Take control of your stories
Remember Fighting Fantasy? Create interactive stories with inklewriter
Do you want to write an interactive story in which the reader chooses what to do next? Maybe you’d like to prototype a branching story that you’re planning to use in a videogame. How about a dynamic tutorial that adapts to the reader’s questions, or an interactive letter to a friend?
With interactive stories, you can allow readers to explore a story or setting at their own pace, solve puzzles and challenges, or feel responsible for character actions. You can take the player through to one ending, or you can create a range of different outcomes in response to their choices.
Texts that let the reader choose what to do next have been around in printedbook form for years, but they’re enjoying a new wave of commercial success as more people carry text-friendly mobile devices. Dozens of apps available for iOS cover all sorts of genres too. Time named inkle studios’ interactive travel story 80 Days as its top videogame of 2014, and we gave it five stars in MF278.
If creating this kind of work appeals, inkle studios’ inklewriter tool is an easy way to get started. Both the creation tool and the reader run in a browser window, allowing you to create, revise and share your stories without downloading any software. If you log in, all your stories are connected to your account, which means you can edit from different computers.
Are there limits? Yes, a few. Inklewriter will let you use bold and italic fonts, but it won’t allow for extensive formatting changes, altering colours or fonts, or attaching your own Javascript. You can embed images in your inklewriter piece, but you won’t be able to embed video clips or sounds. And, if what you want to do requires a rich world simulation, you’ll probably need a tool that allows you to write some code – but inklewriter does allow you to keep track of player stats and markers, meaning that it’s robust enough to build many types of gamebook-style experiences.
All in all, inklewriter offers a surprising amount of power with a very gentle learning curve. And if you do find that you eventually need more options than inklewriter offers, the lessons you learn about designing and organising an interactive story will carry over well to more challenging toolsets. Emily Short
Allow readers to explore a story or setting, solve puzzles, and be responsible for character actions