My little game-book is almost finished. It has meant some early rises from bed, and feeling a little exhausted. Overall, I'm quite happy with it: one of my childhood dreams, that of writing a game-book is going to be a reality.
As you know a game-book, is a piece of fiction in which the reader chooses the plot by choosing from a set of given alternatives. In the case of That's Swell, I've added a few dice, because I believe in stories and life there is room for chaos and the unexpected, and because, to be fully honest, rolling dice is fun.
Using a blog to create a game-book.
I'm going to share what I've learned using a blog structure to create a game-book, specifically typepad, but I'm sure most of what I'm going to say will apply to other blogging platforms.
You want pages, not posts.
That's Swell is going to have more than 120 pages, not posts. Why? Well, at least typepad, adds some funny navigation links to the posts. You know like "previous posts", "next posts", "keep reading" and all those familiar navigational links that most posts use.
That's great for a conventional blog because it's often interesting to read the posts in chronological order. But for a game-book, is a complete craze. Game-book fans already know that you don't read the sections of a game-book in sequence: in a printed game book you don't go from page 2 to page 3, to page 4 and so on. Instead, you go jumping from page 4 to page 6 or page 24 according to where you want the story to go.
The "pages" of a blog lack those navigational links, and so they are ideal to get the job down.
Use markdown and CSS.
Actually, I use markdown and CSS whenever I get the opportunity for all my blogging. Markdown, just in case, is a simple language you can use in many blog platforms to format a post or page. Markdown it's easy to learn and much more "visible" than html, meaning it's easier to spot mistakes.
And boy, when you are publishing an online hyper-fiction multimedia book, many things can go wrong. (Trust me)
Markdown is not that powerful, mind you, but that's when CSS comes to the rescue. You need to define standard headings and paragraphs with CSS. You only need to do this once, just define your "perfect" paragraph with CSS and all your paragraphs will come just as professionally great.
( Markdown comes standard in typepad, you need to install a plugin in wordpress).
Go multimedia.
OK, art, music and video can be expensive and I don't go you to go pirate. But there are plenty of alternatives in the web. I can't go into much details, but go for "public domain" and "creative commons".
Some of my sources include From old Books, Flickr and the Internet Archive. Images can be easily edited with The Gimp, which means, you can use a detail in a photo or in a work of art as an illustration.
By the by: the image on this post is in the collection of From old Books.
Check your links
As you write the story, you need to make reference to future sections. Well, I don't know how I make it, but I always end up typing hmtl for html or missing a dot. Perhaps it's a tribute to pay when you can't work full time on a game-book (and who can?). Anyway, just check your links, read the story as if you were a reader and go through every single link.
Set a limit
And break it. :). I mean, tell yourself that your game-book is going to have so many sections, and when you approach the set number, you know it's time to close all the branches of your story.
At times it will seem you are unfair to the reader. At times it will seem like you really want to go the story.
But, keep in mind that if you don't set a limit, the story will keep on branching and branching. There's just no way to include every single option in your story, unless you plan to keep updating the game-book for years to come.
As for That's Swell, the whole thing is yet an unfinished rough draft. It's 118 sections long, the limit was 120, but I'm breaching it soon, and already felling guilty and sad for having to close some interesting story branches, but that's the way it is.
I just hope a kind reader will forgive me.
