{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,13]],"date-time":"2026-08-13T17:28:44Z","timestamp":1786642124403,"version":"build-2736575974"},"reference-count":33,"publisher":"Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)","issue":"3","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,13]],"date-time":"2026-08-13T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1786579200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/legalcode"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["dl.acm.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["ACM Trans. Web"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,31]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN), a primarily web-first hypertextual medium, creates an overhead of writing for authors. There are many methods and tools that have been proposed for writing IDNs with the goal of reducing this burden, but because there is no comprehensive model of the Authoring Burden assessing the impact and appropriateness of these approaches is difficult. We have undertaken interviews with IDN authors (n=14) to understand how they manage the authoring burden within their own projects. Based on these interviews, and drawing on the existing literature, we propose a model of the Authoring Burden comprised of three parts: Content Creation, Dynamic Authoring, and Programming\/Tool Creation. The initial size of this burden is set by the Author\u2019s Goals informed by their Capability and the Audience\/Publishing Context. We also find 29 strategies employed by authors to manage the burden. There are five distinct types. Embracing and Reducing strategies impact the overall scale of the challenge, whereas Generative, Reuse, and Decoupling strategies move work between the three parts of the model. We validate our model with focus groups comprising different sets of experts (n = 8). Our model shows that many strategies for managing the burden transform rather than reduce work, and that the most appropriate strategy for a given author will be highly dependent on their personal goals and capabilities. It shows claims to alleviate the \u2018burden\u2019 of authoring labour may often shift the nature of the labour itself, or the design of a given IDN, into unwanted forms.\n                    <jats:xref ref-type=\"fn\">\n                      <jats:sup>1<\/jats:sup>\n                    <\/jats:xref>\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3757746","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,29]],"date-time":"2025-08-29T11:47:32Z","timestamp":1756468052000},"page":"1-23","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Beyond Authorial Burden"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"20","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-1146-1668","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joey D.","family":"Jones","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton","place":["Southampton, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7512-2710","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"David E.","family":"Millard","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton","place":["Southampton, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,13]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_2_2_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/17530350.2010.506325"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_3_2","volume-title":"On Demand: Writing for the Market in Early Modern England","author":"Baker David","year":"2010","unstructured":"David Baker. 2010. On Demand: Writing for the Market in Early Modern England. Stanford University Press, Stanford."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_4_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/276627.276630"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_5_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1057\/9780230244276_3"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_6_2","article-title":"The combinatorics of storytelling: \u201cMystery train interactive\u201d","author":"Bruckman Amy","year":"1990","unstructured":"Amy Bruckman. 1990. The combinatorics of storytelling: \u201cMystery train interactive\u201d. The MIT Laboratory(1990).","journal-title":"The MIT Laboratory"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_7_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3998\/mpub.12024"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_8_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/1354856516678357"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_9_2","unstructured":"Chris Crawford. 2020. Fundamentals of Interactivity | Interactive Storytelling Tools for Writers | Chris Crawford. (Sept.2020). Retrieved from http:\/\/www.erasmatazz.com\/library\/the-journal-of-computer\/jcgd-volume-7\/fundamentals-of-interactivi.html"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_10_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.3311\/PPee.10313"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_11_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2858036.2858141"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_12_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-34851-8_11"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_13_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-031-47655-6_5"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_14_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1016\/j.poetic.2023.101818"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_15_2","volume-title":"Increasing Authorial Leverage in Generative Narrative Systems","author":"Garbe Jacob","year":"2020","unstructured":"Jacob Garbe. 2020. Increasing Authorial Leverage in Generative Narrative Systems. Ph.D. Dissertation. UC Santa Cruz."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_16_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3337722.3337732"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_17_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1109\/METRICS.2005.24"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_18_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-031-05214-9_4"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_19_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3648188.3675134"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_20_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1177\/15274764241277473"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_21_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/3372923.3404798"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_22_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.4324\/9781315769189-8"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_23_2","unstructured":"Hartmut Koenitz Mirjam Palosaari Eladhari Sandy Louchart and Frank Nack. 2020. INDCOR white paper 1: A shared vocabulary for IDN (Interactive Digital Narratives). arXiv:2010.10135. Retrieved from https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2010.10135"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_24_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-92300-6_51"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_25_2","volume-title":"Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace","author":"Murray Janet H.","year":"1998","unstructured":"Janet H. Murray. 1998. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, USA."},{"key":"e_1_3_2_26_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/02671522.2021.1977376"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_27_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-89454-4_9"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_28_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1609\/aiide.v11i4.12840"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_29_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-12337-0_2"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_30_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-10643-9_9"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_31_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-540-89454-4_1"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_32_2","unstructured":"Yuqian Sun Phoebe J. Wang John Joon Young Chung Melissa Roemmele Taewook Kim and Max Kreminski. 2025. Drama Llama: An LLM-Powered Storylets Framework for Authorable Responsiveness in Interactive Narrative. arXiv:2501.09099. Retrieved from https:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2501.09099"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_33_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-642-33197-8_26"},{"key":"e_1_3_2_34_2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1080\/09548963.2011.540809"}],"container-title":["ACM Transactions on the Web"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/pdf\/10.1145\/3757746","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,13]],"date-time":"2026-08-13T16:34:00Z","timestamp":1786638840000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/10.1145\/3757746"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,13]]},"references-count":33,"journal-issue":{"issue":"3","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,31]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1145\/3757746"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3757746","relation":{},"ISSN":["1559-1131","1559-114X"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1559-1131","type":"print"},{"value":"1559-114X","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,13]]},"assertion":[{"value":"2025-04-16","order":0,"name":"received","label":"Received","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2025-07-28","order":2,"name":"accepted","label":"Accepted","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}},{"value":"2026-08-13","order":3,"name":"published","label":"Published","group":{"name":"publication_history","label":"Publication History"}}]}}