Shining Moon Episode 11: Interactive Fiction

Hello, and welcome to Shining Moon: A Speculative Fiction Podcast, Episode 11. Today we’ll continue our series by asking what it takes to write interactive fiction and visual novels. We’ll talk plotting, choices, lack of choices, and more.

 My guests this week are Stewart C. Baker, Alexei Collier, Tina Connolly, and Stephen Granade.

Tina  Connolly is at tinaconnolly.com
Alexei Collier is at alexeicollier.com. 

Stephen Granade is at  sgranade.itch.io.

"Don't tell me that the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." -- Anton Chekov

Piano music for closure

Thank you for listening to Shining Moon! You can reach the host, Deborah L. Davitt, at the following social media platforms:

www.facebook.com/deborah.davitt.3

Bluesky: @deborahldavitt.bsky.social

www.deborahldavitt.com

Transcript

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hello and welcome to Shining Moon, a speculative fiction podcast episode 11. I'm your host, Deborah L. Davitt. Today we'll continue our series by asking what it takes to write interactive fiction and visual novels. We'll talk plotting, choices, lack of choices, and more. My guests this week are Stuart C. Baker, Alexi Collier, Tina Connolly, and Stephen Granade. I will never be able to say that the right way.

Stephen Granade:
I was here to trip you up

Deborah L. Davitt:
Stephen Granade.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I...I...I...possibly. Either that or I can manage to trip over my own tongue, which is also a possibility. Let's start with some introductions. Stewart C. Baker is an academic librarian and author of speculative fiction and poetry, along with the occasional piece of interactive fiction. His fiction has appeared in Nature, Lightspeed, and Flash Fiction Online, among other places. Stuart was born in England, has lived in South Carolina, Japan, and California, and now lives within the traditional homelands of the Lukiamuti... band of Kalapua in the Western Oregon along with his family. Although if anyone asks, he'll usually say that he's from the internet. Hello Stewart, and thank you for being on.

Stewart Baker:
Hello, thank you for having me, and it is true, I am often from the internet, including right now.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Alexei Collier is a skeleton with delusions of grandeur, imagining himself to be a neurodivergent and disabled human who writes fantasies inspired by science and science fiction, inspired by folklore. Alexei grew up in sunny Southern California, but powerful forces flung him deep into the heart of the Midwest, where he now lives across the street from Chicago with his wife and their cat. His short fiction has appeared in daily science fiction, diabolical plots and worlds of possibility among others. You can find out more about Alexi at his oft-neglected website, alexicollier.com. Hi, Alexi! It's wonderful to have you on the show.

Alexei Collier:
Yeah, it's great to be here. Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt:
will now move to Tina Connolly, whose books include the Iron Skin and Seriously Wicked series from Tor and the collection On the Eyeball Floor from Fairwood Press. Her interactive fiction includes the Choose Your Own Adventure Book Glitter Pony Farm and a number of games on Story Loom, including Fairy Tale Thunderdome, co-written with S. L. Huang. She has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. She co-hosts Escape Pod, runs Toasted Cake, and you can find her at TinaConnolly.com. I don't know how she has time to be here, but I am really glad that she is. Hello, Tina, welcome.

tina connolly (she/her):
Thank you so much for having me.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Steven Grenade is a writer, editor, and XYZZY awarded game designer whose works have appeared in Escape Pod, Baffling Magazine, and the late Lamented sub-Q. They co-edit Small Wonders, a sci-fi fantasy magazine for flash fiction and poetry, direct the science track for Dragon Con, and organize the interactive fiction competition for 15 years. Hello, Steven. Thank you for joining us.

Stephen Granade:
Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All right, we are gonna jump straight into the questions. I'm gonna start with, how do you wind up writing interactive fiction? I've tried my hand at it a couple of times, using Twine for the most part. And Twine is a program that allows you to see all the steps and the connective tissue between the steps and so on and so forth. But how do you wind up plotting something out that is going to be so extravagantly interconnected and really twined? I'll start with Stewart, how do you start an interactive project?

Stewart Baker:
That's a great question. A lot of the times for me, it actually depends on what I want to write it in. So in addition to Twine, there are a ton of authoring tools out there for interactive fiction, like Ink, for example, which is another text-based one. There's many, what you call, parser-based, if you've ever played things like Zork or the old Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game. Those are games where you type like north, west, south to go in a certain direction, inventory, to see your inventory and stuff like that. So I think, at least for me, a lot of the time, I'm thinking not just how am I gonna write the story, but what platform I wanna write it in, and that sort of informs a lot of choices.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, that's very fair. And yeah, I find that the way I think about a story is very much dictated by where it's going to be when I am done with it. And, and, yeah, it just is.

tina connolly (she/her):
Yeah, well, I was just going to agree with Stewart because I think thinking about the platform you're doing it on is in fact one of the driving forces of what shapes it, which is part of what I think is so interesting about writing interactive fiction. My main two examples of writing interactive fiction at this point have been the games I've been doing on Story Loom, and then I've written a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and I'm in the process of writing another one for them. So, and those are kind of, you know, two different styles of what you're looking at. I think that one of the things that I know I've talked about with Stewart in the past is the difference between if you're looking for a game to have replayability versus one to maybe go through one time or... have a main journey that you go to. So I think that there is, that is one of the main things that kind of informs when you're trying to structure it and think about how it should go. I know when we're looking at the Choose Your Own Adventure books, for example, those are often eagerly grabbed up by readers who might be kind of reluctant readers in other areas.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
So one of the things often you're doing with the Choose Your Own Adventures is trying to make a kid, you know, excited to read through a path to find out where it's going. and maybe not end on page one with rocks fall, everyone dies, but encourage them to read on a little first before rocks fall and everyone dies.

Stewart Baker:
gonna say that was exactly no

Deborah L. Davitt:
I will say that I expected.
 
tina connolly (she/her):
Hehehehe

Stewart Baker:
sorry so that was exactly my experience with Chooser and Adventure was rocks fall and everyone dies

tina connolly (she/her):
Everyone dies.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, my son, I expected him to be as eager about choose your own adventure books as I was as a kid. But when I introduced him to him, he actually froze up in fear.

tina connolly (she/her):
Oh, yes.

Deborah L. Davitt:
The possibility of choices having impact and influence just repelled him. So I was just like, okay, well, we'll back off from that. I can't help how your brain is structured.

tina connolly (she/her):
Oh yeah!

Deborah L. Davitt:
That is all, that is all, that is all, I have to respect it.

tina connolly (she/her):
See, I can-

Deborah L. Davitt:
I can't try to just force something on you.

tina connolly (she/her):
Right. No, I can see that because I think... So my daughter's been playing some of my games and also I've been co-writing some games with Essel Huang on the site and they have a lovely story, Baking for the Wind, that's basically a choose your own adventure. I mean, not that, an interactive great British Bake Off type of show. And anyway,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
but my daughter will often come to me and be like... I don't know what to choose next because what if it's wrong? And I'm like,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

tina connolly (she/her):
I know, honey, I feel the same way. But what I actually liked about the Choose Your Own Adventure books is that you can put your finger between the pages. And

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

tina connolly (she/her):
then if you're wrong, you can go right back and you can make everything OK.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I did the same thing, yes. Steven, how do you get started with an interactive fiction? How do you have the idea and then how do you wind up plotting it out?

Stephen Granade:
For me, I definitely want to nod in agreement with what Stewart and Tina said, that platform and the mechanics have a lot to do with it. So I got my start in the parser-based text adventure world, which is really strong at modeling worlds and states. So a lot of times I would start with, what would happen if you were a baby? and you had a limited range of things you can do. Like you can hold a thing in each hand, you can pull up, you can't walk places for a parser-based game because, you know, it models that kind of world and really feeds into that. When it comes to like choice-based things where, like choose your own adventures, where you're like making choices and moving on, it's a question of, to me, What is interesting about the choices that you're providing and what is that doing for the story that makes it amenable to the story that I'm trying to tell? The choice of games game that I wrote, that's a choice-based game with stats behind it. So what makes for an interesting story that will be reflected in the way that the stats change? So really I kind of start with like, Why should this be an interactive story and not just like a short story or a novel? What is it about the mechanics of the interaction that matters?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes, absolutely. That is one of the things I want to come back to is why write something as a story as a or a game instead of a story and that's something I'm going to come back to a little bit later on. I'm going to move to Alexi now and because I know that you tend to write more visual novels so I'm not sure that asking you a question about uh How do you choose to plot something that has multiple choices is relevant to you. Do you write anything that has choices or are used solely

Alexei Collier:
Yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
visual

Alexei Collier:
oh

Deborah L. Davitt:
novel?

Alexei Collier:
yeah, yeah. No, two of my, oh three now, I've just started a new game, Majestery

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
and Magic that has like kind of RPG elements and lots of choices and stuff. And yeah, I think I'm gonna end up echoing what a lot of other people said, which is you have to look at the mechanics you're working with and okay, what is it I want to do that you can't do in a linear narrative? And... For instance, this new story, Magestria and Magic, that I just started, one of the things I really wanted to do was give the player character choices. Like, you pick your class and appearance and everything. And

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
yeah, you can't do that in a... I mean, I guess you could do that in I Can Choose Your Own Adventure, but I don't know how you would do it. But yeah, plot-wise, I tend to, so far... I'm kind of the newbie here, because I started with Story Loom, but I didn't have... Aside from game mastering role-playing games, which is a very different

Deborah L. Davitt:
yes.

Alexei Collier:
thing, in which I did not do what I'm about to say, I do kind of outline things. Like, you know, I have like a plot arc and like a three- or... I actually tend to favor four-act structure.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
And then, you know, I'll kind of chapter about like, okay, how can this branch or whatever? So, yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I find that when I'm writing a Twine story in particular, I am more in line with my pantsing background than my plotting background because whenever I find some place that it can diverge, that's the natural place to diverge and then I have a complete split in the story and now it's going to go down multiple levels this way and then it's can I get it back around to one of the endings or is this going to be an ending all by itself or something like that? So I'm a little bit different in that regard. I'm gonna stick with Alexei here for the moment and say, do you think of it more of a story or as a game? Since you've got that RPG background, much like I do with GMing using D&D and other systems, do you think of it as a story or a game foremost when you're writing interactive fiction?

Alexei Collier:
Well, I mean, yeah, that's a really good question. Again, it kind of depends on the individual. I think it's one of those, yeah, case-by-case basis situations. I did a little one chapter thing called Apocalypse Quiz, which is an adaptation of a flash story I wrote that I said, hey, this would make her a really, it was like a sort of, you know, Listic all story and I said I could turn this into a quiz and so that I was thinking obviously is much more like a game But there's


Alexei Collier:
still a central, you know narrative that's being told there since it was adapted from a story I Feel like for my first Red and Wolf my first story. I kind of bounced between the two I it's a little rough because I didn't I was not my literally my first interactive fiction. So

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Alexei Collier:
and then obviously my visual novel death and only under I was It was straightforward, it's story. And, but I think I'm feeling a little bit more like it's a game on my newest one. Um, so yeah, I really think it's a case by case thing.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All right, Stewart, would you agree with that? Is it a case by case thing for you? Or do you settle down at the beginning of a project and say this one is definitively a game versus a story?

Stewart Baker:
Um... Yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Or do you

Stewart Baker:
no.

Deborah L. Davitt:
have this sort of superposition over the top of it going, yes, it's a game.

Stewart Baker:
Yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes, it's a story. It's a game. It's

Stewart Baker:
I

Deborah L. Davitt:
a story.

Stewart Baker:
kind of laughed when Alexi started talking because I was like, yeah. Is this an exclusive or an inclusive or situation here? Like, sure,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Stewart Baker:
it's a story or a game.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha!

Stewart Baker:
Yeah, that's like, some of them definitely are more game-like. So like, I've also adapted some of my short stories. Well, one of my short stories in Twine.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
And in that case, what Twine does for listeners who aren't familiar with it, is you get like a website kind of set up, right? And you can click links to change things, advance the story, or what have you. And in this case, I didn't have like, you know, you make a choice. There were no choices. It was literally just an interactive adaptation of a piece of short fiction. And so different words would be highlighted and you can click on them to sort of focus in on different elements of the story kind of thing. But then most of my other interactive fiction is a lot more game-like. Even I think, well, and for choice of games where I have a stupidly big... interactive novel coming out that I co-wrote with James Beeman. That one does have like stats like Stephen mentioned earlier, but I think even so it feels almost more story-like to me just because so much of the narrative that's driving it is the narrative, right? Like the choices feed into that narrative. But it's still mostly you participating in the narrative as a reader, if that makes sense,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
versus the more game-like ones, where I feel like have, at least for me, more of an element of exploration or discovery kind of thing.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Interesting. Tina, story or game? Or again, are you in superposition to yourself?

tina connolly (she/her):
Superposition. I do think, yeah, so definitely there's this, the interactive element gives a different process to all of them than say prose writing. So like I can say that, yes, this is categorically, there are some things I do differently in this that I do in like fiction writing, and again, that I do in playwriting, which is its own thing altogether again. And it's been really neat to learn what pieces work. well in which places, what you can get away with in which places and what you can't, is fascinating to me. I think that, you know, one of my early stories I wrote on Story Loom, I wanted to write a really cozy rom-com, and I was writing it for me at the time as something that would not stress me out like my daughter when I had to make choices. So most of the choices are things like, you know, which kind of, you know... terrible witty banter do you want to go with in this scenario? And either one will be okay, you will still get the girl, but you know, you have different paths that you take to get there. And that was a choice I made specifically because I was like, how can I make this not stressful?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah

tina connolly (she/her):
So I think there's a big, there's, you know, there's such a variety. And I was going to say, Stewart has a game, Five Plus One Equals You on Story Loom,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

tina connolly (she/her):
which is, yeah, which is really pushing the boundaries of what you can do with the coding available on StoryLum for making it game-like where you can really, it feels like the sort of, you can explore any of these rooms and see what clues you can find. And Alexei mentioned his, the Apocalypse quiz one, which I also, you know, that was a really fun way to tell a story because it felt like one of the, the BuzzFeed quizzes that you can pick. Yes, no, you know, what's the right answer here? And I don't know, it's so fun to play with all the, the forum and see what you can do with it.

Deborah L. Davitt:
absolutely indeed, I'm gonna come back to five plus one because that one stressed me out so much that I was like, okay, I have to give myself a little bit of a break from this, I promise at some point I will finish it Stewart. It's just that the first chapter was just like, this is going to get under my skin, I know that it's horror, it's going to get under my skin and I'm not going to sleep. So. Steven, I'm gonna move on to a different question with you. When do you why or when if you use it, do you use the so called magicians force in writing games where a choice isn't a choice at all but leads to the same conclusion rather regardless of the decision made? Do you ever do that or do not?

Stephen Granade:
I mean, the sound that you hear is my hobby horse riding up that I'm about to climb on top of, because

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha

Stephen Granade:
I think the sort of instinctive reaction that folks have when you're talking about choices is for a choice to matter, it has to have a quote unquote effect on the story. Otherwise it's fake and it doesn't matter. And that was certainly how we started out with. uh, like choose your own adventure books Like if you go back to the cave of time the first one it just branches and branches

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Granade:
and branches and branches and branches so that every choice makes a bifurcation, uh but

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm. Those are difficult to do.

Stephen Granade:
Well, it becomes very shallow and unmanageable very fast, um,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stephen Granade:
so Especially when you talk about doing this on a computer where you can keep track of what people have done and chosen in the past uh that's an opportunity to have people make choices that quote-unquote don't matter, by which we mean it doesn't change the plot that will get summarized on Wikipedia, but changes

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Granade:
the effect of the journey that you're going through. And

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stephen Granade:
even and even if it doesn't do that, uh there's a really good essay uh by the narrative designer Kat Manning uh on expressive choices. That is

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stephen Granade:
You're making a choice and you're expressing something, even though it is not reflected in what happens in the story. Like it is a choice that lets you express your own values and opinions, you know, why are you taking this action that you're taking? Or to determine what kind of person that you are inhabiting in the story world. Goes all the way back to like Telltale Games as whole, you know, so and so will remember that because you made a choice.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Stephen Granade:
And that's a really powerful way of saying, you did something and people have noticed and it may get reflected back to you later on and people will react

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stephen Granade:
to you in the way that you have made these choices, even if the Wikipedia level plot hasn't changed.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I like that, thank you. Tina, I was thinking specifically of a couple of moments in a fairytale Thunderdome when I wrote that question.

tina connolly (she/her):
Mm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Do you find these to be expressive choices or do you find them to be just... You go ahead and tell me.

tina connolly (she/her):
I just wanted to agree so much with what Stephen was saying, because, and this is something that's certainly been a learning journey for me as I wrote my first game last year and learned as I went along. But I was going to really ditto what Stephen said, that sometimes if you do have to make a player, you know what has to happen. Unfortunately, this is the next step in the plot. then I try to find some other way to make that choice meaningful. Like, you know, how do you, like Stephen was saying, how do you feel about that choice? Are you happy about this? Are you mad about it? I did, yeah, I did some, I am thinking now, Fairy Tale Thunderdome, which is a game in which there's a bunch of fairy tale characters that have go on quests to save the kingdom. But there are definitely parts in there where... I remember I was like, okay, I need X thing to happen next. And if the character doesn't do it, doesn't choose to do it willingly, well, then they're gonna be consequences. So

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehe

tina connolly (she/her):
it's like, then the character might be backed into having to do that after all, but maybe something pretty bad has happened to that character in the process of refusing to do the right thing or the brave thing in that case. So that was a choice I made a few times to go down that route. SL Huang and I brainstormed about this a lot because we were writing that game together. And

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

tina connolly (she/her):
yeah, another one that we came up with doing is that they came up with this one was like, you know, you can choose to, I will do a thing or I will make someone else do the thing, which is kind of like when you're

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hmm

tina connolly (she/her):
going trick or treating and you're like, am I going to ring the doorbell or am I going to make you ring the doorbell? And either way, the doorbell is getting rung and you're getting the candy, but you know, you could decide how you feel about it in the moment.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Stewart, when you are writing, do you use the magician's force or do you consider it an expressive choice?

Stewart Baker:
Uh, both sometimes.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Haha

Stewart Baker:
So normally, like, if I'm writing in Twine or something, probably not so much. With Story Loom, one of the things was that the deadlines for that were pretty intense when they first started doing it. So it was like five chapters a month. So there were certainly times where I was like, ah, something should happen here. dot dot, eh, random choice, some words, next.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha

tina connolly (she/her):
Hahaha

Stewart Baker:
Probably not best practice. But yeah, generally speaking, I think, I also like to subvert things a lot. I'm just naturally subversive. So some of 5 + 1 = You, for example, that horror one, which actually ends up being just really, really meta-fictional.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, I'll come back to it. I promise I will.

Stewart Baker:
A lot of that game actually is about the agency. Player agency

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
is a thing that people like to talk about a lot. And in that one, it's a question of player agency versus character agency and playing with how you play. console RPG and you're walking in some cool scenery and there's this really cool thing far off to the right and you're like I'm gonna go over there. Oh, no, your path is blocked by like two pebbles. Guess you're not going over there

Deborah L. Davitt:
YEAH!

Stewart Baker:
So it's that sort of funneling players in a way that they feel like they have agency. I think Like like your choices should at least feel like they matter to some degree

Deborah L. Davitt:
They should, yes.

Stewart Baker:
But I think not in a super transparent way because that's irritating I don't know. Yeah. I like the idea of expressive choices though, like designing your character, right? In Skyrim or something. That has no effect

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
on the game, but it helps engage you as a player with this person you've poured your time into. You know.

Deborah L. Davitt:
to sort of pursue the rabbit hole here of player agency. I'm not deliberately skipping over Alexei to answer the same question that everybody's already answered. I'm going to ask all of you the same question. I find that in some of the more modern games, you are presupposed to be a specific person in the narrative. And a lot of the older style of games, you were basically a floating ball and you could be whatever you wanted to be. speak to me about what is the value of being a specific person of a specific, in a specific place, in a specific time to a narrative that somebody might not be able to escape from and go, but that's not what I wanted to be. So I'm gonna start with Alexei, since I haven't had a chance to talk to you in a bit, and we'll ask you.

Alexei Collier:
Well, if I understand the question correctly, I think I would point to the pros narratives where you are typically inside the head of a character and if you don't like that character, I guess maybe you stop reading? I don't know. I actually, I don't know if this is a particularly popular view, but actually I would say generally prefer games that have that make specific choices about the character, or at the very least you can make specific choices about what type

Deborah L. Davitt:
That

Alexei Collier:
of character

Deborah L. Davitt:
is the

Alexei Collier:
you

Deborah L. Davitt:
question

Alexei Collier:
can be.

Deborah L. Davitt:
that I was gonna follow up with, is being allowed to make choices

Alexei Collier:
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
that change that character. And sometimes I'm finding in the more modern games that you're not allowed to make choices that really change who that character is,

Alexei Collier:
Hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
who define that for you.

Alexei Collier:
Right. I would say that I actually, I like, unless I'm, you know, I find that character especially obnoxious for some reason, I don't have a strong preference between those two options. What I don't like is the blank slate character as much,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
because there's sort of nothing for me to connect to.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
And I have had that problem with games and trying some interactive fiction as well where I think choice of games a lot of times the character, the you character is supposed to be kind of a blank slate, which is, you know, doesn't quite work for me. Unfortunately, I don't know why. I'm a very character oriented writer, I guess maybe,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
and as a reader I also like really sort of, you know, it's all about, you know, whose head I'm inside of.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
I don't know if that answers your question.

Deborah L. Davitt:
No, it does, yes. It's a matter of opinion, and I'm throwing it out for discussion. And I'm gonna swing back around to Stewart at the top of my list of people here and ask you, you have some characters in your work that are very distinctive, very integral people. They are protagonists with a capital P. They are individuals. as opposed to people that you can develop yourself as you're working through the choices. Why make that choice as a writer?

Stewart Baker:
I wish I knew.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah

Stewart Baker:
I think that's, yeah. And I think that in some ways goes back to that sort of, is this a game or is it a story kind of question?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Stewart Baker:
I think there's many reasons to tell a story or write a game and I don't necessarily think any of them are better than the others.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
But to me, what I really like about telling stories and reading them, like Alexi said, is that opportunity to experience someone who isn't me in a way that's maybe not quite like being John Malkovich where I'm sliding down the magical slide to literally inhabit someone else's head. But it's that stereotypical like walk a mile in someone's shoes kind of thing.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stewart Baker:
I really like... storytelling as a way to better understand, I guess, the world around you. I'm not sure there really was a specific reason that I wrote, like Library of Worlds, for example, which has a named protagonist. And it's in the third person instead of like, you do this, you do that. You don't, that's not in there. It's the main character does the thing and you just get to choose it. I don't think there was a specific reason I wrote it that way, other than probably just watching too much isekai anime where there's very very clearly defined main characters who are quirky and weird.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, that's fair enough. Steven, do you find that you want to have very voicy interactive characters, or do you like to have that little bit more distance so that people invest themselves into the plot?

Stephen Granade:
I was kind of an early adopter of the, well, what if we had like a defined protagonist?

Stephen Granade:
Because


Stephen Granade:
when I got started in the 90s, like the whole idea in Tex Adventures was like, oh, it is an avatar for anyone and there is no personality. I think it eventually ended up being called the ageless, faceless, gender neutral, culturally ambiguous adventure person in Zork Grand Inquisitor. There's like... You're a blank slate that has no actual characteristics other than moving through this world and doing stuff. But the more definition that the protagonist has, I find it easier than to write to because they're going to have reactions to the world and interesting interactions and interesting relationships. And even if you let the player adjust those and help define those, having something more specific and defined lets you be a lot more specific about the kinds of things that you were writing. And I think even in an interactive space makes it, you get the benefit of the specifics invoking the general.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, that makes sense. And Tina, same question for you. Do you prefer to write in a specific persona, even in our interactive games, or do you prefer to have that step back and let people develop their own character?

tina connolly (she/her):
It's interesting because I think the more game writers I talk to, I think we're all really structurally, we're all interested in what can we do with structure. We're interested in pushing the limits. We're very creative. And everyone's

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
like, but what if we did it this way? And I feel like there's a lot of that here because I would say that definitely my instinct... is to create personas. And I think partly probably because I also like Alexi said, I'm a character writer and also I come from the theater. So I am like,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
oh, I could be, you know, this person and what would they like to do in this journey? And to me, that is fun in a game. In fairy tale Thunderdome, you know, Rapunzel wants revenge, for example. So whenever I'm writing a Rapunzel's character, you as the game player gets to choose. Well, am I going to take the ultimate revenge? Well, okay. What about now? What about now? Okay, but she did something that really pissed me off. So what about now? And that's just, that is a lot of fun to do. So

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

tina connolly (she/her):
that's, my answer is that's a lot of fun. But I also, you know, the more that I'm getting comfortable writing in this space and learning so much, it's been really neat to see what I can do from the opposite direction. And when I can give choices to build, you know, other types of characters and still have that work in the story, that's a really... interesting different challenge.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah it is.

tina connolly (she/her):
I'm kind of newer to, you know, a couple people have mentioned working with sort of like stats and variables, but I was playing one of Merck and Wolfmoor's games on Story Loom, Demons Are Us, and they were, you know, they were doing the sort of lit RPG thing where they were like letting you know, hey, you just got plus one and such, and you know, you've leveled up in, you know, scheming or... murder skills or whatever it was. And you can choose now. Do you want to go towards a side of good or the side of lawful neutral or whatever it is? I can't remember what the specific choices are, but

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
they are very clear about these are the things you can choose between. And that is something I want to figure out how to do too, because I think it's really no matter what kind of choices the game

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

tina connolly (she/her):
player makes.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, I was thinking specifically of Birdland by Brendan Patrick Hennessy, which I had recommended to me. And it was one of those stories where I was like, okay, I no matter what I do to say no to something, I keep winding up being funneled into an ending that I don't particularly want. And when you're when you're when you're when you're reading a story, at least for me, there's a little bit more of a It's not me. Even though I'm in somebody's head, I'm not necessarily, I'm not making choices. I'm not invested in the same way that I am in a choose your own adventure interactive fiction because in an interactive fiction, it is in some respects me because I'm still making the choices. So I find there's more resistance to me, or at least in me, to being funneled into a persona that has a specific end. So, yeah. That's just the reader talking to you. So it may or may not be valid. It's just

tina connolly (she/her):
No, see, I think that's so interesting because I do think that there's all so many different valid types of gameplay and what

Deborah L. Davitt:
one reader after all.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
and you know what speaks to you on each particular project.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All right, we're gonna swing to another question here. How would somebody start writing interactive fiction today? Are there markets for this sort of thing? What would you advise to someone who wanted to just dip their toes in and get started? And I'm gonna start with Stewart because I believe I've asked you that question myself before I started writing Twine. So.

Stewart Baker:
Well, the short answer is no.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha

Stewart Baker:
There are not really any markets. I used to edit one called Sub-Q, which was actually a professional paying market for interactive fiction that ran for about five years up until like, I don't know. anything between 2020 and 2022 is the same year for me, but it was somewhere in that space. That it was too expensive to keep going.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah,

Stewart Baker:
So

Deborah L. Davitt:
a lot of magazines

Stewart Baker:
I know,

Deborah L. Davitt:
are having that problem right now.

Stewart Baker:
right, at one point, strange horizons will theoretically accept things in HTML.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Stewart Baker:
And I know that Apex has run at least one interactive fiction, and in theory would presumably accept more. But that was when Jason Sizemore was running it. And it

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Stewart Baker:
may have been so confusing because the reason I know this is because he was trying to adapt it for EPUB. So he may have been like, well, that's never happening again.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha

Stewart Baker:
And that, I think,

Stephen Granade:
Which

Stewart Baker:
is,

Stephen Granade:
you can do, but it is so

Stewart Baker:
yeah,

Stephen Granade:
hard.

Stewart Baker:
that was what I said. I was like, Well, how do you like anchors in Word?

Deborah L. Davitt:
I tried to sit down and do this in Word at one point in time because I was trying to take a Twine game and I was trying to present it to someone who was

Stewart Baker:
Mm-hmm.

Deborah L. Davitt:
wanted to have something in Word for this.

Stewart Baker:
Right.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I'm just saying they're going, anchors are my friend

Stewart Baker:
Yep.

Deborah L. Davitt:
and yet I hate them so

Stewart Baker:
I've done

Deborah L. Davitt:
much.

Stewart Baker:
it. I've done it once. That was enough, right?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Stewart Baker:
Stephen, do you know any other places? I think you're probably a really good person to answer this question about market type things for interactive fiction.

Stephen Granade:
Yeah, unfortunately, my answer is going to echo you that I don't think there's a whole bunch of them. You know, places like Story Loom, Choice of Games, you know, you have both the possibility of pitching them and getting, you know, a contract to write one of their mainline games or pitching them and doing one of their hosted games, which has less money. like upfront, but has a very strong community of people who play a lot of those games and a monetary renumeration scheme that actually pays writers. But after that, it drops off really fast.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Stewart Baker:
But there's things like if comp, which you ran for a long time.

Stephen Granade:
Yes, so the interactive fiction competition, which has been going, oh my gosh, since 1995, is for interactive pieces that are two hours or less to play. And you actually can get cash prizes out of that. The big benefit that I saw coming out of that is that you get folks looking at your game and potentially giving you feedback, which in some ways outweighed the small amount of cash prizes that you could potentially win. That was certainly for me a training ground before I started running it, where I would put things out and go like, oh, that didn't work at all. And here are people telling me in exquisite detail why

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah

Stephen Granade:
it sucked so bad.

Deborah L. Davitt:
It's like fan fiction.

Stephen Granade:
But it was,

Stephen Granade:
yeah,

tina connolly (she/her):
Yay!

Stephen Granade:
but

Deborah L. Davitt:
It's

Stephen Granade:
it

Deborah L. Davitt:
a

Stephen Granade:
was

Deborah L. Davitt:
laboratory

Stephen Granade:
actually very.

Deborah L. Davitt:
for getting all the responses in the world and realizing,

Stephen Granade:
Yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
nope, that didn't work.

Stephen Granade:
but it was kind of a crash course in some of the lessons that otherwise I would have had to have learned much more slowly and painfully about what things can and can't work in this space, or if you're going to make them work require a fair number of backflips and a willing audience.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Tina, you are relatively new to writing interactive fiction. I'm gonna ask the question a little bit differently for you. How did you get started in it?

tina connolly (she/her):
Oh, that's a great question. Well, actually, I had been asked to blur but choose your own adventure book for a friend during, and it was kind of the tail end of the pandemic. And I have two small children and they were home for like a long time until

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

tina connolly (she/her):
we all got shots. So I'd been kind of despairing that I would ever write again, which obviously in retrospect, I was in a pandemic and I was homeschooling, but you know.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I was right there with you

tina connolly (she/her):
Right, right,

Deborah L. Davitt:
and

tina connolly (she/her):
you

Deborah L. Davitt:
I

tina connolly (she/her):
know

Deborah L. Davitt:
know

tina connolly (she/her):
the feeling.

Deborah L. Davitt:
exactly how you felt.

tina connolly (she/her):
So I read my friend's book and I thought, oh, choose your own adventure book. Like it ends every three pages. I bet I could hold three pages in my brain. So that was my friend Bart King who wrote Time Travel Inn, which is a very funny book. And he very kindly, you know, talked to me about how he got. got started doing that. And so I ended up pitching the Choose Your Own Adventure People some ideas, which is how I ended up writing Glitter Pony Farm, which was a lot of fun. And so then when the story Loom Gag came along, I felt like, oh, OK, I've actually done something like this, which was helpful for me to feel more comfortable sort of throwing my pitch in there. I will say I've also done. We're talking about markets for interactive fiction and yeah, stranger isons did used to at least try to take some of the

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah,

tina connolly (she/her):
experimental

Deborah L. Davitt:
I've

tina connolly (she/her):
things.

Deborah L. Davitt:
recently submitted them something.

tina connolly (she/her):
Oh, good.

Deborah L. Davitt:
It was not accepted, but they

tina connolly (she/her):
Okay.

Deborah L. Davitt:
definitely still accept

tina connolly (she/her):
They still

Deborah L. Davitt:
the

tina connolly (she/her):
look

Deborah L. Davitt:
submissions.

tina connolly (she/her):
at those, but I at least wrote one like interactive fiction that flash story that you just kind of read straight through and my friend Carolyn Yocum. has a brilliant one that ran on light speed called, Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station, Hours Since the Last Patient Death Zero. And it is technically written like an interactive fiction story, you know, go to A, go to B, or, you know, choose C or D, but you kind of just read it straight through. And part of the genius of the story is that, theoretically you have choices, but as we all know, there are no choices in health. health insurance and all the choices ended in bitter, bitter failure and tears.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I love that, I'm gonna have to look that one up.

tina connolly (she/her):
Oh, it's great.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Alexei, you said that you are also relatively new, so I'm gonna ask the same question that I asked Tina. How did you get started?

Alexei Collier:
Well, I found out about the story Luma opportunity and unlike Tina, I said, I have no experience with this, but I'm gonna try it anyway.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahaha

Alexei Collier:
No, I've been toying around with interactive fiction and RPG stuff since I was knee high to a butterfly or whatever and I wanted to, I was like, this seems like something, I knew what I needed as an impetus was an outside force. to sort of make me do it. And I was like, well, I'm gonna jump into the deep end here and sink or swim. And it turned out really well, actually. I came on a little bit later than Tina and Stewart, but not by much. And yeah, it's, you know, with the ups and downs of it being, you know, the platform still being in beta, it's been actually really great. So yeah, I would say, and I guess... The lesson here is, you know, don't, it's kind of that don't self-reject thing because I almost didn't

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Alexei Collier:
reach out for the position. And I think the reason I ended up coming in later is because I also didn't email the person back until much later than other people had followed up. So yeah, just, I guess, take the opportunity if you get it.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, absolutely, yes. I'm going to change topics now. We're gonna talk about your individual works, each one by one. I'm gonna start at the top with Stewart. What gave you the inspiration for Five Plus One Equals You, which is your horror title, which I swear, now that you've told me it's meta, I will finish reading. What gave you, what got you started on this? And just talk to me about it, please.

Stewart Baker:
Yeah, so the whole idea of 5 plus 1 equals u is that you, quote, unquote, wake in a dark room in a house. And you're trying to figure out who you are. You have no memory. The lights are off. You turn the lights on. The door is locked. You're in this locked bedroom. And so you sort of have to, in fact, in a very parser-based like. classic interactive fiction type way. You have to examine things. You

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
have to open things, search for things, move about the room. So that part was definitely inspired by those sorts of classic interactive fiction games.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
I mentioned that it's about players versus characters and that tension that exists there. And one of my favorite. games is like the Undertale series, which is a sort of subversion of Japanese RPGs from the 90s, like the Final Fantasy games. And the whole point in... this is very long and rambling, sorry. So the whole point in Undertale is that you don't have to kill the monsters, right?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
Which is... boggling.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I'm going to go to bed.

Stewart Baker:
But the sequel has this whole thing, which was called Delta Rune, has this whole thing where you build the vessel, which is your character, and you spend like five minutes clicking through options, you know, like in many more modern console RPGs where

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh

Stewart Baker:
you

Deborah L. Davitt:
yeah.

Stewart Baker:
can literally spend like an hour designing your character. And so you go through all this, and then the game's like, so this is the vessel. Too bad, none of that matters. And I was like, wow.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh.

Stewart Baker:
But in a way that ties it into the sort of thing that Toby Fox, who's the creator, often does with

Deborah L. Davitt:
Interesting.

Stewart Baker:
playing around with things you assume are just a normal part of the game. It's not part of the story and it turns out to actually be part of the story instead. So that was kind of, I think, where that sort of meta aspect came from. Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, like I said, I will get back to it. I absolutely promise.

Stewart Baker:
No worries.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Could you talk to me a bit about the design process for the library of worlds? How did you, for example, come to decide to make the player character non-binary? How did you come up with the entire world of the library? It's again, it's a fascinating concept and I want to know more. So talk to me.

Stewart Baker:
As you may know, I work in a library.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Stewart Baker:
Although not a public library, which is where this one is set. I don't think I could

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes.

Stewart Baker:
survive in a public library.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh, one more.

Stewart Baker:
Yeah, that one is more inspired by Isekai or like other world anime type stuff,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stewart Baker:
which are anime where the character usually dies at

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh.

Stewart Baker:
the very beginning, at the very beginning. Like literally, the first thing that happens is the character dies and then they are reborn in a fantasy world. So and then they, you can think of kind of like Jumanji, but not really. I'm just trying to think if there's any Western versions. It's like a portal fantasy kind of thing,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stewart Baker:
except usually the character dies at the beginning.

Deborah L. Davitt:
at the beginning as opposed to Narnia

Stewart Baker:
At the very

Deborah L. Davitt:
where

Stewart Baker:
beginning.

Deborah L. Davitt:
they all die at the end.

Stewart Baker:
That's

Deborah L. Davitt:
So,

Stewart Baker:
right, that's right. And it's

Deborah L. Davitt:
okay.

Stewart Baker:
a truck

Deborah L. Davitt:
Ha

Stewart Baker:
usually, not a train.

Deborah L. Davitt:
ha ha.

Stewart Baker:
Yeah, so this is kind of where that idea of all these other worlds that are sort of connected. And I was like, well, what better place for them to be connected than a library? And there's also, a nod to Terry Pratchett's Discworld in there, where all

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hell

Stewart Baker:
libraries

Deborah L. Davitt:
Space.

Stewart Baker:
across the multiverse exactly are connected by L space, where it's the weight of all these words and books and things that sort of distorts

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Stewart Baker:
reality, and skilled enough librarians can travel between them.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I love that.

Stewart Baker:
Yeah. As for the non-binary thing, that's kind of a funny question for me because my approach is almost the opposite when I sit down like Like, characters are often the first thing I think of.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
And for me now, I'm often to the point where I'm like, that just happens. Like, I'm very sure if my characters are male or, you know.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stewart Baker:
But if they are, I'm like, does this really need to be like a straight white man character though? Like, is there a specific reason? And if there's

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
not, I'm like, well, we're gonna change something then.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Interesting.

Stewart Baker:
Just because I think, for one thing, going back to that idea of writing people who aren't me, right?

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Stewart Baker:
I would be intensely bored if I was writing about myself.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, fair enough.

Stewart Baker:
And I think it's good for representation or whatever. I want there to be stories and games about people from all over, so I like to sort of push things as woke as possible, as it were.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All right, all those

Stewart Baker:
In

Deborah L. Davitt:
are

Stewart Baker:
a

Deborah L. Davitt:
fair things

Stewart Baker:
tongue-in-cheek

Deborah L. Davitt:
to say.

Stewart Baker:
kind of way.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All those are perfectly fair things to say. Again, I will be getting back to the Library of Worlds because I was spending more time on Alexei's visual novel and trying to get through it. So, but I will be getting back to it. Tina, I've played all the way through Fairy Tale Thunderdome Royals, but not

tina connolly (she/her):
Thank

Deborah L. Davitt:
as

tina connolly (she/her):
you.

Deborah L. Davitt:
companion story by SL Huang, which is Fairy Tale Thunderdome Woods. Could you talk a little bit about the decision to make some of the protagonists less sympathetic than others? Because, for example, Cinderella, as seen through the eyes of, say, Sleeping Beauty, is a very unsympathetic character. Was that a risk for you? Or did you find that just to be a good writing exercise?

tina connolly (she/her):
It's funny you ask that because I really like Cinderella. She's very stompy and she just likes to smash things. So I mean, that was a lot of fun to write. So yeah,

Deborah L. Davitt:
But yeah.

tina connolly (she/her):
so I don't know if I thought about it as risky at the time. I can see where the question comes from for sure. But in my head, I'm sure I was just like gleefully cackling like, oh, smash, stompy, smash.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I'm gonna go get some water.

tina connolly (she/her):
That story was fun to write because you do, as you noticed, you rotate through many different POVs as you're playing the story.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes, indeed.

tina connolly (she/her):
So we have five initial fairy tale princesses going off on my side, going off on their quests. And so I'm like, I will put you in the head of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Beauty, et cetera, and you get to follow their quest with them. So I guess for me too, it's just as theater and characters. it made sense to me that some of the characters, of course, don't get along with each other. So,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Absolutely.

tina connolly (she/her):
you know, Sleeping Beauty is a little uncertain about Cinderella's stompiness, but yeah. But I think other characters are probably more in favor of it, like Snow. Snow is also a pretty stompy character, Snow White.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yes, indeed. Could you talk a little bit about your collaboration with SL Lang to bring this very long and very ambitious story to a close? Because I think it's like 17 or 18 chapters from each of you and they intertwine.

tina connolly (she/her):
Yeah, yes!

Deborah L. Davitt:
Because I was only playing through one, I didn't notice if decisions made in one storyline would affect the past taken in the other or not. So how did you go about doing this? How did the collaboration process work? and what were some things that you learned while doing it.

tina connolly (she/her):
Yeah, well, Essel Hoang is wonderful to collaborate with. We had such a good time. I feel that both of us were kind of like, ooh, what can we do? Well, this will be challenging, let's do that. So we definitely gave ourselves a lot of work, but we enjoyed every single minute of it. Story Loom is not set up that you can share variables across games, unfortunately.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

tina connolly (she/her):
So yeah, the two games were not able to interact or affect each other. So that meant when we were planning, we had an extra wrinkle to think about, as in what can we show that we know will be the same

Deborah L. Davitt:
PLEASE!

tina connolly (she/her):
on the other side and what do we have to avoid talking about? Especially as we got to the ending where

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh yes.

tina connolly (she/her):
the endings all diverged fairly, quite a bit on both our sides. There are a number of different ways the endings can go. So as we were writing the endings and then writing the epilogues, we had to have a lot of discussions like... Okay, you can't mention this character because they could be, you know, I don't want to say all the spoilers, but you know, they could be anywhere. They could be dead. They could be in another world. They could be, you know, all these kind of things. So you cannot mention

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah,

tina connolly (she/her):
them

Deborah L. Davitt:
exactly.

tina connolly (she/her):
on your side. Yeah. So that was, it was a lot of fun to really kind of think about all those sort of angles that you wouldn't have with traditional storytelling because

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh yeah.

tina connolly (she/her):
yeah, again, more work than anybody. needed to take on for themselves, but we just, we just, it was so much fun. Another thing we had to do was we had to find like different reveals and cliffhangers for each story because there

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
were different, there were, there was information we needed to get across in each story, but we also, if you were reading both at the same time, we didn't want to ruin each other's cliffhangers and things like that or spoiler the other with like... climactic information, so we had to find different ways of coming at some of the same material. So that was also tricky and fun.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, I also thought it was very interesting that you traded characters with each other at

tina connolly (she/her):
Yes!

Deborah L. Davitt:
a certain point. Which again, puts you in sort of a bind as to what you can talk about and what you're allowed to say about any given character. Because

tina connolly (she/her):
Yeah.

Deborah L. Davitt:
now you've got Wolf and you've got all these other

tina connolly (she/her):
Right.

Deborah L. Davitt:
characters. and some of your characters have gone to the other side to handle issues over on her side of the

tina connolly (she/her):
Correct.

Deborah L. Davitt:
narrative. And I'm just saying, they're going, this must have been crazy.

tina connolly (she/her):
Yes. We decided early on that like my characters would work on saving sort of the magic piece of the kingdom and their characters would work on saving sort of the political piece of the kingdom. So that meant we each had different climaxes we could work towards that our characters

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
were trying to solve. So that was very helpful that we were able to kind of separate them out like that. We are actually we are both writing new stories now that we have decided to do. still sort of together, but in a little less chaotic, hairy, challenging method, which is they're writing a story called, Unfit Magic, and I'm writing one, Timely Magic, and both these are kind of based off some jokes that we were all having in chat with Stewart and Alexei and so forth. And I think it might have been Alexei who mentioned something about... a magic IT place where you're taking calls and having to solve magical tech problems. And we kind of ran

Deborah L. Davitt:
I

tina connolly (she/her):
with

Deborah L. Davitt:
love

tina connolly (she/her):
that.

Deborah L. Davitt:
this.

tina connolly (she/her):
So it's a lot of fun. So, but this time what we're doing is we have the same world, but just two completely different stories. So no cross, I mean, there's a little crossover. Like you see some of the characters popping in and out, which

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

tina connolly (she/her):
we enjoy doing, but we're not trying to make the plots line up this time, which is gonna be a lot easier.

Deborah L. Davitt:
That sounds like it's going to be fun and I look forward to reading it.

tina connolly (she/her):
Thank you.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Alexei, let's talk about a death in Oleander, which differs from some of the other stories we've discussed so far in that it's a visual novel rather than an interactive fiction. There are no choices for the audience to make, but it's a fascinating story in its own right filled with people fighting class prejudice and living in the aftermath of a great magical war while trying to solve a murder. Why did you feel that a visual novel was the best way to tell the story rather than a traditional novel or novella? And why did you choose to make it non-interactive?

Alexei Collier:
Well, I would say there is one choice, which is to read it or not read it.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
But,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Well, I like it so far. So

Alexei Collier:
oh,

Deborah L. Davitt:
I'm

Alexei Collier:
OK.

Deborah L. Davitt:
about halfway through. So I really enjoyed it.

Alexei Collier:
Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting you asked that question, because A Death in a Leander actually started life as a novel project.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
And for various reasons, I had to put it aside, even though it was like almost 80%, 90% done or something.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh no!

Alexei Collier:
One of the things that was actually one of the issues was that it was coming in. Like kind of in that really awkward space right between novella and novel.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Uh huh.

Alexei Collier:
Um, and so when I, when I, uh, started, uh, writing, you know, these interactive fi- this interactive fiction for Story Loom, it was one of the things that I, I had in the back of my mind as something like, oh, I could adapt this. Um,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
and so I would like to say it was, it was, you know, uh, this, it was this. soul-searching artistic decision, but a lot of sense it was an economic decision, a pragmatic decision

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Alexei Collier:
of I've got this material and somebody's going to pay me for it. So

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, that's a

Alexei Collier:
rather

Deborah L. Davitt:
perfectly

Alexei Collier:
than,

Deborah L. Davitt:
valid reason to

Alexei Collier:
right,

Deborah L. Davitt:
do something.

Alexei Collier:
yeah, and then of course if I still have the option to develop into a novella or adapt into a novella or a novel

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
as well, but you know it's like okay well I could write this as a novella or a novel and you know go through the long process, especially novel, long process of finding

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh yeah.

Alexei Collier:
an agent and such to represent

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh yeah.

Alexei Collier:
me, or I could get paid for it now, and also had the opportunity to collaborate with my spouse whom I commissioned to make all of the backgrounds that look like

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh,

Alexei Collier:
those sort

Deborah L. Davitt:
nice!

Alexei Collier:
of old-timey photographs. And that was something that I felt that could make the Lillian unique as a visual novel and

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
not just to stand out from the other story loom. stories but just give it a certain character that was different.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh, it definitely has that. The backgrounds give it a lot of depth and a lot of texture. So I really like that aspect. And overall, the story is wonderful and I'm enjoying it thoroughly. So I highly recommend it. Just, I just had questions because otherwise I can't, I don't have much of a podcast if I don't have questions.

Alexei Collier:
Yeah, no, um, yeah, it's been I mean it I In in adapting it I think I was able to see a lot of places actually where the original Narrative had issues and I there was a lot of stuff that I ended up cutting or changing That

Deborah L. Davitt:
Ahem.

Alexei Collier:
I think if I did go back and turning into it turning into a novella or novel It would it would actually be a lot stronger for having sort of gone through that funnel

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, that was

Alexei Collier:
That

Deborah L. Davitt:
going to be my next

Alexei Collier:
was

Deborah L. Davitt:
question,

Alexei Collier:
going

Deborah L. Davitt:
which

Alexei Collier:
to be

Deborah L. Davitt:
was

Alexei Collier:
my

Deborah L. Davitt:
what

Alexei Collier:
next

Deborah L. Davitt:
have

Alexei Collier:
question.

Deborah L. Davitt:
you learned? And apparently you have learned a lot. It helped you to take a step back and take a look at it from a different perspective.

Alexei Collier:
Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, there was some, you know, also time distance involved there as well. But one of the issues I was having, you know, with it was I'd gotten sort of to this point in the story and the, you know, there's this class divide, this sort of,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
that's kind of central to the story, the Evroy and the Montaigne. And in the sort of novel draft, that was kind of this There was also this sort of ethno-religious angle to that. And like,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
I didn't, I, that's not, there's nothing in my background like that. So I, as I was going, moving forward with that, I like, it didn't feel like, I didn't feel quite comfortable doing that. And so I, I was planning to, if I went back to finish the novel project to change it to a class struggle anyway, because

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
I, that is, from my background. My grandparents were like socialists during the height of the Red Scare. And they, you know, members of, I don't know, the Communist Party of probably Washington State or some such until they left, because for reasons. But

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm.

Alexei Collier:
yeah, there's like a very, very strong union, working class union strain in my background. And so

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
I felt like I could tap into that a little better than this sort of. um, this ethno-religious struggle that was, you know, a little bit beyond my, the scope of my, um, experience, I guess.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I do have one more question, which is, is there going to be a sequel? Because I really would like there to be.

Alexei Collier:
Oh, wow. You know, I guess there could be when I was when I was adapting and I did consider adding some choices in there. And I ended up ditching that.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
But since there aren't any choices in there, I suppose there could be a sequel. You know, when I was working on the novel project I kind of wanted to write a I was like, I like this Viola character, you know, she's, she's a smart cookie. Like, I would like to have a I would focus on her a little bit. Like Stewart, I very rarely write from like a white male protagonist perspective

Deborah L. Davitt:
Mm-hmm.

Alexei Collier:
actually. Dathanole and is unusual for me for having a male protagonist. So obviously I had this idea that maybe I would write something from her point of view. I don't know. I don't wanna make any promises, but.

Deborah L. Davitt:
I'm not asking for a promise, I'm just asking for hope. Hehehehe

Alexei Collier:
Well, I'm probably going to be pretty busy with my new RPG-ish one, but

Deborah L. Davitt:
OOF

Alexei Collier:
maybe in the future.

Deborah L. Davitt:
We're going to move to Stephen and we're going to do something a little different with you. You're going to select one of your interactive fictions and make me play it without even knowing what it's going to be. You're going to read, I'll make some choices and then we'll discuss what your inspirations were and what you want an audience to take away from reading it or playing it at the end. Are you ready?

Stephen Granade:
I am absolutely ready.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, lay it on me.

Stephen Granade:
Okay, so this is a game called Binary, and we start out, it says, Connected to Upload Core and your choices approach.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, I approach.

Stephen Granade:
Audio channel established. So, Gwen, come back. Oh. And your choices approach.

Deborah L. Davitt:
up.

Stephen Granade:
Forever and yet no time, both at once. Sorry, it'll take me a moment to get up to speed. Your choice is approach.

Deborah L. Davitt:
approach.

Stephen Granade:
You managed to restore station power? After all the damage the filaments did or... No. You're beaming power to me. Still slow. Our connection is throttled. Come closer. And your choices are approach or withdrawal.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hmm, I'm gonna go with approach one more time.

Stephen Granade:
Thank you, that's much better. I wondered if anyone would come for me. I feared I'd loop forever on reserve power until I ran down. Idle tech slowing. An unwound clock. Almira Linale, former stationmaster. I assume you're here to talk about the war. Approach, withdrawal.

Deborah L. Davitt:
approach.

Stephen Granade:
Of course, why else come to a wreck of a space station limping around a ruined binary system, if not for history? All in good time, I suppose. Give me access to the station logs. I wasn't at speed for the very end. Approach or withdrawal?

Deborah L. Davitt:
approach.

Stephen Granade:
Like, maybe.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehehe

Stephen Granade:
No

Deborah L. Davitt:
It

Stephen Granade:
one.

Deborah L. Davitt:
seems...

Stephen Granade:
Sorry, go ahead.

Deborah L. Davitt:
No, it's just one of those, well, Withdrawal seems like it would end the story, so I'm gonna continue with that, but there's part of me that's curious about, my fingers in the book trying to go back to the

Stephen Granade:
Yep.

Deborah L. Davitt:
last choice.

Stephen Granade:
So.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Go forward, approach.

Stephen Granade:
No one. The filaments let no one escape. Over 20,000 and... Damn it. I didn't know you could cry after being uploaded. I need a moment. Approach or withdrawal.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay, you got me very interested, so we're gonna approach.

Stephen Granade:
Did you restore me only to badger me all this time and you can't spare one minute more? Wait. How long has it actually been? My subjective time is untrustworthy. I need access to your public shell. Approach or withdrawal. No. Oh no. years. Too long. Too long by half. I'd already lost Baku and Gwen, but I'd hope to see my daughter again after so many years. Though... Wait. Your name? Moda Lanali. You're my granddaughter. Confirm or deny.

Deborah L. Davitt:
confirm.

Stephen Granade:
That's why you're here. It's not about the spikes. It's not about what happened in Atari B. You wanted to meet your grandmother. Agree or demur?

Deborah L. Davitt:
demur.

Stephen Granade:
It's to be like that, then.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehehehehe

Stephen Granade:
I shouldn't expect otherwise. Denial is a strong family trait.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah.

Stephen Granade:
Fine. Let's ignore your mother for now. Ask me about the station instead, as if that would be less painful.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hahahaha

Stephen Granade:
Ask about the station or ask about mom.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh, ask about mom.

Stephen Granade:
I had to save one of us. If her dad or other mom had left, it would have weakened my position as station master, especially in the middle of a war. She'd just finished school, so a tour of the central systems made sense, at least to Baku and Gwen and me. We all wanted our daughter safe. Your mom fought me bitterly in the way that only family can. Said she had no intention of leaving us. Shouted it really so loud, her black rat scurried back to his cage. Asked me why she had to go. I couldn't tell her the truth. I sent her on without explanation and hoped she would eventually forgive me. Tell a harsh truth, tell a comforting lie.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Tell the harsh truth.

Stephen Granade:
You tighten your lips when speaking a truth you don't want to say, just like she used to. Another family trait. But thank you for saying it. Let me trade you honesty for honesty. I'd intended to wait until she was safely away then make sure the filaments spy on the station, learned about the spikes, but guilt lashed me until I could wait no longer. The filaments arrived before she left. Their light ships raked fire across her ship as it twisted away. Until today, I didn't know if she'd lived or died. Don't. Don't look at me like that. I had to. Accept or doubt.

Deborah L. Davitt:
accept.

Stephen Granade:
Baku said he agreed too. He didn't mean it. It shouldn't have come to this. I didn't hate the war. I hated its necessity. The filaments that destroyed our settlements, occupied our worlds, left countless corpses in their wake. We had to fight back. Even a remote civilian station like mine voted to support the war efforts. I knew war tore families apart. I prepared for that. What I didn't know was that I'd destroy my own family by doing what was right. Wait or recoil.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Wait.

Stephen Granade:
was the spikes. My own government had hidden a weapons program on my station. They betrayed me. Of course I was hurt and frightened, a weapon capable of destroying sons. My government was preparing to commit genocide. It was unconscionable. What's my family's worth set against that? admire her resolution, curse her foolishness.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Admire her resolution.

Stephen Granade:
I want to agree with you. I can't though. Have you ever had to choose what deaths to allow? Imagine balancing on a knife's edge, debating which way to fall while that edge sinks inexorably into your flesh. As I said, Baku supported me after I told him and Gwen. State secrets, of course, but what did I care by then? And they were my partners. The three of us argued back and forth. Tell the filaments and Dumas, keep silent and be complicit. I couldn't live with a secret. I couldn't. Baku couldn't either. Lost himself in the list bottles of rye. I couldn't even keep him sober enough to upload him before the end. Coward. God. Why? Comfort unreservedly, comfort ambivalently, disheartened reluctantly, disheartened ruthlessly.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Stephen Granade:
Okay. You'll be unsurprised to hear that Baku tried to make me feel better, too." Gwen didn't. She judged me harshly for my decision, then she tried to stop me. And when she couldn't, she led the charge to force me into this upload. Held me in the chair as the helmet slid over my head, clamped tight as Gwen's arms. When it was over, Gwen let go of my empty body like she was releasing a burden. She time-shifted me down, her movement speeding up as I watched, rivulets of tears racing down her face. In a blink, she was gone. I was left to rot. I can't say she was wrong to do it. And now you're here. Power reserves, 11% limiting connection. Approach withdrawal. We don't have long. You're running out of suit power. Don't be surprised, I still have access to your shell. You have to go. After everything, I wouldn't see you stranded here. But when you go, please take me with you. Pull my core from the system. I don't care if you restore me later. I just want to be with you. Take her, disconnect her, leave her,

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hmm, woo.

Stephen Granade:
leave her without a word.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Ooh, take her.

Stephen Granade:
More grace than I suspect I deserve. Thank you. I hope we talk again very soon. Connection lost.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Hehehe

Stephen Granade:
And the end.

Deborah L. Davitt:
That one has so many ways it can go.

tina connolly (she/her):
That was really great. I liked that a lot.


Stephen Granade:
Yes.

Stephen Granade:
Oh, thank you.

Alexei Collier:
Yeah, that was fantastic.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Now, where can people find that one


Stewart Baker:
I really like how sneaky that was.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah, where can people find this?

Stephen Granade:
It is at SubQ Magazine or at my site, sgranade.itch.io. It is called Binary.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay.

Stephen Granade:
So if you search for binary, Stephen Granade, it should show up.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Do any of you have any upcoming or recent projects that you'd like to discuss that we haven't already touched on? Don't let everybody start at once. Stewart, do you have something?

Stewart Baker:
I briefly mentioned the Bread Must Rise which is coming out from Choice of Games on Thursday, September 28th. If you're interested in Nailed It, the baking show where people fail terribly, I highly recommend checking that out. That's co-written by me and James Beeman. It should be on Steam, Apple Store. You can tell I don't use Apple products because I don't know

Deborah L. Davitt:
Yeah

Stewart Baker:
what that's called. Google Play or the Choice of Games website.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All right, Tina, do you have anything coming out in the near future that you'd like to talk about?

tina connolly (she/her):
You know, we touched on most of the games. I do have a short story coming out soon from a collection that Alex Schwartzman is putting together, which is a funny story about theater. It's called Stage Shows and Schnauzers. So I'm looking forward to that coming out.

Deborah L. Davitt:
All right, Stephen, how about you? Anything in the near future that you'd like to talk about?

Stephen Granade:
I'm between projects right now with most of my time going to Small Wonders, which is the flash fiction and poetry magazine that Cicelynn Smith and I are co-editing, but Professor of Magical Studies is still available from Choice of Games and it only came out last year, so it's not too dated yet.

Deborah L. Davitt:
Ha ha. Alexei, how about you? Anything in the recent past or the near future that you'd like to talk about?

Alexei Collier:
Well, most of my creative energies are going towards the new game that just has one chapter so far and hopefully chapter two coming this week, Magestria and Magic. It has a little bit of a meta to it as well because it's about a group of teens who sit down to play a game called Magestria and Magic and find themselves transported to the land of Magestria. And well, that's as far as the story goes so far. So I guess No more spoilers But yeah, I'm

Deborah L. Davitt:
Well...

Alexei Collier:
having a lot of I'm having a lot of fun with it

Deborah L. Davitt:
Oh good.

Alexei Collier:
Yeah

Deborah L. Davitt:
That sounds like it's gonna be a blast.

Alexei Collier:
I hope so 

Stewart Baker:
That's a lot of fun to play. I played the--


Deborah L. Davitt:
Okay. You played the first chapter, Stewart? I'm getting a thumbs up for the people in the audience who can't see it. All right, so next week on Shining Moon, we'll either be taking another whack at our interview with Leslie Connor of Apex, or talking about contemporary fantasy versus urban fantasy with Lauren Brothers, Michael Haynes, and Sheila Massie. Stories we'll discuss if it's the latter or The Morning House by Kate Hartsfield and Play Devil by Josh Pearce. See you all next time.