THE INFLUENCE OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS ON AUTHORS OF ELECTRONIC LITERATURE AND INTERACTIVE DIGITAL NARRATIVES

Pages: 209-220

DOI: 10.4324/9781003119739-20

Abstract:

The computer and its programming are intermediaries between author, text and reader, creating a ‘trilogical’ relationship (Weight 2006: 413-414); interactive digital narrative (IDN)/electronic literature (e-lit) creators must either learn programming languages, or make use of software to implement their vision. Each emerging writing technology transforms the act of writing, often introducing new forms of literature. Digital author tools (Shibolet et al. 2018: 523) emerge from adaptations of technology created for other purposes or original platforms designed explicitly for creating digital literature. The affordances of authoring tools are many; constraints can be frustrating for authors but can also inspire creativity. The design and distribution of author tools contribute to the construction, make up, and dedication of associated communities; less obvious is the way that a given tool’s community contributes to its conventions, distribution, perception and even the themes and forms of the works themselves. This chapter outlines the affordances of several prominent authoring tools, incorporating my practice-based perspective as a digital author. It compares the factors contributing to the establishment of hypertext communities based in StorySpace and Twine, exploring how both the technical and the human factors of creative authoring platforms shape the works that emerge.

Source: Scopus