Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives

Hypertext is now commonplace: links and linking structure nearly all of our experiences online. Yet the literary, as opposed to commercial, potential of hypertext has receded. One of the few tools still focused on hypertext as a means for digital storytelling is Twine, a platform for building choice-driven stories without relying heavily on code. In Twining, Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop lead readers on a journey at once technical, critical, contextual, and personal. The book’s chapters alternate careful, stepwise discussion of adaptable Twine projects, offer commentary on exemplary Twine works, and discuss Twine’s technological and cultural background. Beyond telling the story of Twine and how to make Twine stories, Twining reflects on the ongoing process of making.

"While there have certainly been attempts to study Twine historically and theoretically... no single publication has provided such a detailed account of it. And no publication has even attempted to situate Twine amongst its many different conversations and traditions, something this book does masterfully." —James Brown, Rutgers University, Camden

Stuart Moulthrop is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and serves as Co-Director of the Digital Cultures Collaboratory in the Center for 21st Century Studies. He is author of several notable works of electronic literature including Victory Garden (1991), Under Language (2008), and End of the White Subway (2016). He has collaborated with Dene Grigar on Traversals (MIT Press, 2017), concerning the preservation of early electronic literature.

Anastasia Salter is Associate Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, and the Director of Graduate Programs and the PhD in Texts & Technology for the College of Arts and Humanities. Salter is the author and coauthor of many books, including A Portrait of the Auteur as Fanboy (University Press of Mississippi, with Mel Stanfill, 2020), What is Your Quest? From Adventure Games to Interactive Books (University of Iowa Press, 2014), and Flash: Building the Interactive Web (MIT Press, with John Murray, 2014).