Creative-Warm Up: Art Exercise

• Follow the directions on page 145. Supplies will be provided.
• In pairs, discuss the impact of visual changes on your perception of a book.

Discussion: Twine Threads

• What did you learn from your own writing?
• How did your peers use Twine differently?
• How did working in Twine change your writing?

Reading Out of Order: Building Stories

• What is sequential art?
• The space between: considering the gutter
• The tension of images and text

Exercise: Follow the Character

With your small group, choose a character to “follow” through Building Stories. Choose several pieces of Building Stories and try to place them in order by time. Draw a timeline charting the evolution of the character. Make sure to consider:

• Visual evolution (clothing, expression, aging)
• Contextual evolution (situations, environments, relationships)
• Narrative evolution (major events, turning points, character arcs)

Consider using markers to color code your timeline. Make sure to write all group member’s names on your timeline and hand it in at the end of class.

Take-home Discussion

Log on and complete this week’s two exercises:

• Week Five: This is Not a Book
• Week Five: Dissect a Page

Creative Warm-up: This is Not a Book

• Follow the directions on page 19.
• If you end up with something you cannot do under the constraints of the classroom, try flipping 5 pages in the other direction.
• Share the results of your “choice” with a partner.

Discussion: Nonlinear Storytelling, Meaningful Choice, and Player/Character Motivation

• Considering Emily Short’s Bee
• Play: Depression Quest
• Exercise: Choose Your Ending

In-Class: Building Your Twine Story

1. Adding the framework

• Never remove or change the “Start” passage.
• Include the “StoryTitle” and “StoryAuthor” passages
• Add a passage called CSS with the tag “stylesheet
• Pick an export format

2. Linking passages and adding elements

• Add a link: [[text you display|PassageTitle]]
• Add an image (stored in same folder): [img[sampleimage.gif]]
• Embed another passage: <<display ‘PassageTitle’>>

3. Playing with your stylesheet

• Change the display of links:

a { text-decoration: none !important }
a.internalLink { color: green !important }
a.internalLink:hover { color: white !important;

• Change how passages are displayed:

.passage { width: 500px !important }

.passage {color: purple }

Overall Stylesheets for Inspiration

4. Working with Conditionals

<<silently>>
<<set $metking = “no”>>
<<endsilently>>

<<if $metking == “no”>>The king barely nods at you in greeting.
<<set $metking = “yes”>><<else>>The king ignores you.<<endif>>

5. Going further: Twine scripting

Project Turn-in and Peer Review

Join the “Project One: Twine Storytelling” group during today’s class. When your project is ready (by midnight, Tuesday, September 24th), post a new forum topic with your work’s title. Link to your work.

By our next in-person class meeting (October 1st), read and respond to each of your peer’s Twine projects. This virtual feedback substitutes for our class meeting. Remember to be constructive and thoughtful: highlight moments where you were surprised, engaged, impressed by a choice in language or sensory detail, or intrigued by a response to your progression.

For October 1st

Start reading Chris Ware’s Building Stories. Aim to read about 1/3-1/2 of the contents, chosen however you’d like. Remember to bring This is Not a Book and Building Stories with you to class.

Warm-up: Communication

• Follow the directions and fill pages 49-50 of This is Not a Book.
• Pass your book to the person to your right and back again
• Repeat at least four times with your correspondent

Critique and Discussion: Exercises in Style

• Game narratives and book narratives
• Impositional versus Expressive Narratives
• Oulipo: writing under constraint

Making Things with Twine

• Creative Writing Exercise: Telling a Story
• Play: Porpentine’s Howling Dogs
• Play: Ryan Casey’s Twine Tutorial
• Anna Anthropy – Twine Tutorial
• In-class: Twine Basics

Text/Hypertext Project: A Personal Twine Story (Due September 24th)

For your first project, we’ll be working in Twine to share a personal story. Start with your memory, but don’t feel limited by it: use your experiences as a starting point for shaping the narrative. On this first assignment, stick to realism or at most magical realism, and focus on your voice and using Twine as a medium for communication. Keep in mind what you want your player to take away from the work.

• Use links effectively. Consider both the text used to link to the next passage and the organization of your content. Remember to watch your structure and make sure it can be navigated in a way that enhances each passage’s content.
• Write meaningful passages. Each passage should serve a clear purpose and demonstrate your style, whether you are working with minimalism or relying heavily on metaphor. Your story should contain approximately 15-20 passages.
• Plan a clear beginning and end. Your story should be a complete short story: it can have two or three possible endpoints, but it should clearly come to a conclusion. Make sure the passages are linked to provide the player with a satisfactory ending.
• Respond to reader/player choices. Depending on the needs of your story, use a combination of simulated loops, if/then statements, and other Twine conditionals or variables. At least five passages need to demonstrate meaningful incorporation of responses to conditions–use Dan Cox’s guide for reference.
• Enhance your Twine interface. Use CSS, images, sound files, or JavaScript to customize your Twine project appropriately. Make at least three meaningful changes to the core interface. Consult Porpentine’s Twine Resources for reference.

Your Twine story needs to be hosted and accessible to your classmates for peer review. One easy solution is to follow Dan Cox’s instructions to use Google Drive. If you don’t want the work to be public, you can restrict access only to those who have the link. However, if you want to publish your project, you can share it on TwineHub — currently, via email. (This can be a great way to have a public portfolio piece.)

Take-home Discussion

Log on and complete this week’s two exercises:

• Week Two: This is Not a Book
• Week Two: Playing “Bee”

All discussion requirements will be forum posts in the class group, which is restricted to access by members of the class.

We’ll be using this class as a hub for the week. Today, we’ll be getting to know each other and the course and laying the foundation for a creative class. We will:

• Review the syllabus and class texts
• Register for accounts on the site
• Complete a first creative writing activity

Before next week, read:

• Lamott, Bird by Bird.

  Getting Started 3-15.

• Queneau, Exercises in Style.

  Introduction, Metaphorically, Dream, Narrative, Official Letter, Passive, Exclamations, Comedy, Sonnet, Unexpected, Science Fiction, Cyberpunk.

You should have create an account on the site in-class. Log on and complete this week’s two exercises:

• Week One: This is Not a Book
• Week One: Exercises in Style

All discussion requirements will be forum posts in the class group, which is restricted to access by members of the class. Feel free to create other groups and experiment with the class site as you like.