The more time we spend on our phones, the more text messaging seems like a natural artistic medium, a modern outgrowth of the epistolary novel. You can see it in the fake text message web fiction genre, in games like Sarah is Missing… and in the silly quasi-interactive thriller that a smartphone writing app has somehow seduced me into creating.

The app I’m talking about is called Tap, a recent extension of the existing trend of text messaging fiction platforms. It’s following on the heels of a very similar service called Hooked, and less directly, the kid-focused Amazon Rapids. On both Tap and Hooked, you get what looks like a text message interface, with messages advancing as you tap a box at the bottom of the screen. It’s not like a…

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