Stranger Adventures, an interactive net drama, has been running for a couple of years. It has been nominated for an Emmy twice. There is an interview with the writers by Christie Taylor at the Writers University. Here is an excerpt:
How does writing for “Stranger Adventures” differ from screenwriting?
This is just like writing a screenplay to me in that you do have to write shootable scenes as if it were a movie script. However, each of the scenes you write don’t necessarily have to connect to the next one, so it’s like writing individual movies, some with beginning, middles and ends. Others have no ends, just cliffhangers.
When it comes to the e-mails [that characters send to players] it reminds me of when I first began to write screenplays and I used to explain what was going on in the scenes instead of letting information come out in the scene itself. Writing the e-mails to participants logging on and playing the game is committing one of the cardinal sins of screenwriting, where you tell the reader what’s going on in the scene rather than letting the scene speak for itself. I think it’s great in this format because you have to keep the viewer or the player interested and give juicy information without having to think of a clever way of showing it. This gives a very personal touch and allows the player to connect with the character like a real person.