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The Authoring Problem

Challenges in Supporting Authoring for Interactive Digital Narratives

  • Addresses research challenges involved in the abiding problem of supporting the process of authoring interactive stories
  • Incorporates views from a wide range of academics and practitioners, bridging the gaps between these two communities
  • Brings together the open challenges and unanswered questions in one volume for the first time

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series (HCIS)

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Table of contents (21 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-vi
  2. The Authoring Problem: An Introduction

    • Charlie Hargood, David E. Millard, Alex Mitchell, Ulrike Spierling
    Pages 1-13
  3. Authors and Processes

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15
    2. Understanding the Process of Authoring

      • Sofia Kitromili, María Cecilia Reyes
      Pages 17-30
    3. Authorial Burden

      • Joey Donald Jones
      Pages 47-63
  4. Form

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 205-205
    2. Authoring for Story Sifters

      • Max Kreminski, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Michael Mateas
      Pages 207-220
    3. Shower Curtains of the Mind

      • Stuart Moulthrop
      Pages 235-249
    4. Game Mechanics as Narrative Mode

      • Alex Mitchell
      Pages 251-269

About this book

Authoring, its tools, processes, and design challenges are key issues for the Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) research community. The complexity of IDN authoring, often involving stories co-created by procedures and user interaction, creates confusion for tool developers and raises barriers for new authors.

This book examines these issues from both the tool designer and the author’s perspective, discusses the poetics of IDN and how that can be used to design authoring tools, explores diverse forms of IDN and their demands, and investigates the challenges around conducting research on IDN authoring.

To address these challenges, the chapter authors incorporate a range of interdisciplinary perspectives on ‘The Authoring Problem’ in IDN. While existing texts provide ‘how-to’ guidance for authors, this book is a primer for research and practice-based investigations into the authoring problem, collecting the latest thoughts about this area from key researchers and practitioners.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Bournemouth University, Poole, UK

    Charlie Hargood

  • University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    David E. Millard

  • National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Alex Mitchell

  • Hochschule RheinMain, Wiesbaden, Germany

    Ulrike Spierling

About the editors

Dr. Charlie Hargood is an academic in games technology in the department of creative technology at Bournemouth University. He is an internationally recognised expert in interactive narrative and Hypertext. He has long been a contributor to the ACM Hypertext conference where he runs the Narrative and Hypertext workshop, and has twice won the Englebert prize for Hypertext research. His recent research has focused on locative narrative and the UX of authoring tools and he was the technical lead of the StoryPlaces project.

Dr. David Millard is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, UK. A leading figure in the Hypertext community, he has over 240 publications in international conferences and journals, was Vice-Chair of ACM SIGWEB from 2015-2019, and is the current chair of the ACM Hypertext steering committee. He has won awards for his work on hypertext structures and authoring, and his current research interests are focused on hypertextual structures in games, locative literature, and digital narratives.


Dr. Alex Mitchell teaches game and UX design and interactive storytelling in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. His research investigates various aspects of computer-based art and entertainment. His recent work has explored the role of defamiliarization in gameplay, and motivations for replaying interactive stories. He is a founding executive board member of ARDIN (Association for Research in Digital Interactive Narrative).


Dr. Ulrike Spierling is a professor of Media Design at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, Germany. She has been leading research groups in Interactive Storytelling since 1998, with applied research and development projects tackling interactions with virtual characters, conversational user interfaces, chatbot-based storytelling, as well as location-based interactive drama in Augmented Reality. She has organized several international workshops on Authoring for Interactive Narrative since 2006, and co-founded the annual conference series ICIDS (International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling) in 2008.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: The Authoring Problem

  • Book Subtitle: Challenges in Supporting Authoring for Interactive Digital Narratives

  • Editors: Charlie Hargood, David E. Millard, Alex Mitchell, Ulrike Spierling

  • Series Title: Human–Computer Interaction Series

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05214-9

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Computer Science, Computer Science (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05213-2Published: 02 January 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-05216-3Published: 03 January 2024

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-05214-9Published: 01 January 2023

  • Series ISSN: 1571-5035

  • Series E-ISSN: 2524-4477

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: VI, 336

  • Number of Illustrations: 17 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: User Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction, Game Development, Interaction Design

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 149.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 199.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access