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My first Twine story — an attempt at interactive history
Hi there,
First off, this is such a great forum. Helpful, full of great stories, etc. Nice.
I'm a music writer from Vancouver. I do some work for the CBC, mostly about classical music. A while back, I pitched my editors on the idea of doing an interactive story about the uncanny deaths of three avant-garde composers from the early 20th century (Schoenberg, Webern and Berg). It's a little corner of music history that I've always been morbidly fascinated by, and I've been looking for a way to write something valuable about it for a while. I've also been a big fan of Twine for the past couple of years, so I figured, why not?
The story went live this past week. Altogether, I'm satisfied with it. Doing non-fiction/history/biography in an interactive format offered a few challenges and a lot of interesting opportunities. On one hand, when you've got a story that's ostensibly "true," you're stuck with the fact that it basically happened one way. That limits what you can do in terms of branching narratives. Or, at least, it did for me — it may just be lack of imagination.
But, on the other hand, Twine offered the opportunity to toss around certain bits of the story in a more fragmented way than would be permissible in conventional music writing. I found myself able to include some of the poignant details that I might have cut from a straightforward essay. The interactive format lent itself particularly to telling Webern's story, the details of which have always been a bit hazy.
I'm interested in your reactions to this. I'm willing to entertain the notion that I bit off more than I can chew, but I'd love to see more people doing history or even journalism with Twine. Because it definitely sent me off in some unexpected directions.
Here's the link: http://dissonance.cbcmusic.ca/
First off, this is such a great forum. Helpful, full of great stories, etc. Nice.
I'm a music writer from Vancouver. I do some work for the CBC, mostly about classical music. A while back, I pitched my editors on the idea of doing an interactive story about the uncanny deaths of three avant-garde composers from the early 20th century (Schoenberg, Webern and Berg). It's a little corner of music history that I've always been morbidly fascinated by, and I've been looking for a way to write something valuable about it for a while. I've also been a big fan of Twine for the past couple of years, so I figured, why not?
The story went live this past week. Altogether, I'm satisfied with it. Doing non-fiction/history/biography in an interactive format offered a few challenges and a lot of interesting opportunities. On one hand, when you've got a story that's ostensibly "true," you're stuck with the fact that it basically happened one way. That limits what you can do in terms of branching narratives. Or, at least, it did for me — it may just be lack of imagination.
But, on the other hand, Twine offered the opportunity to toss around certain bits of the story in a more fragmented way than would be permissible in conventional music writing. I found myself able to include some of the poignant details that I might have cut from a straightforward essay. The interactive format lent itself particularly to telling Webern's story, the details of which have always been a bit hazy.
I'm interested in your reactions to this. I'm willing to entertain the notion that I bit off more than I can chew, but I'd love to see more people doing history or even journalism with Twine. Because it definitely sent me off in some unexpected directions.
Here's the link: http://dissonance.cbcmusic.ca/
Comments
Thanks.