Non-linear storytelling involves presenting a narrative in a non-chronological order or with multiple branching paths, giving readers more control over the direction and outcome of the story. There are several tools available to help writers create non-linear stories:
- Twine: Twine is an open-source tool for creating interactive, non-linear stories. It provides a visual interface to help writers structure their story and add branching paths easily.
- Ink: Developed by Inkle Studios, Ink is a powerful scripting language designed specifically for writing interactive fiction. It allows writers to create complex branching narratives, variables, and conditional logic to create dynamic stories.
- ChoiceScript: ChoiceScript is a simple scripting language developed by Choice of Games that focuses on creating choice-driven interactive stories. It allows writers to create multiple-choice text-based games with branching narratives and variables.
- Ren’Py: Ren’Py is a visual novel engine that uses Python scripting language for creating interactive stories, primarily for visual novels. It supports branching paths, variables, and multimedia, such as images and audio.
- TADS (Text Adventure Development System): TADS is an authoring system for creating interactive fiction, including non-linear stories. It provides a powerful programming language and a suite of development tools for creating text-based adventures and branching narratives.
- RPG Maker: RPG Maker is a series of software tools for creating role-playing games, which can be used to craft non-linear stories as well. It allows writers to create custom game mechanics, branching paths, and dialogue trees.
- StoryMapJS: StoryMapJS is a tool for creating interactive maps and timelines that can be used to tell non-linear stories. It’s particularly useful for stories where geography or chronology plays a significant role.
- ChatMapper: ChatMapper is a tool designed for creating branching dialogues for video games and other interactive media. It provides a visual editor for designing conversation trees and supports variables and conditional logic.