Writing IF
Writing IF
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Once students have read some interactive fiction, they often want to try writing it. Now, since the release of Inform 7, they can, to a much more important degree than ever before. Until the spring of 2006, software tools for writing IF fell into two principal categories, programming languages and easy development systems. Programming languages, such as Inform 6 and TADS (The Adventure Development System), offer lots of important advantages. They cost nothing, work on all operating systems, and enable the writer to produce virtually any desirable interactive effect. Just as important, they let the writer create and de-bug his or her work with great efficiency. Especially in the case of Inform, these languages are extraordinarily well documented. With enough time and determination, an intelligent, computer-savvy adult can gain a working knowledge of Inform, even without prior programming experience. Most important contemporary works of interactive fiction are made with programming languages. However, programming languages have traditionally offered a real learning challenge, one that is far beyond the capacities of most teenagers, who, contrary to the popular myth, are not at all knowledgeable about computers. That’s where easy development systems come in, especially a relatively new one and very effective one called Adrift Generator. Adrift costs money, seventeen dollars (U.S.) per registered copy, works only on Windows, and cannot produce some of the interactive effects that programming languages can. In order to get many of the more complex effects that Adrift can produce, the author often has to work harder and longer than he or she would in Inform or TADS. But Adrift is very easy to use, without much prior knowledge. Within an hour, a student can have a rudimentary story working, with some interactivity and automatic on-screen mapping. With much more work, a student can produce a creditable story. Adrift also offers easy ways to incorporate sound and graphics into a story. In 2006, the creator of Inform, Graham Nelson, introduced Inform 7, a revolutionary new tool for writing IF that has important educational implications. With Inform 7, the author of a story describes his or her work in relatively natural English sentences, such as "A-221 is a room," or "Jeff is a man in A-221." Inform 7 recognizes only a small subset of normal English sentences, and so students find it more difficult, at first, than Adrift. Unlike Adrift, Inform 7, in its present form (as of August 2006) does not allow for sound and graphics; but, otherwise, the new Inform offers all the advantages of an IF programming language, for both Windows and MAC OS, in a package that students can use with relatively little instruction. Further, because it takes the form of natural English sentences, Inform 7 can help students to improve the clarity of their writing. If it is to compile into a usable story, a student's writing, or "source code," must be "clear" to the very literal Inform 7 system. If the student fails to produce code that the system can use, Inform 7 tries to point out the source of the problem, and to suggest possible revisions. Eventually, with a bit of persistence and perhaps some help from a teacher, student authors can earn the satisfaction of seeing their writing compile into a real interactive story. In addition, the creation of Inform 7 source code gives students practice in description, narration, and exposition, three of the important "modes of discourse" that young writers often seek to master. When such writers are detailing the sights and sounds of particular locations and objects in interactive stories, they are practicing the descriptive "mode." When they add characters and events, the writers are practicing narration. And the source code itself, taken as a whole, serves, for the learner, as an accessible and interesting form of exposition, since the code consists of a detailed "how to" essay, addressed to the computer that will present the story to a reader. This link leads to a series of examples illustrating the development of an Inform 7 story through the modes of description, narration, and exposition. Adrift is available on the Web at http://www.adrift.org.uk/. You can learn much more about Inform at http://www.inform-fiction.org/. There’s lots of TADS information at http://www.tads.org/. A student handout on Adrift is available, using this link. A similar handout for Inform 7 is available here.
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