Tracery: An Author-Focused generative text tool

Abstract

New communities of generative text practitioners are flourishing in novel expressive mediums like Twitterbots and Twine as well as the existing practices of Interactive Fiction. However, there are not yet reusable and extensible generative text tools that work for the needs of these communities. Tracery is an author-focused generative text tool, intended to be used by novice and expert authors, and designed to support generative text creation in these growing communities, and future ones. We identify the design considerations necessary to serve these new generative text authors, like data portability, modular design, and additive authoring, and illustrate how these considerations informed the design of the Tracery language. We also present illustrative case studies of existing projects that use Tracery as part of the art creation process.