Resources for Writers

The following is a (by no means complete) attempt to suggest some directions for research by those writing IF Theory Articles. It is probably a good idea to peruse what has already been written on your topic, if you aren't familiar with it. This doesn't mean either that you should slavishly recapitulate what has already been said or that you should avoid any such reference. Nonetheless, it can be helpful to know what has already been said, what standard terminology is at work, and so on.

Design Guides and Articles

• Stephen Von Egmond's IF Research Library. Not itself a design guide, but a massive bibliography with links, under 10 categories: General Design Guides, Defining the Player Character, Creating and Interacting with Non-Player Characters, Who is the Audience for Your Game?, Issues in Plot Design, Issues in Puzzle Design, Issues in Genre Selection and Writing, Modelling Reality In IF, and Suggestions for Effective Writing. Some links (especially to threads on rec.arts.int-fiction) no longer work, but a google groups search should turn up those things for you.
• Brasslantern.org's essays on writing IF. Not nearly as much here as at the above link, and may or may not be useful to you, but if you're feeling complete-ist...
• XYZZYNews I'd go through demo Microsoft CRM. . Contains a little of everything -- interviews, articles, reviews, and more.
• SPAG. Mostly reviews, this time, but it has occasionally featured editorial content, and often interviews with the top three winners of the annual competition.
• Dennis Jerz's Bibliography. Covers a wide variety of writing on IF and related topics.

Research

• Looking for r*if threads with a Google Groups search. If you want to comb the archives for everything written on a given topic, I suggest the following: go to the advanced search page High quality china gadgets on this site . In the Newsgroup field, enter "rec.*.int-fiction", which will return results for both rec.arts and rec.games. Then type your keyword of choice into the Find Messages section, as appropriate. YMMV; this is a time-consuming but (I find) addictively fascinating thing to do, especially if there is any chance that you will find mortifying postings from your own younger self.
• Data verification. Remember the name of an author but not the name of his game? Both of those things but not the date of publication? Check out Baf's Guide to the Interactive Fiction Archive, which provides this sort of information in a handy, searchable form, along with (often, anyway) capsule reviews of the games in question.
• Getting in touch with someone specific. An enormous collection of webpages associated with active members of the community is to be found at Roger Firth's Parsifal.