My name is Ben Carey from the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and I am conducting research for my doctoral project on the role of the creative writer in producing interactive narratives. I am currently seeking responses from aspiring interactive writers, such as yourselves, in the form of an online questionnaire. The questionnaire contains seven questions about the interactive writing process, such as ‘How much experience have you had in relation to writing interactive narratives?’ The questionnaire should take approximately 20 minutes of your time.
This project is supervised by Associate Professor Susan Carson and Mr Craig Bolland of QUT, Brisbane, Australia, and is due for completion in January 2017. My aim is to include my findings in my doctoral project as well as to publish this material and present it at a reputable conference such as the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling.
Wow! I’ve already received 9 responses. Thank you to everyone who has completed the questionnaire. To those of you who haven’t, please consider it. It will only take 20 minutes of your time and your input is extremely valuable. Thanks!
Quest is another popular one. Emily Short has a list of forums on the sidebar of her blog.
If you want to reach more people about this and you have an IF-related blog, you could look into adding it to Planet IF. Posts there are automatically tweeted on Twitter as well.
I’ve looked at your questions, and they all seem a bit … basic. Can I ask what new and novel concepts your PhD is going to be looking at? Have you written any interactive fiction yourself? What do you hope to develop as a thesis over and above the last 20 years of IF theory that the community have been developing?
Thanks for your feedback. Yes, this questionnaire is fairly basic, but that is because it is complementing the more extensive interviews I am doing with more established authors in the field.
A thesis is not always about creating a killer theory. Most of the time it is about collecting the knowledge of the experts that have come before you (and those currently practicing) and synthesizing that material. In that way you can often contribute something helpful back to the field. For my project the focus is around the writing process. I am interested in the differences in process between traditional writing practices (such as a novel or short story, say) and interactive narratives. A lot of research has been done on readers and the actual interaction itself, but not a whole lot on us writers. I am also interested in developing techniques for aspiring writers. I know Emily Short has done some great work in this area, but I have not come across a lot of other material on this topic. If you know of any, please point me in the right direction.