Teaching digital fiction: integrating experimental writing and current technologies

Abstract

Today's creative writers are immersed in a multiplicative, multimodal-digital-universe. It requires "multiliteracies", all in a constantly and rapidly evolving technological environment, which are not yet fundamentally integrated into the basic literacy skills entrenched in school learning. How can creative writing instructors in higher education best prepare their students for the real-world contexts of their creative practice? One approach is to integrate the creative writing workshop with a focus on digital and interactive design. This paper outlines a module incorporating multiple literacies into a creative writing course, Playable Fiction, noting the affordances, limitations, and benefits of teaching workshops for writing digital fiction ("born-digital" fiction, composed for and read on digital devices). The researcher took an ethnographical approach to the question, designing a module to encourage creative writing students to experiment with digital fiction, and observing the effects on the students' attitudes and their coursework. Included is a discussion of the benefits to students of developing multiliteracies and considerations for teaching, including issues of technical know-how and the lack of infrastructural support. Finally, the paper describes the model class taught to second-year and third-year undergraduates in the 'Games Design and Professional Writing' programs at Bangor University, in the UK, including marking recommendations and reading list advice.

“There’s always an option”

“…A more recent research project demonstrated the value of IF as a springboard for creative writing (Lee, 2019). The teaching of digital fiction writing is also making its way into courses on creative writing and game design at the university level (see for example, Skains, 2019). However, research on the affordances of creating IF in interdisciplinary writing projects for L2 learning is largely unexplored territory.…”

From Climate Change Ignorant to Climate Change Educator

“…We decided that the climate change education curricula we wrote would be supported with a quantitative psychology‐based measure of attitude change. The curricula would also incorporate an interactive digital narrative, [19] to convey climate change in a novel manner. Emboldened by my time at Welsh Crucible, and so that I would have time to work on the climate change education, I asked my employer to change my contract to incorporate science communication, thereby shifting my focus from 100 % lab‐based research to 50:50 lab‐based : science communication‐based research.…”

“…Workshop 2 was centred around readinga ni nteractive digital narrative (IDN), [19] No World 4T omorrow, [23] writtenb ym y colleagueD r. Lyle Skains. This addressed both individual behaviours and political-economic systemic changes.…”

Playing for Change: Teens’ Attitudes Towards Climate Change Action as Expressed Through Interactive Digital Narrative Play

“…The workshops encompass an innovative combination of interactive chemistry lessons, reading, and discussion of interactive digital narratives (IDNs) for themes of climate change and personal choice, and student construction of their own IDNs on themes of climate change and personal responsibility. This learning intervention is a multiliteracies approach (Cope and Kalantzis 2009;Skains 2019b) to teach the science of climate change through digital literacy, interactivity, creative writing, game design, discussion, and group and individual work. Multiliteracies is a design-based pedagogical approach that develops multiple professional, developmental, and cognitive skills through the holistic layering of multiple practical activities within any given course or lesson.…”