This is the first time I have heard and used Twine as a writing tool. I am not a fan of choose-your-own-adventure type of texts. I would rather have the author make the choice for the reader. I ended up creating several scenarios in my story as I could not figure out how to loop a choice back to a previous choice. I am not used to this type of writing as I am creating two or more storylines moving at the same time. This type of writing is similar to the Xanalogical structure mentioned by Nelson (1999). He stated that “The writing process, and especially sophisticated rewriting, consists of repeatedly reorganizing evolving drafts” (Nelson, 1999). Choose-your-own-adventure type of texts enables the writer to “re-write” every decision that the reader makes for the character. This enables new possibilities and new endings for the story. This is how Nelson (1999) describes the Project Xanadu.
It has always been much more ambitious, proposing an entire form of literature where links do not break as versions change; where documents may be closely compared side by side and closely annotated; where it is possible to see the origins of every quotation; and in which there is a valid copyright system (Nelson, 1999).
In a way, xanalogical structure of writing is a modern way to organize and annotate ideas. It presents a visual image for writers and readers alike to see how everything is connected and the effects and consequences of each choice.
In today’s writing technology, instead of reading and writing in traditional written forms, we create and read texts using hybrid books such as notebooks and iBooks. We even read magazines, journals, and printed books digitally. These forms of texts are lightweight, easy to carry and even gives reader the opportunities to choose the outcome of a text (ie. stories on Twine). According to Bolter (2001), One important feature of eBook is the ability to turn any text into a hypertext. In other words, readers are able to search for the occurrence of words and phrases within the text. Another feature of an eBook is that it is connected to a “growing world of materials available online” (Bolter, 2001). eBooks like stories from the Twine give readers access to endless possibilities with a click of a button. As Bolter put it, “Unlike a printed book, which can only contain one fixed text, the eBook is designed to be reloaded.
I really enjoyed the creative process of making stories from Twine and I hope to learn more about it.
References
Bolter, J.D. (2001). Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 77-98.
Nelson, Theodore. (1999). Xanalogical structure, needed now more than ever: Parallel documents, deep links to content, deep versioning and deep re-use. Online