Introduction

This chapter discusses the writing and transmitting of letters in Emily Short's award-winning 2012 interactive work, First Draft of the Revolution, self-described as ‘an interactive epistolary story’. Hosted and played on a dedicated website, (https://www.inklestudios.com/firstdraft/), First Draft is a story told almost entirely through letters written by and sent amongst a crew of characters set in eighteenth-century revolutionary France. It begins with a correspondence by the protagonist, Juliette, to her husband, Henri, who has banished her from Paris to ‘a village above Grenoble’ in the Dauphiné countryside. The work also features letters by Henri; Henri's sister, Alise, who does not like Juliette and approves of her being sent away; and Mother Catherine-Agnes, Juliette's Mother Superior at an unnamed convent where Juliette grew up before getting married. Together, their correspondences reveal Juliette's discovery of a plot by the friar in the country village to manipulate Henri's recently found illegitimate son (also at the same village!) in an effort to overthrow the Lavori, an order of magic-using noblemen to which Henri belongs.

First Draft is by no means unique as an interactive epistolary story. There are many examples of interactive letters used to advance gameplay and narrative particularly in recent years.