Part One: Tips on creating branching narratives
How do you go about writing dialogue (and a story in general) for a branching storyline?
Here are 10 Things To Remember for writing branching dialogue...
Time
Hub & Spoke v Waterfalls
Presentation
Consistency
How many options?
Plan ahead
The player is the star
Make it awesome
Choices matter
Signpost big events
Part Two: How does Twine work?
This is Twine.
This is the Wiki for using Twine.
Here's a guide to using Twine by Anna Anthropy.
Here's a background article from The Guardian about "the Twine revolution".
Here's a YouTube tutorial for Twine.
By far the best way to learn how to use Twine is to start playing about with it yourself. You don't need much coding skills (almost none, really), you just need to have some ideas, be curious and get stuck in.
Part Three: Working session
Using Twine, your task is to create a game.
Things to consider:
- The subject should be connected to your own social issue theme
- You should use both Hub & Spoke and Waterfall styles in the game
- Keep in mind the things we've been discussing so far, about branching dialogue and story-telling
- Make sure it works technically
- Keep it simple
Part Four: Feedback
Looking at the games you have made and what you have learned during the course of the day.