The best books on interactive storytelling?

[Aaron A. Reed]

In the last ten years quite a few books on interactive storytelling
have cropped up, some academic, some practical. I'm wondering if
anybody has read any of these and can make recommendations, positive
or otherwise.

For my part I've read "Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st
Century Fiction," which I felt was a good overview but didn't seem to
tell me anything I didn't already know, and "Hamlet on the Holodeck,"
a classic which is unbelievably celebrating its 10th anniversary.
"Twisty Little Passages" is excellent, but more about history and
analysis and hence not really what I'm talking about here-- I'm
looking for books about the craft of interactive storytelling, along
the lines of the "IF Theory" book but with a broader scope.

[Emily Short]

On Feb 5, 1:23 pm, "Aaron A. Reed" <aar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> In the last ten years quite a few books on interactive storytelling
> have cropped up, some academic, some practical. I'm wondering if
> anybody has read any of these and can make recommendations, positive
> or otherwise.

I had mixed feelings about Chris Crawford's book on Interactive
Storytelling, which I wrote up a bit here:

http://emshort.wordpress.com/writing-if/books-and-other-resources/chris-crawford-on-interactive-storytelling/

I've also read part of Marie-Laure Ryan's _Avatars of Story_, which I
thought fairly intriguing; Ryan does a good job of articulating what
she means by the idea of interactive narrative, and describing some of
the problems attached to it. Sometime I mean to read the rest and
review it also, but just haven't gotten to it yet.

I haven't read Glassner's book at all.

And then there's _Second Person_, which I just through sheer
coincidence posted about a moment ago.