RESOURCES, LINKS, & THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

[alana_exchange]

AO3 ONLY CYOA

The simplest way to make a CYOA on AO3 is to make each node of the story a single chapter and hyperlink between them! If you upload all your chapters in approximate order (for your own ease of editing) and want to shuffle them afterwards to obfuscate the order, you can go to "Edit Work" then "Manage Chapters" to drag them into any order without breaking your links.



You can either upload completed chapters and edit the hyperlinks in post-upload, OR make dummy chapters equal to your story nodes, grab the URLs and link up the hyperlinks in your writing program, and then edit the dummy chapters to have the full text afterwards, whichever makes it easier for you.

The less simple way is to use the awe-inspiring power of Workskins to code a single-chapter CYOA. This is beyond our ken but it looks cool as hell!

SUGGESTED HOSTING

If you need hosting, we suggest the following websites:

https://neocities.org - Free website hosting, 100% blank slate
https://itch.io/ - Game marketplace, provides support for Twine (and HTML, Java, and Unity in general) to be played in-browser, and has a semi-private publishing option
https://borogove.io/ - Free hosting for IF games (including Twine, Ink, and several other systems), games can be private/unlisted
https://dashingdon.com/ - Free hosting (for Choicescript only)

PLANNING AND STRUCTURE

It is totally fine to go into a CYOA without a plan! Since the requirements for the exchange are so low, it can be very easy to find just a few choices and endings from a simple premise. But, if you want to plan... the example story flowcharts were made with this free flowchart maker, but anything that lets you draw boxes and lines should do you (Google docs, office software, a notebook and post-its...) You could also organize with bulletpoints and indents, especially if each path is fairly linear and non-connected.



However... you can always interconnect your paths! The most traditional format of a CYOA is a tree, with each branch seperating out from the rest, but you can always weave what Marco Arnaudo calls 'network' or 'string of pearls' stories.


Borrowed from Marco Arnaudo's "Studying Gamebooks: A Framework for Analysis"

You can also create even stranger structures-- loops (where later choices lead back to previously seen nodes), locked rooms (where nodes are not linked to by any other node and can only be discovered through investigation outside the links), hidden hyperlinks in the text...? The only limit is your imagination!

SOME COOL LINKS

Links about CYOAs, gamebooks, and hypertext games:
https://analoggamestudies.org/2023/09/studying-gamebooks-a-framework-for-analysis

AO3 Workskin Resources:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/11514573
https://archiveofourown.org/works/15685086/chapters/39753822

Twine Resources:
https://twinery.org/cookbook/index.html
https://www.jezner.com/2021/03/09/twine-2-tutorial-getting-the-players-name/
https://intfiction.org/t/new-sugarcube-version-how-to-play-audio/45778/4
https://twinelab.net/twine-resources/#/
https://twinery.org/reference/en/
https://itch.io/queue/c/1758362/twine-resources?game_id=644320

Choicescript Resources:
https://www.choiceofgames.com/make-your-own-games/choicescript-intro/

Some cool games to check out:
https://birdland.camp/
https://www.choiceofgames.com/user-contributed/fallen-hero-rebirth/