Interactive Fiction
David Artsmith - In some ways the creative process can be incredibly lonely. Even though you are surrounded by a multitude of the most colorful and endearing characters you can imagine, they all exist only within the confines of your head. You are isolated inside of yourself, and the extent of your wanderings is the limit of your own mind.
Writers block often forces people to completely stop working, instead going out to do a physical activity, watch a movie, take a walk, or do anything except engaging in the act of writing. This is an attempt to jar their brains out of the rut that has developed. By exposing themselves to other people ideas, to thoughts outside of their own minds, they can expand their imagination and open up new connections, which will allow them to continue down the path of creation.
Tandem creativity is when any two or more people come together to engage in a process of imagination. The most common example of this would be when two people write a book together. Each author brings their own perspective, their feelings, and their hang ups to the process. The challenge here usually isn’t summoning up creativity. The fact that there are two people working off of one another will usually take care of that. Instead the struggle will be to find a compromise between the vision that each person has for the story and its characters.
A book, however, is a rather two dimensional project. The storyline can only go in one direction at a given time, even if that direction is back and forth in time. You can only have one voice, one narrative at a time. In effect, the two authors have to take turns writing and re-writing one another’s work.
The practice of interactive fiction takes this concept to the next level. Whether via roleplaying or interactive writing, this creative process involves two or more people acting in the capacity of their own distinct character, or characters, and interacting with one another to create a story. This narrative can theoretically go in several different directions all at once, with each person creating their own sphere of influence over the telling of the story.
The benefit of this is that even if one of the writers gets stale, they can always draw on the creativity of any number of other participants to continue their story. There is also an aspect of excitement involved. When two or more people are involved as active partners, and even as competitors, it is difficult for the writing to get boring, because you are essentially constantly working off of the other person.
There is still a problem with individual visions having to resolve into a single concept, however this is less since each person actually has control over their own characters. Even if the tale gets off track, you can always do something to correct it, either by having one of the characters do something, or through the use of narrators and story masters.
In summary, tandem creativity is a form of collective imagination in which two or more people share in the creative process, in order to develop a work of shared art. This can be as simple as two authors collaborating on a book, or as complex as an entire community interacting with one another as fictional characters to create a whole new world. This process is becoming more common, as increases in web 2.0 technology make it easier for people to collaborate on ideas from across the world.
