Literary Tricks in Interactive Fiction: Exploring The Medium
I have been writing text-based, literary interactive fiction since 2022. Earlier this year, I was invited to host a panel on interactive fiction at WriteHive Con 2025. Let me share it with you!
Interactive fiction has been around for long—and even in literature, with books meant to give the reader agency (e.g., the famous collection Choose Your Own Adventure) and books where the order of the story and/or the reader’s limited agency over it was part of the story (e.g., Cortázar’s Hopscotch and Wolfe’s The Fifth Head of Cerberus). It evolved to the choice-driven narratives we see today—where text is still central and foremost—and even further into narrative videogames—where narrative is a driving element, but text is not the medium.
I have been writing text-based, literary interactive fiction since 2022 through my app Unearthed Stories. Earlier this year, I was invited to host a panel on interactive fiction at WriteHive Con 2025—and the video was just released!
What does the panel cover?
Here are some of the questions that were discussed:
What is interactive fiction?
What are game mechanics?
What are the key elements to consider before writing interactive fiction?
How do you approach plotting a nonlinear narrative?
How do you balance player agency with authorial intent?
How do you design choices that feel meaningful rather than superficial?
What are some approaches to handling consequences of choices across a long narrative?
How do you create characters who adapt believably to different choices?
What's the most difficult aspect of writing IF?
How does the ludo-narrative harmony/dissonance affect your plotting?
How can you use the interactivity mechanic to show-don't-tell?
What are the craziest things you've tried in interactive fiction?
Have you learned anything surprising from how readers engage with your stories?
What advice do you have for writers wanting to write IF?
You may find that a lot of the literary tricks I discussed here apply also to regular books, since these are broader considerations centred on the narrative voice—some of which we may have discussed in prior posts.
Want to read my Unearthed Stories?
I’d really appreciate that if you do! The best bit is that most of these stories are actually free-to-read, and the app itself is free-to-install. Here it is: