Interactive Fiction Glossary, One Example Each

An interactive fiction glossary is more useful grouped than alphabetized. Half of these words describe what you do as a reader; the other half describe how the story was assembled, and mixing the two is the main reason the category sounds harder than it is. Each term below gets one example, because a definition you cannot picture is just another word to look up.

• Interactive fiction is the umbrella term; text adventure is the older name for one branch of it.
• Parser games ask you to type a command, choice-based games ask you to pick a line, and AI-narrated apps ask you to write a sentence.
• Words like knot, divert and passage describe authoring tools, not reading.
• Four newer terms matter to readers: turn, context window, story memory and retry.
• A glossary entry without an example is a definition you will look up twice.

What does interactive fiction actually mean?

It means a story you act inside rather than only read, and the phrase covers every input method anyone has tried. The disagreement is never about the stories; it is about how narrow the term should be. Older sources use it for parser games alone. Current usage covers choice-based work too, which is why two people can both be right and still argue.

Term	What it means	One example
Interactive fiction (IF)	Any story whose next passage depends on what you did	The whole category below
Text adventure	The older name, usually meaning a parser game	Typing go north at a prompt
Parser game	The code reads your typed command	unlock the door with the brass key
Choice-based / CYOA	You pick from a printed list of options	Two bulleted lines under a scene
Gamebook	A printed branching story, often with dice	Turn to page 211
Hypertext fiction	Prose connected by links rather than commands	A word in the paragraph is clickable
Visual novel	Mostly choice-based, with drawn art and voice	A portrait on screen while text runs

The authoring side keeps the phrase in literal use. Inform, the system behind a large share of parser work, describes itself as “a programming language for creating interactive fiction, using natural language syntax” — the term is what the tool is for, not a label applied afterward.

Which words describe how a story was built?

These are writer’s words, and you can read for years without needing them. They become useful the moment a review says a story is “well-woven” and you want to know what was woven. Each authoring system names its pieces differently, which is why the same shape has three names.

Authoring system. The software a writer uses to assemble the story. Inform, Twine and ink are three; our comparison of Twine and AI-written interactive fiction covers what changes when the prose is not written in advance.

Passage, node, knot. All three mean a named chunk of story the writer can point at. The names come from different tools. ink, described by its makers as “inkle’s scripting language for writing interactive narrative,” calls its chunks knots, and its documentation names them “the fundamental structural unit of ink content.”

Divert. A jump from one chunk to another with no reader input. In ink’s syntax a divert is an arrow, and the documentation notes that one “can even happen mid-sentence,” which is how a branch can close without the reader feeling a joint.

Sticky and non-sticky choice. A distinction worth knowing because you have felt it. A non-sticky choice disappears after you take it; a sticky one stays on the page and can be taken again. The same ink documentation marks them with different characters for exactly that reason.

State. Anything the story remembers as a value rather than as prose: a key you carry, a door flagged open, a count of how many times you lied.

Who is the “you” in the story?

The reader’s position has its own small vocabulary, and it is the part most worth learning, because these words name things you will notice on the first page.

• Player character (PC). The person you act as. Sometimes named and described, sometimes left as an outline you fill in.
• Non-player character (NPC). Everyone else. The borrowed abbreviation is the clearest sign of how much of this vocabulary came from tabletop games.
• Interactor. A scholarly alternative to “player,” used when “player” suggests a game and the work is not one.
• Second person, present tense. The default voice: you stand in a doorway. It reads as instruction and description at once.
• Dungeon master. The human at a tabletop who arbitrates, narrates and hosts. Software can take two of those three jobs, which we worked through in AI narrator vs dungeon master.

What do the AI terms in an interactive fiction glossary mean?

They are the newest words in the category and the ones most often used wrongly in app store copy. Four of them change what reading feels like, so they are worth separating from marketing vocabulary.

Turn. One exchange: your move, then the narrator’s answer. In Fabledrift, an interactive fiction app for Android, a turn is a scene — a few paragraphs you read before writing again, not a chat reply.

Prompt. Everything handed to the model before it writes: the world, the rules, the record of what happened, your move. Readers never see it. It is the reason two apps using the same model read nothing alike.

Context window. The hard limit on how much text a model can hold at once. It is a size, not a memory, and it is not the same as story memory — a distinction we took apart in story memory vs context window.

Story memory. A structured record kept outside the prose — names, places, injuries, promises — and handed over on every turn so the narrator does not have to infer a thousand earlier words from the last few hundred.

Continuity error. The failure you actually encounter: a dead character speaking, a left-handed sword switching hands. Usually a memory problem rather than a writing one.

Retry and step back. Two different fixes. Step back returns you to an earlier scene of your own. Retry asks for the same scene again, told differently. Keeping them separate matters, because readers reach for one and get the other.

Which terms come up after the story ends?

The vocabulary for finished stories predates everything above and still works, with one addition that only applies when the prose was written live.

Term	What it means	Why it matters now
Walkthrough	A written route through a game	Useless for AI-narrated stories, which have no fixed route
Spoiler	A revealed outcome	Still spoils a designed ending; cannot spoil an unwritten one
Transcript	The full text of one reading, saved	The only durable artifact when no two readings match
Replay	Reading again to see a different branch	A branch in designed work; a different story in generated work
Ending	The scene the story stops on	Designed endings are chosen from a set; generated ones are written once

Words that still cause arguments

Three of these are genuinely unsettled, and knowing that saves you an argument. Whether choice-based work counts as interactive fiction depends on whose interactive fiction glossary you read, and both camps have decades behind them. Whether “player” or “reader” is the right noun depends on whether the work has a win condition. And “AI storytelling” currently names everything from a chat window with a character sheet to a narrator with a maintained story record, which is why it tells you almost nothing.

The practical test is older than any of this terminology: ask what the software remembers, and ask how it accepts your move. Those two answers place a story in this interactive fiction glossary more reliably than the label on its store page.