A key concept running through the undergraduate English course entitled “Narrative in a Digital Age” is procedural creativity, which involves the “creation of possibility spaces…governed by procedural generative principles” (Wells and Boyd 273). Procedural creativity is a form of creative praxis using procedural systems that are often now formalized in software, such as digital authoring platforms like Twine (twinery.org), that result in works of narrative and ludic potentiality. Procedural authorship, however, is a form of creative praxis that students typically find challenging to meaningfully understand solely as readers. This paper will discuss how Twine is used in “Narrative in a Digital Age” to deal with this challenge by means of an experiential learning opportunity that takes the form of creating a playable story for a course jam called “Fabuludus.”

A section of the course focuses on hypertext fiction, which, in terms of basic mechanics, today’s students initially find commonplace and boring. When presented with hypertext concepts such as reader-chosen narrative paths (“wreaderly texts”), the model that most often springs into student minds are the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. In a “Refuse Your Own Adventure” class, this rather limited model is countered by an exploration of three Twine-authored works that creatively complicate simplistic understandings of hypertextual narrative choice: Anna Anthropy’s Queers in Love at the End of the World (2013), Porpentine’s howling dogs (2012), Michael Lutz’s My Father’s Long, Long Legs (2013). A fourth Twine work, Pippin Barr’s Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: The Twine (2019) is also used for the Procedural Authoring Platforms in-class introductory workshop on Twine (in part because its code is publicly available for study). The procedural creativity exemplified by these works is analyzed to enable students to start exploring procedural authorship through a “function before fiction” exercise that, rather than starting with a story idea, instead asks them to start with a function or set of functions in Twine and formulate a narrative scenario in which it/they could be used. Through this exercise and the creation of a playable story, Twine becomes the means for students to discover the interpenetration of creative writing and programming, to tackle more complex procedural authoring platforms, and ultimately to learn that procedural creativity is not limiting and formulaic, but full of exciting narrative and world-building possibilities.

Works Cited

Anthropy, Anna. Queers in Love at the End of the World. Itch.io, 2013, https://w.itch.io/end-of-the-world.

Barr, Pippin. Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment: The Twine. Pippinbarr.com, 2019, https://www.pippinbarr.com/games/2019/07/03/lets-play-ancient-greek-punishment-the-twine.html.

Lutz, Michael. My Father’s Long, Long Legs. Correlatedcontents.com, 2013.  http://correlatedcontents.com/misc/Father.html.

Porpentine. howling dogs. Slimdedaughter.com, 2012, http://slimedaughter.com/games/twine/howlingdogs/.

Wells, Matthew J., and Jason Boyd. “Generating Gameworlds with Computers: The Case for Procedural Creativity.” Information and Learning Sciences, vol. 120, no. 5/6, 2019, pp. 266-84.

1. digital humanities
2. game studies
3. teaching