Some hypotheses I have right now, in no particular order:

1) TINAG isn’t necessary in order to tell stories; but some ambiguity as to where the story stops is helpful.

2) You can create a frame around your story (eg a multi-platform story that aggregates in one core website) and you can break TINAG at that one place. All other de-immersing moves (such as having your ‘character’ messaging people reminding them he’s fictional) should be kept to a minimum.

3) Redundancy is important in digital narratives: while books have to be ruthlessly trimmed, there’s so much rubbish online that if every element moves the story on, it doesn’t feel right. It’s the equivalent of those clunky five-minute exposition sequences you see in bad movies.

4) The intermediate stage between a digital story (with redundancy etc) and a print book, that you can sell as you can’t digital ones, is this central/framed website.