{"id":102,"date":"2021-02-21T19:57:13","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T02:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/?p=102"},"modified":"2021-02-21T19:57:13","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T02:57:13","slug":"task-5-twine-task","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/2021\/02\/21\/task-5-twine-task\/","title":{"rendered":"Task 5: Twine Task"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is my brain on the Twine Task.<\/h3>\n

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The Twine Task had me in knots for more than a week.\u00a0 Self-limiting beliefs interfered with the process, resulting in the same tasks being completed 2 or 3 times, just as I tried to wrap my head around it all.<\/p>\n

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Image from: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Choose_Your_Own_Adventure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The process began with a lot of enthusiasm. \u00a0\u201cChoose Your Own Adventure\u201d books provided some of my fondest childhood memories, so I loved the idea of building my own story.\u00a0 In addition, my research interests lie in using technology and narrative techniques to help facilitate positive behaviour change.\u00a0 Learning about Twine as a tool for interactive, non-linear storytelling just made sense.<\/p>\n

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The process I followed, however, did not necessarily make sense.<\/p>\n

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Image from: Image from: https:\/\/twitter.com\/raamana_\/status\/1284062758275670016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just like the red-stringed \u201cah-as\u201d of popular detective shows, I envisioned a magical process where exciting possibilities and connections would fall into place.\u00a0 Although I viewed some Twine tutorials that demonstrated the tool’s features for story mapping, I chose to get some ideas on paper first.\u00a0 I began with the opening scenario for my story and some possible pathways that could branch off from there.\u00a0 True to my usual process of writing-before-typing, I began this task by first writing out the sequences, both on paper and on post-it notes.<\/p>\n

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This might be considered to be a type of “pre-writing” as described by Bolter (2001).\u00a0 It marked the beginning of a process in which\u00a0 “the associative relationships define alternative organizations that lie beneath the order of pages and chapters that a printed text presents to its reader” (Bolter, 2001, p. 33).<\/p>\n

I quickly found that I was feeling a little lost and decided that I wanted more structure in the process.\u00a0 I changed to the keyboard, typing the opening scenario and the optional pathways that could unfold from this scenario. \u00a0When I started to see that the branching passages could become overwhelming, I began colour-coding the various passages that could ensue from each of 3 options in the initial scenario.\u00a0 This colour-coding served as an anchor to help me to keep track of the various story branches.<\/p>\n

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Not long after colour-coding potential pathways, I decided that I would benefit from creating a table that included the colour-coding and clustered the pathways (also referred to as \u201cscreens\u201d or outcomes that resulted from decision points) together. \u00a0This allowed me to create another visual of which screens led to one another.<\/p>\n

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Creating a Word document for this purpose also allowed me to search for certain words or screens when I became confused.\u00a0 Twinery.org also provides this searchability, but I wanted to have the narrative pathways resolved before I tackled that new technology.<\/p>\n

I discovered it was easier to understand the flow of the various story options when I assigned screen numbers to the passages that resulted from a given decision point (e.g., Screen 5, Option 2).\u00a0 This system evolved organically; I didn\u2019t envision it from the beginning of the task, and I had to double-back and add these details to my earlier work once it fell into place.<\/p>\n

In chatting about the Twine Task with a classmate, I described apprehension about utilizing the Twine technology.\u00a0 I shared that it reminded me of the \u201cif\u2026then\u201d statements of dreaded geometry lessons and the 0s and 1s that never made much sense to me in my Grade 10 \u201cComputer Programming\u201d class.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not a sequential thinker,\u201d I heard myself say (and realized that I\u2019d heard my mother say that about herself over the years.)<\/p>\n

Once I actually started using Twine, the process went fairly smoothly and I lamented not using the technology much earlier.\u00a0 It was even better than my “default” post-it note process!<\/p>\n

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I used my Word document to supply story content to Twine, and I found Twine\u2019s hypertext process to be a breeze in comparison to the work I had completed to that point. \u00a0I had feared that the hypertext “coding” would be far more complex and cumbersome.<\/p>\n

After creating passages in Twine, I copied and pasted elements of the story back into my Word document to keep track of the specific paths that would lead a user to a given passage.\u00a0 This helped me to create passages that were generic enough to accommodate diverse pathways.<\/p>\n

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While creating an interactive story with Twine was surprisingly simple, I did experience frustration with finding simple ways to share my Twine with others.\u00a0 After zipping files and copying them into text editors,\u00a0 a user would still have to know how to download a file and open it with the appropriate application.\u00a0 I wanted to remove those steps.\u00a0 After researching a variety of options, I landed on itch.io.\u00a0 While this eliminated the steps of downloading and opening, I am not fully satisfied. I would prefer the link to be embedded within this blog, requiring just a single click.<\/p>\n

The Twine Task process demanded equal parts of sequential and abstract thought.\u00a0 I developed an appreciation for the complexities of interactive gaming.\u00a0 It is a genre that demands that imaginative, big-picture storytelling be interwoven with the minutia of details and possibilities, all within the context of a narrative that allows players to have agency in the storytelling.\u00a0 This challenge can present a “narrative paradox\u201d where \u201c\u2026the aim to give control over a character in a virtual environment to the user, clashes with the aim to provide a coherent and author determined course of events within this environment” (Aylett, 1999, cited in Swartjes, 2010, p. 4).<\/p>\n

Reflecting on my interest in helping people to “re-write” personal narratives with increased agency, I\u00a0 can see that the non-linearity of hypertext may afford opportunities for individuals to associate new ideas and pathways with their life stories.\u00a0 Indeed, Dillon (1996, p. 27, cited in Miall & Dobson, 2001) asserts that “contemporary hypertext thinking seems tied to concepts of association and non-linearity of access…”\u00a0 The flexibility of hypertext may be especially conducive to the intentional authoring of one’s life.\u00a0 Within an educational context, hypertext could fit well within narrative learning environments that engage students as co-authors of a story, and consequently enhance learning.\u00a0 \u201cBy enabling learners to be co-constructors of narratives, narrative-centered learning environments can promote the deep, connection-building meaning-making activities that define constructivist learning\u201d (Mott et al., 1999, cited in Swartjes, 2010, p.4).<\/p>\n

The Twine process demonstrated the diversity of paths that can lead us to the same place.\u00a0 It is both a challenge and a relief to see to discover that the path is not linear; our lives are not a simple series of \u201cif\u2026then\u201d statements, as much as we might like to think so.\u00a0 With the illusion of control shattered, we are free to see that no mistake is finite and unrecoverable.\u00a0 There are many ways for us to get to our desired destination.\u00a0 We are unique individuals, and technology needs to provide the flexibility for us to meander our way through our multiple choice-points and preferred ways of being.\u00a0 As I developed my interactive story, I wondered about including options that would be true “dead ends”.\u00a0 But, as long as we are alive, there are no true dead ends.\u00a0 Everything is possible.<\/p>\n

To check out my first attempt at a Twine interactive story, click here!<\/a> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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(You’ll need to click the image that looks like this.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

References:<\/p>\n

Bolter, J.D. (2001). <\/span>Writing Space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print<\/span><\/a><\/span>. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Chapter 3<\/span><\/p>\n

Miall, D & Dobson, T. (2001) \u201c<\/span>Reading hypertext and the experience of literature<\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span>\u201d Texas Digital Library.<\/span><\/p>\n

Swartjes, I.M.T. (2010). Whose Story Is It Anyway? How Improv Informs Agency and <\/em>Authorship of Emergent Narrative<\/em>. University of Twente.\u00a0 https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3990\/1.9789036530040<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is my brain on the Twine Task. The Twine Task had me in knots for more than a week.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74950,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74950"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/narration4transformation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}