A cloud-based "branching fiction" creator!
The goal of this project was to create a more user friendly version of the online Choose Your Own Adventure writing platforms currently available. Most of the great features available on platforms such as Twine require users to learn special syntax. It's not particularly complex syntax, but it does create a small barrier for writers learning the tool. We believe we can offer a product that is easier to use, has a cleaner, more professional look, and is more mobile friendly than anything currently available.
One thing we have not seen done well is a feature for writers to mark certain passages as unfinished storylines. Some platforms require or encorage writers to finish a story before publishing, or even to write the base of it elsewhere before posting it to the site. Others simply don't have a good way to deal with unfinished storylines. We see a trend, however, of people writing stories in installments, of increased audience participation in the story creation process, and we want to encourage that. We currently have a feature where authors can mark a page as "To Be Continued" which will act like a temporary ending. In future, we also want to give readers the option to subscribe to receive an email or other notification when that branch of the story is added to, and even an option for writers to survey their readers for what to write next at those temporary endings.
- Age restrictions for warned content.
- Banning users and user abuse reporting.
- Readers bookmarking pages of any story to return to later.
- Beta readers features, including a built in option for betas to leave feedback.
- The ability to share stories with certain readers without making them public on the site, possibly via a special link.
- Tracking for most popular stories by how often they are read.
- Rating of stories 1-5 stars by readers.
- Adding visuals so that authors can create graphic novels.
- Adding variables to a story which can contain reader input, or track change based on the reader's choices.
- Statistical analysis of readers choices for writers: which paths are followed most often and which choices are most popular, and potentially even whether the choice of branch affects the reader's rating of the story overall.
- Co-writing of stories or branches of a story, and guest authoring of certain passages or branches.
- Color schemes both for writers while they are writing, and so that writers can set a mood for their readers.
This is the settings page for a story, which lets writers set warnings and subject tags for a particular story.
This is the overview of pages within as story, from which writers can select a particular page to work on, or publish a story. Notice that after it was clicked, the "Publish" button became a "Your Story is LIVE!" button.
This is what the readers sees when they start reading a story. The continue button will take the reader to the next page of the story.
Pages further into the story may have multiple buttons linking to new pages, as seen below.
