Twine Narratives for Artists

Twine is a free, browser-based tool for building stories that branch, where readers make choices, follow links, and find their way through a world you've built. It requires no coding experience, and it's been used to make zines, games, poems, interactive essays, and things that don't have a name yet.

In this workshop we'll use Twine as a starting point to think about narrative structure, game mechanics, and what it means to co-create a story with your reader. We'll look at how these ideas connect across forms: zines, interactive fiction, web pages, net art, poetry. And you'll have time to start making something of your own.

Artists, writers, and makers who are curious about interactive and nonlinear work, whether you're already deep in a practice or just following an instinct that something you want to make. No coding experience needed. No game design background needed. Twine runs in your browser and is designed to be picked up in an afternoon.

• Branching narrative & structure. How nonlinear stories work: choice trees, loops, dead ends, multiple endings. What branching lets you do that linear narrative can't, and why that might matter for the work you're already making.
• Game mechanics as storytelling tools. How literary genres translate to game mechanics. We'll look at examples from interactive fiction, net art, and artist-made games that use non-linear structures to give readers/players agency in the story.
• Making something in Twine. Hands-on time to start a piece of your own. You'll leave with a working Twine file and a clearer sense of what you want it to become.

• Free Twinery account - https://twinery.org/
• Laptop that can connect to Wifi*

*We have some computers we can lend out for the workshop, please indicate if you will need this when you sign up

In 2017 Jason co-founded the Midlands Games Industry Discord, a hub for regional game developer communities from Leicester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Warwick, Coventry, and Royal Leamington Spa.

In 2021 Jason started a PhD at DMU looking at the culture and sustainability of online gaming communities, and in 2022 he became the Chairperson of the DMU Game Development Society.

We're a small CIC in Leicester that strives to provide opportunities for artists at any stage of their journey to experiment with creative technology in their practice. See past projects at: http://newmediaart.club

The ground-floor café will NOT be open that day, please find the back entrance gate on Colton Street and Sean will let you in. Back entrance pictured below:

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Sean Carroll