the reader’s (or player’s) choices. The author writes several directions for the story and offers choices that branches into different directions.


Examples of Interactive Fiction

Some of the earliest works of interactive fiction can be found in the form of video games, often called “text adventures.” In these games, the player types input into the computer to indicate what they want to do. In the example above, the designer creates a village for the player to explore or even buy items to use later in the story. These games often describe environments of fantasy and science fiction, allowing the player to navigate worlds unlike our own.

Although modern video games are much more of a graphical experience than text games, they can still be considered interactive works of fiction. Take the new Spiderman game on the Playstation 4, where players take on the mantle of the web-slinging superhero. Players decide the order in which they save the city; they can go against big-league criminals first, or bide their time with purse snatchers and lesser tasks.

One particular website that I’ve come across that keeps the more textual aspects of this genre alive and well is Choice of Games:

As you can see from their homepage, they have a variety of “games”, or interactive stories, to choose from. They are quite similar to literary magazines, in fact; they allow users to submit their stories, although there is no issue or edition that is published. They emphasize that submitters to their website are writers above all else, not game designers or coders. Above all else, the quality of writing and the story is what matters in these works of interactive fiction. The only new element is the ability to provide engaging choices to the reader, which makes up for the “interactive” part.

This is an example of a piece of interactive fiction where the reader takes on the role of a dragon, getting to do all the things that dragons do in fairy tales. They are presented with choices on how to stop a knight that seeks to slay them. For the author, writing stories like these are a mix of writing in prose and writing in code. They type out their story, but also have to use code to indicate when different choices will occur.

As much as it would be interesting to have intricate code-based work featured in Klio, this would most likely be too challenging. Interactive fiction can be achieved through much simpler means; take “choose-your-own adventure” stories for instance.

Books like these were very popular for a time. Whenever there is a part where the reader can choose between a couple of options, the story tells them to go to a certain page or section. Not all of the book will be finished in a single telling of the story, but this allows the reader to go back and begin again, this time making different decisions. In online publications of interactive fiction, readers are often given links that take them to the part of the page where their choice leads.

Bringing Interactive Fiction to Klio

There are a number of ways that students can structure their own pieces of interactive fiction, though I would like to recommend how I would go about it. The story can be divided into numbered sections, and any decision the reader makes will lead them to a section that shows the result. Here is an example of how I believe this system would best be implemented in Klio:

This is what a section could look like. The author directs you to other sections to see how the story will unfold from there. Based on how they decide to act, they can receive different endings. Obviously the paragraphs of text can have much more detail, just as a normal fiction story would. The directories to different sections can even become links that take the reader to the appropriate section.

One might argue that by writing these kinds of stories, the author must sacrifice levels of intricacy and nuance and go for a simpler kind of story. This is where I must disagree. I believe it would be entirely possible for Klio to get submissions of stories that manage to tell an interesting and unique story, while also allowing the reader to choose what direction that story takes.

As the current Fiction Genre Coordinator at Klio, I am excited to say that accepting works of interactive fiction is entirely possible within Klio’s creative arts journal. They can fit the same requirements that all stories have: 4000 words, limited to 2 pieces per submission. I welcome suggestions and submissions for this genre.

I challenge Penn State students to write a piece of interactive fiction that not only has unique elements from a storytelling perspective, but also presents the reader with different and interesting endings based on their choices.