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Using narrative to communicate ideas is very common and storytelling is a powerful tool in digital creativity. These stories don't have to be linear and passive however: you can create stories in which the audience can interact, whether through choices or gamified elements.
By interactive, we mean making something that someone else can interact with. In other words, they don't passively take in the content, but they have to do something to interact with it. A bit like clicking the heading below to find out more.
In everyday life, many things are interactive - you do things to them to control them. A light switch, for example, is interactive.
However, we're thinking specifically about media that is interactive, especially things you might create digitally. Video games are an obvious example, from simple games you might play in a web browser or an app to complex games with almost infinite possibilities.
Games aren't the only example, however. Websites are interactive, as users can choose their own path through them. You can even create slide presentations and spreadsheets that are interactive. And almost everything you might use on a digital device tends to be interactive in some way.
Interactive stories are also very common in some areas. You might be aware of 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books or films like Netflix's Bandersnatch, as narratives that have user interaction. As you consume the story, you make decisions, and there are multiple ways the plot could go. Digital technology opens up more ways of creating these kinds of stories, using different kinds of tools.
Making things interactive can help you find new ways to communicate your argument or story, or give people different routes through your material. Interactivity can:
As part of our digital creativity workshops, we've run a session on games and interactive stories, exploring examples of interesting games and stories and how you would go about creating simple games and interactive stories using Scratch and Twine. The slides for the session are below.
Twine is a tool for creating interactive, non-linear stories and text-based games that work by getting the user to choose the path they want to follow through your structure.
Twine creates an HTML file containing your story/game, making it easy to then publish your story on the internet for others to try.
It is also a good tool for planning out interactive narratives, even if you don't want to publish a text-based game version. The Netflix interactive film Bandersnatch was plotted out using Twine.
Although Twine is designed for making games and interactive narratives, you might also find it useful for organising information in different ways, making more of a mind map structure rather than something linear. Try using it to make notes or organise your thoughts!
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