What Is Interactive Fiction?

Interactive Fiction is a different way of experiencing writing than the traditional linear writing or books. Traditional books have a "set in stone" way of experiencing it meaning that every person will have basically the same experience. A large amount of Interactive Fiction experience is the opposite. Some reasons for this is that Interactive Fiction can have many features. For example, many pieces of Interactive Fiction require you to make choices throughout the experience resulting in different events that affect the story slightly or as much as changing the ending of the story. By having these choices implemented into the story it can cause several to even hundreds of different experiences depending on the piece. Bee requires the user to choose from a list of options what to do next. Depending on your choices you can end up with 4 different endings but even if you get the same ending as another user, your experience will be different.

Adventure and Zork are a strictly text based type of Interactive Fiction. They play like an adventure or some people even think they should be categorized as games. The user has to type in what they want to do next in order to progress in the story. Usually this type of Interactive Fiction is nonlinear and allows you to do what you want in the order that you want to do it.

Some other pieces, such as Yung Hae-Chang Heavy Industries' DAKOTA, are not choice based as many pieces of Interactive Fiction but the experience differs from traditional text by implementing music and flashes this words in an interesting pattern that goes with the music. Some others use music to help immerse the user into the experience and set the tone. Umineko no naku koro ni is a japanese visual novel that does exactly this plus pictures of scenery and each of the characters.

Basically Interactive Fiction is not categorized as one genre or type, it is a large variety of things that change the way that you experience text. Some people may disagree but I feel as if Interactive Fiction should be categorized as any type of writing that changes the normal experience for the user. This could be anything from using one of your senses that you usually do not use while reading or something that gives you options by allowing the user to participate.