Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

50%
+0 −0
Q&A Are there tools that can aid an author in writing a branching storyline?

I would like to know whether there are any tools that would help an author write a branching storyline. Usecases may for example be: campaigns for Pen and Paper games visual novels Choose Your O...

4 answers  ·  posted 7y ago by Secespitus‭  ·  last activity 5y ago by System‭

#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-12T23:01:19Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/32467
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T07:40:03Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/32467
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by (deleted user) · 2019-12-08T07:40:03Z (about 5 years ago)
I would like to know whether there are any tools that would help an author write a branching storyline. Usecases may for example be:

- campaigns for Pen and Paper games 
- visual novels
- _Choose Your Own Adventure_-style books 

The common thing is that there are people who will interact with your work by choosing certain paths, all of which you have to account for.

The problem with writing these things in Word is that you can very quickly lose track of where exactly you wrote what and which events predate the current state you are writing about. Overlooking paths you have already accounted for can happen quite fast. Putting new paths you haven't thought of before into the document is quite difficult. Making multiple files can lead to a lot of files and thereby it becomes difficult to keep track of everything again.

Of course often you have certain decisions that lead to branches and then merge the branches for key events again, but most the problems I mentioned are still there.

Is there software that would help me overcome these problems? Preferrably the software should be free.

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2018-01-10T20:12:47Z (almost 7 years ago)
Original score: 11