Bloomsbury · 2026
Creating the
Interactive
Digital Narrative
A practical guide to designing interactive digital narratives
Published by
Bloomsbury Academic
A practical guide to designing interactive digital narratives
A practical guide to designing and producing collaborative digital narratives.
"Interactive storytelling isn't simply about adding choices to a linear narrative. It requires a fundamentally different way of thinking."
How do you plan and produce a story when the audience shapes its direction? When the narrative unfolds across platforms, and the creative team spans disciplines?
These are the central questions this book addresses — practically, not theoretically.
Drawing on Bradford Gyori's years of experience in television production for networks including HBO, FX and MTV, and his subsequent work as a researcher and educator, this book walks readers through the creative and organisational processes behind building interactive narratives that actually get made.
Rather than presenting a rigid formula, Creating the Interactive Digital Narrative offers frameworks, examples and working methods developed through years of collaborative production — in broadcast studios, university classrooms and community storytelling projects.
The goal is not identical projects. It is capable, adaptable storytellers who can approach any interactive challenge with clarity, creativity and the tools to bring their ideas to life.
Traditional storytelling guides often assume a linear process: idea → outline → draft → revision.
Interactive storytelling rarely works that way.
Projects evolve across multiple platforms and media simultaneously — with writers, designers, journalists, developers and producers shaping the narrative together, often all at once.
"Rather than forcing this complexity into a rigid formula, the book embraces the reality of collaborative storytelling."
It is designed to be explored flexibly — allowing readers and creative teams to move between chapters, tools and examples as their projects develop. A framework for navigating the creative process, not a rulebook for following it.
Step-by-step guidance on developing ideas, organising creative teams and moving projects from initial concept through to production — with real-world examples at each stage.
Concrete methods for assigning roles, structuring multi-disciplinary teams and managing the complex dynamics of collaborative digital storytelling projects.
Lessons drawn from interactive journalism, documentary storytelling and experimental narrative work — including projects developed in television, higher education and community settings.
Practical tools designed to help creators plan and produce their own interactive narratives, tested across years of university teaching and professional practice.
Bradford Gyori's path is an uncommon one. Before entering academia, he spent years working in television — contributing to projects for networks that reached tens of millions of viewers. That experience of making things — under pressure, in teams, on deadline — continues to shape everything he teaches and writes.
He is currently Principal Academic in Digital Storytelling at Bournemouth University, where he teaches interactive documentary and digital narrative design. As Programme Leader for the MA in Creative Writing and Publishing, he has built one of the UK's distinctive postgraduate programmes bridging creative writing and emerging digital forms.
His research explores what happens to stories when audiences become participants — when the narrative is no longer delivered but co-constructed. His projects span interactive documentaries, digital journalism, locative storytelling and community-based narrative initiatives.
Creating the Interactive Digital Narrative is the product of that dual life: a decade of teaching creative teams how to make interactive stories, filtered through the practical experience of someone who has actually made them.
The frameworks in Creating the Interactive Digital Narrative were not developed in isolation. They emerge from Bradford's ongoing work as a practitioner — building, running and researching interactive storytelling projects across a range of formats and contexts.
Projects exploring how documentary storytelling evolves when audiences can shape their own path through a narrative — across platforms, formats and levels of participation.
Narrative experiences that unfold across real physical locations — placing participants inside stories that respond to where they are and the choices they make.
Collaborative projects developed with communities — exploring how participatory narrative methods can involve non-professional storytellers in building and sharing complex stories.
Academic and creative research into emerging narrative forms — from branching structures and multi-platform storytelling to immersive and mixed-reality narrative experiences.
Bradford regularly presents, teaches and runs live interactive storytelling experiences. Here are upcoming events and appearances.
A live interactive narrative experience where participants explore a mysterious story unfolding across real locations. Combining storytelling, gameplay and immersive theatre, Sea Cipher places the audience at the centre of a branching narrative.
A weekly creative writing event hosted by Bradford Gyori, featuring a guest writer and live feedback sessions. Each session opens with a featured writer presenting their work, followed by opportunities for participants to share short fiction and receive feedback from the group.
Writers can sign up to present a 20-minute reading (around 1500 words) or a 5-minute lightning round (around 700 words). Sessions explore experimental storytelling, strange fiction and emerging narrative forms in a supportive creative environment.
Bradford Gyori's talks draw on decades of experience across television production, narrative research and teaching interactive media in higher education. His sessions work for academic conferences, industry events and postgraduate programmes equally.
Bradford is available for keynotes, workshops, conference presentations and programme collaborations. For universities, creative organisations and media events.