An Online Authoring Tool for Interactive Fiction

Abstract

Interactive fiction is a part of digital literature that promotes the active role of the reader in the reading process of an electronic book (e-book). For this purpose, multimedia resources are included within the content of the e-book, with which the reader has to interact. As a consequence, a richer reading experience is promoted, according to which the reader must decide how to continue the story he/she is reading, and, in turn, these decisions condition the future course of the story. However, the main problem faced by writers of interactive fiction is the lack of editors that make it easier for them, who are not necessarily experts in interactive content design, to use these strategies in the contents of their e-books, and which in turn offer them enough narrative flexibility. For this purpose, we have developed IFDBMaker, an interactive fiction authoring tool oriented to writers with no prior knowledge in digital content production. This tool is equipped with a web-based interface and lets non-technical writers use sophisticated narrative resources while authoring interactive fiction e-books with the sole support of a simple web browser.