The contents of the book are drawn from many sources; some pieces are reprints of web pages or usenet postings, some are written specifically for this context, and some are papers created for other academic settings. The tone of the articles varies widely, from the casual to the academic, the conversational to the learned. On consideration, we decided that this represented the IF community better than a more stylistically unified edition possibly could.

Three-part Article on the Evolution of Adventure and Zork, Dennis Jerz and Adam Thornton.

Evolution of the Small Game, Stephen Granade.
Discussion of how small games have become increasingly prevalent over the years as IF has evolved.

History of Italian IF, Francesco Cordella.
A discussion of the history of Italian IF, starting with Enrico Colombini's 1982 "Avventura nel castello".

History of Spanish IF, dhan, with supplementary material from Urbatain.
A history of Interactive Fiction in Spanish, starting from the commercial works of Dinamic in 1984.

Game Design

Make IF Fast, J. Robinson Wheeler.
A slight revision of an article submitted to About.com, about creating IF starting from a transcript of game-play.

Laying Out Geography for IF, Emily Short.
A discussion of how to lay out an easily-understood map and how to pace the player's progress through the geography. [Draft version available online.]

IF and Specific Genres

2 Dada Angels, Rybread Celsius.
Rybread's perspective on his unique approach to IF creation.

Introduction to Choose Your Own Adventure, Philipp Lenssen.
Some techniques of writing effectively in the CYOA form.

Setting Development for Historical IF, Peter Nepstad.
Nepstad offers his advice on how to research a specific real-life setting for historically-accurate interactive fiction.

The Parser at the Threshhold: Lovecraftian Horror in Interactive Fiction, Michael Gentry.
Michael Gentry discusses the techniques of structuring a story to present Lovecraftian horror effectively in IF.

IF and Science Fiction: A Genre Article, Maureen Mason.
Maureen Mason discusses how the demands of IF fit the requirements and possibilities of the science fiction genre.

Description

Writing Descriptive Prose in IF, Stephen Granade.
Using samples from an invented game, Stephen Granade teaches some techniques for guiding the player's attention through descriptive prose.

Mapping the Tale: Scene Description in IF, J. Robinson Wheeler.
J. Robinson Wheeler analyzes room descriptions from a variety of sources, discussing what makes them effective and evocative (or the reverse).

Description as a reflection of the PC's Identity, Paul O'Brian.
Paul O'Brian looks at how the descriptions of rooms and objects indicate a personality for the player character.

World Modeling

Crimes against Mimesis, Roger Giner-Sorolla.
Reprint of Roger Giner-Sorolla's classic rec.arts.int-fiction essay on world modeling in interactive fiction (and its most common flaws).

Surrealism and Magic, JD Berry.

Simulationism, Sean Barrett.
Discusses some of the common simulation problems and goals for the world model of an IF game.

Puzzles and Plot Structure

The Narrative and Crossword Get Friendly -- on The Use and Deployment of Puzzles, Jon Ingold.
Discusses puzzles from two angles: the skills used by a player to solve them, and the tools available to the author to create them. Also talks about methods of re-educating the player to think in the terms required to solve the game.

Personality and Puzzleless IF, Duncan Stevens.
A revision of Duncan Stevens' article for About.com about how the personality and drives of the player character can provide motivation in a story, in the absence of a system of puzzles.

Pacing in Interactive Fiction, Brendan Barnwell.
Brendan Barnwell discusses how the quantity of game text, and the ways in which it is doled out to the player, affect the player's experience and involvement.

Non-Player Characters

NPC Roles and Types, Jim Fisher.
A brief but cogent article about the different roles that an NPC can play within a work of IF, and the different implementation requirements that attach to each of these. Reprinted portion of a longer Onyx Ring article.

NPC Action Scripting, Brent VanFossen.
Discussion of how an NPC can be programmed to behave actively in his model world.

NPC Dialogue Writing, Robb Sherwin.
Discusses how effective dialogue may be written for interactive fiction protagonists and NPCs.

Polish and Presentation

Developing Hints for IF, Lucian Smith.

Translating IF, Gunther Schmidl and Vika Zafrin.

Multimedia IF, Neil K. Guy.

Taxonomy of User Interfaces, L. Ross Raszewski.
An exploration of the ways in which IF has sometimes differed from the standard status-bar-and-text-window representation, and some of the options afforded by variation.

Introduction, Dennis Jerz.

Toward a Theory of Interactive Fiction, Nick Montfort.
Printing of Nick Montfort's article, establishing some basic terminology and definitions for the effective discussion of IF. [Read online]

Experiments of Form, Sean Barrett.
A discussion of some standard expectations about the boundaries of interactive fiction, and how they have been broken in the past (or might be broken in the future). Asks which of these expectations are inherent aspects of the medium, and which are simply variations that have not yet been attempted.

Discussion of Janet Murray and IF, Mark Silcox.
Mark Silcox addresses the theories of Janet Murray and comments on how they apply to interactive fiction.

Object Relations, Graham Nelson.
A meditation of sorts on the eloquence of objects, and their ability to shape an IF world.

Repeating Text in IF, Jason Dyer.
A look at situations in IF in which text is repeated, and solutions to the problems posed thereby.

Role-playing Elements in Interactive Fiction, Magnus Olsson.
A discussion of how the second-person narrative structure of IF derives from its role-playing aspects.

The Influence of Genre on Puzzle Formulation, Neil Yorke-Smith.
Discusses from an abstract perspective how the demands of different genres shape the puzzle possibilities for a given game.

IF as Propaganda, Duncan Stevens.
Looks at how IF works (or could work) to persuade and convert, as well as to challenge or tell stories.

Last update May 12, 2003.