doug — off the record

just a place to share some thoughts


Writing Interactive Stories

OK, I’m hold enough to confess that I got hooked on the game of Zork a long, long time ago.  Zork was an interactive game that prompted you for various moves at every step.  It was great to visualize and each step potentially changed the story you were immersed in.

For the most part, electronic books follow the printed book where stories are linear.  It works and stories are written that way.

Except for genre of interactive adventure writing.  To do that, you need to investigate Inklewriter.  This application provides a wonderful environment for writing but, more importantly, it helps the author write the interactive, branching story.  Just writing your story and when it comes time to branch, just add the options along with the paragraph that will be the destination!  Inklewriter keeps track of everything so that you don’t have any points where your reader is left hanging!

For the visual among us, a map of your story is generated on the fly.

The interface is straight forward and dead simple to operate.

The clean interface features a toolbar on the left and the big area for assembling your story.  For a small fee, Inklewriter will convert your masterpiece to a Kindle document.

Check out a demo story here.  (The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

You’ve got to give it a shot.  You won’t believe how quickly and easily you, or your students, can writing your own interactive story.  This is a definite keeper – you’ll want to bookmark this.



5 responses to “Writing Interactive Stories”

  1. Too funny! I wish I’d kept my old ‘lessons’ where I had grade twos program their own ‘choose your own adventure’ story in Apple Logo ‘back in the day’!! It was EASY peasy once HyperCard arrived on the scene a few years later (1986).
    Thx for this Doug.

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  2. I don’t go back as far as HyperCard but certainly do HyperStudio!

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  3. […] Writing Interactive Stories: OK, I’m hold enough to confess that I got hooked on the game of Zork a long, long time ago.  Zork was an interactive game that prompted you for various moves at every step.  It was great to visualize and each step potentially changed the story you were immersed in. – by dougpete – Tags: 24 july – https://dougpete.wordpress.com/2013/07/20/writing-interactive-stories/ […]

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  4. […] OK, I’m hold enough to confess that I got hooked on the game of Zork a long, long time ago. Zork was an interactive game that prompted you for various moves at every step.  […]

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  5. […] by Doug Peterson "For the most part, electronic books follow the printed book where stories are linear. It works and stories are written that way. "Except for genre of interactive adventure writing. To do that, you need to investigateInklewriter. This application provides a wonderful environment for writing but, more importantly, it helps the author write the interactive, branching story. Just writing your story and when it comes time to branch, just add the options along with the paragraph that will be the destination! Inklewriter keeps track of everything so that you don’t have any points where your reader is left hanging!"  […]

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