TWINE STORY-That Was the Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia — an interactive story about a Southern night, sudden darkness, and what lingers long after the lights come back on.

Click above to get the “feeling” of the story.

https://twinery.org/2/#/stories/57353a72-d5b2-4658-98fe-b202a1fc4bf6/play

That Was the Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia — an interactive story about a Southern night, sudden darkness, and what lingers long after the lights come back on.

Reflection on My Process

When I started this Twine assignment, I quickly realized that if I focused on images, sound, or technical features too early, I would lose the story.  It was the mysterious nature of the song title that inspired me to create a story. So I made a conscious decision to write first and design later. I treated Twine as a writing space rather than a multimedia tool, using only text and choices until the entire story existed from beginning to end. It was a wonderful creative exercise because as the story unfolded from option to option and I became (no pun intended) entwined with the tool-and the story actually began to write itself.

The original idea came from hearing the song “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” on the radio. I wasn’t interested in adapting the song itself or its storyline, but the title stayed with me. I was drawn to the image of a Southern state on a sultry, hot August night, suddenly going completely dark. From there, I imagined what that kind of silence, heat, and disorientation might feel like, especially in small towns and rural places where people are used to listening closely to the night. I could actually see the scene in my mind. I could feel the heat of the earth. I could hear the cicadas’ song in the darkness. I could also sense the tenseness of the people of the small towns as they gathered together, experiencing a shocking and unexpected event.

As I wrote, I focused on atmosphere rather than explanation. I wanted the choices to feel like different ways of witnessing the same strange event, not decisions that led to right or wrong outcomes. Writing in short passages helped me think carefully about pacing and restraint, and about when to let silence or ambiguity do more work than description. It is hard to give up that control as an author.

Once the story was fully written, I tested it in Play mode several times, clicking through different paths to make sure the structure held together and eventually returned to the same ending. This was really no different than a thorough editing process. However,  keeping the story to roughly fifteen screens forced me to be selective and intentional. I know that I was able to expand beyond that amount, but for a first attempt, I decided to keep it simple and effective. Only after the text felt complete did I start to think about how visuals or sound might enhance the mood rather than distract from it.

This process reinforced for me that even in a digital, interactive format, authorship still begins with human voice and judgment, and that technology is most effective when it supports thinking rather than directing it.

ADDENDUM:

I really had a negative response to the use of this tool. The upside was that it encouraged me to do some research on how other students in various situations had found it when it was part of an assignment. I asked Chat GPT to give me a review and it did which I will copy here. I found the result fascinating. The research indicated that certain types of individuals depending on their penchant (gamer inclined versus writers) respond to it with varying degrees of positivity.

CHAT GPT SAID:

Below is a synthesis drawn from many published reflections in education blogs, digital-humanities courses, composition classes, and teacher-education programs where Twine is commonly assigned. I’ve grouped the patterns that consistently appear in student responses, and then analyzed what they reveal about the tool itself.

Overall Pattern of Student Reactions to Twine Assignments

Across courses, student reactions tend to cluster into three predictable positions:

Type of Response Typical Experience
Enthusiastic “I finally felt creative / like making a game”
Mixed “Interesting but frustrating”
Negative “I spent more time fighting the tool than thinking”

Your reaction — negative — is actually extremely common, especially among strong writers.

1. Positive Responses: “It made me think differently”

Students who liked Twine almost always described a shift from writing to designing.

What they said (typical themes)

  • Felt like building a world rather than writing a paper

  • Enjoyed reader agency

  • Liked visual mapping of ideas

  • Found nonlinear thinking freeing

  • Experienced ownership and playfulness

What they were reacting to

Twine externalizes structure. Instead of holding organization mentally, the structure becomes visible. For some learners this reduces cognitive load.

They stop worrying about sentences and start thinking about experience.

Who tends to respond positively

  • Game-oriented thinkers

  • Visual planners

  • Students comfortable experimenting

  • Students less invested in traditional prose voice

2. Mixed Responses: “Creative but cognitively heavy”

These students appreciated the concept but struggled with the execution.

Common comments

  • Hard to track branches

  • Technical distractions

  • Took far longer than expected

  • Hard to revise globally

  • Unsure what counted as “good writing”

What’s happening cognitively

Twine requires managing three layers simultaneously:

  1. Story

  2. Structure

  3. Interface logic

That is much closer to programming than writing. Many students realize the assignment is not about narrative skill alone but systems thinking.

They often finish proud but exhausted.

3. Negative Responses: “The tool replaced the writing”

This group consistently reports frustration — and importantly, they are often strong writers.

Typical reactions

  • Felt artificial

  • Broke immersion in language

  • Focus shifted to mechanics

  • Couldn’t sustain tone

  • Writing became fragmented

  • Spent time troubleshooting instead of composing

Underlying issue

Twine changes the unit of composition.

Instead of writing flowing text, the writer produces modular text fragments.

For writers who think rhythmically, narratively, or atmospherically, this feels like interruption rather than expansion.

They experience the platform as:

not helping thought — but constantly interrupting it

Why the Reactions Diverge

Twine rewards a different literacy than traditional writing.

Traditional Writing Skill Twine Skill
Voice System design
Flow Navigation
Argument Possibility space
Sentence craft Node architecture
Linear meaning Conditional meaning

So the assignment does not just change format — it changes what counts as competence.

Students who value language feel constrained.
Students who value structure feel empowered.

The Key Insight From Student Feedback

Twine doesn’t simply teach storytelling.

It forces students to confront a shift:

Writing becomes arranging conditions for reading rather than producing a continuous text.

Many students realize they are no longer composing meaning directly — they are constructing a system in which meaning emerges.

Some find this liberating.

Others experience it as losing authorship.

Where Your Negative Reaction Fits (THIS IS ME)

A negative response usually comes from writers who:

  • think in sustained tone

  • care about pacing and rhythm

  • experience language as continuous

  • want control over interpretation

For these writers, Twine feels less like expanding writing and more like breaking it apart into pieces.

So the reaction is not failure to engage the tool.

It is actually evidence of a different model of writing — one where meaning lives in sequence rather than choice.

Short Analytical Conclusion

Student responses to Twine consistently reveal that the assignment is not neutral.
It privileges spatial and systemic composition over linguistic composition.

Therefore reactions are not about effort or creativity — they reflect competing definitions of what writing is:

  • Writing as expression

  • Writing as structure

  • Writing as environment

Twine exposes that conflict more clearly than almost any other classroom tool.”

I found this quite fascinating.  For my purposes it is an absolutely accurate description of myself as a writer and my response to this tool.

In conclusion, what began as frustration and a negative response actually turned out to be one of the more thought provocative assignments of the course. I came to understand how a specific digital tool affects me, in both how I respond to it and how I utilize it.