Young Writers Society

Hi guys,

I'm writing an app which is basically a decision based story where the user has the choice of saying yes or no throughout the story. Based on his or her decision the story changes. There can be numerous endings to the story but only one ending is the right one.

The app is just a bit of fun and I have started writing the story behind it with no real structure or path so I am kind of stuck and I am looking for inspiration.

So far the story starts with the user waking up in a forest in the dark, not knowing how he/she got there. The first decision the user must make as to whether he/she goes to check out a body lying on the ground near him.

If anyone is interested in helping me out I would be grateful.

Thanks,
Matt

Hi there! And welcome to YWS!

What kind of help are you looking for on this project? AND since you're looking for help on it, I've moved it from the welcome mat to the Writers Corner where it'll get the attention it deserves (and more appropriate attention, too.)

Are you looking for those with experience with choose-your-own-adventures? Or app developers? Because we may have some CYOA-experienced folks around here, but only a handful of app-savvy folk.

My favorite thing ever for planning out branching stories is articy:draft. The big downside is that you have to pay for the program, but if you're serious about publishing your app and want to continue publishing CYOAs, it is very reasonably priced even with the commercial license.

This seems like the kind of thing @fortis might be interested in, she recently wrote a Choose Your Own Adventure story!

This is so cool! I feel like it's the kind of secret adventure you could play with on a bus or hidden behind a math book or something. The fragmented app-ishness of it looks like it won't take up too much concentration, but will still be really fun to engage with.

Maybe for each part you could ask yourself 'what if' and try to come up with two or three potential outcomes, then pick your favourite.

Inspiration is everywhere; humans are natural daydreamers, and we get lost in our own adventures all the time, even if those adventures involve kissing a classmate or having an imaginary argument with someone. A lot of the time when we think we're looking for inspiration we're actually looking for a right answer. Instead, think of as many ideas as possible, including, and especially, the silly ones. Even if an idea doesn't fit the theme you can still have fun playing with it and maybe use some alternate form of it at a later point.

My suggestion is create your 'Right' path first. All the way to the end and mark where each choice is. I am one of those, "use paper" programmers so I know what you are going through.

Start with your original "good ending" storyline, then branch off with each of decisions working backwards. You have no idea where something might go if you start your branching at the beginning, but working backwards you can start with just two endings and make your four or however many you have. that is my suggestion.

Thanks guys for all the responses, I completed the story to the best of my ability and uploaded it to the app store, if you guys have iphones it would be great if you could check it out and give me some feedback or suggestions on how the story should go, etc

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/yesno/id1179135742?mt=8

Or even if you guys want to help me to build out the story even more or suggest features and then I could update the app.

Thanks,
Matt

XxXTheSwordsmanXxX wrote:My suggestion is create your 'Right' path first. All the way to the end and mark where each choice is. I am one of those, "use paper" programmers so I know what you are going through.

Start with your original "good ending" storyline, then branch off with each of decisions working backwards. You have no idea where something might go if you start your branching at the beginning, but working backwards you can start with just two endings and make your four or however many you have. that is my suggestion.

Thats really good advice thanks, I wrote the program and then thought that was the bulk of the work done, and then I had to write a story as well and didn't think it would take long but, with so many endings, and the fact that a story never really finishes

With the app, I think there are way cooler things I can do with it like making the story more personalised, maybe getting information from their facebook account and using their friends as characters in the story!

If you can download and check out the app and give me some feedback i would be grateful (if you have an iphone) or you can check out my github account

https://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/yesno/id1179135742?mt=8
https://github.com/mattroo8/YesNo

Thanks,
matt

Unfortunately, I have only Android devices, so I can't play it through.

Did you code the entire thing from sctatch? :o

Ah thats a pity. Ya I coded it from scratch in objective C. That was the easy part I think, writing the story was the hard part

That's really cool.

Are you planning to release the program as a "make your own CYOA story" app with the story as a demo of what can be done, or are you going to be releasing just your own stories on it?