E-Lit for Children

Children seem to get e-lit long before their parents do. The idea that books might become magical or that poems might leap to life just makes sense to kids. So why not help them write it? One reason that is obvious to anyone who has written an unfinished overly ambitious branching narrative is that's it's easy to create a combinatoric nightmare or to end up with a terrible tangle of branches, leaving no time to create the text. Another reason is building these magic books takes a bit of technological knowledge that these digital-natives for some reason don't have from the womb (no fault of the womb). In this workshop, aimed at children, educators, and adult children, I will walk a group through the making of a choice-based micro-adventure using either Undum or Inkle. The goal will be to dive straight into the e-lit waters by writing a shared narrative within some tight constraints that ensure we will produce a story within the allotted time.

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