HOWTO write a great adventure game, in case you were wondering.

BUS is a simple interactive fiction engine written in Python. It includes a basic world model and NL parser.

Philip K. Dick on writing science fiction in his longish (but interesting) essay titled How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.

Kurt Vonnegut has 8 rules for writing fiction, which are surprisingly portable as rules for writing software.

[stars: 4] How to write science fiction (Card). A great read even if you’re not planning to write a novel: it inspires you to understand what goes into a great story, and makes you want to write better.  Orson Scott Card puts his genre in perspective, and hints at some of what makes him a great writer.  The cover is a trendy, simple retro-brown too.

I like to spend my winter holiday thinking about the year, and what I didn’t do enough of. Next year, I hope to:

1. Write more. Not just web fluff and links (which is fun), but more real fiction and non-fiction. I love to write, but life and complexity just keep on getting in the way.
2. Do more creative stuff. I have an artistic side, but the geek in me naturally suppresses it. I need to learn better balance.
3. Learn more healthy habits. I love good food, I grok nutrition, and I enjoy exercise. I need a bit more of each (and less of the crap).
4. Learn Ruby/Rails well. Last year I polished my C#, Javascript, and Php skills (as well as time spent with SQL, CSS/XHTML, etc.). This year I need to at least know why Rails isn’t for me. So far I’ve only spent a dozen hours with it, which isn’t nearly enough.
5. Focus. Life is noisy. Work is noisy. Learn to deal with both: I will overcome the chaos.

One thing I like to keep in mind with resolutions is that sometimes a year isn’t enough. Life is a garden, and sometimes crops fail. The key is to keep doing healthy things, and remember that growth takes time, practice, and effort.

A good summary of common writing mistakes through the eyes of a fiction editor.

An introduction to Interactive Fiction, for both authors and players.

A few interesting Interactive Fiction articles:

• How to write a great game
• General game authoring notes
• Make IF fast (with a good set of examples)
• IF cliches
• 10 Steps to Great Game Design

Found via ifwiki.

Dr. Dobb’s magazine interviews Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling, based on Chris’s new startup Storytron (via Slashdot). More about IF at Wikipedia and the IF wiki, and a link to my new markup library intended for use in an interactive-fiction wiki I’m working on.