This is a short, interactive story where you play as a character who's about to receive a shock when he or she receives powers or decides to use their powers for good or bad purposes. This is the origin story of either a new hero or villain.

I've always viewed interactive fiction as being the same as choose your own adventures really, but it differs (in my view) in the sense that it tells a coherent story rather than one that's light-hearted and can go down many paths. Like, say the main story of the book is to hunt down big foot, you end up choosing to be a monk or do some time travelling. That would be classed as being a CYOA in my view, because of the radical divergence from the main goal.

So, while interactive fiction can branch, the story is always kept in sight and coherent. I guess I view interactive fiction as not having plenty of deaths either. (So, it's more about shaping the narrative, character relationships and such, rather than trying to find a path where you don't die and seeing what sort of wild adventures you can get into)

But yeah, I'm aware that the term interactive fiction is also used to refer to text based stories where you solve puzzles, input text commands, roll dice and such.

So, I suppose in a sense, you could say that what I'd produce would be similar to Endmaster's work, in terms of how it's put together because of the emphasis on story. Ultimately, I guess you could say it's more akin to choose your own adventures.

Granted, the first work I'm looking to produce is quite weak story wise, and short. It's just to test the waters really. I'll save more ambitious things for later. The number of pages required to tell a story can easily become unwieldy, especially if you don't have many deaths, meaning branches don't get closed. I'm sure I'll get to that point, but not really a good idea as a test run.

It's all quite confusing really anyway, as one (at least I don't) never knows the correct label to apply to their work. I know I couldn't use the 'CYOA' tag anyway, as I believe it's copyrighted, which leaves the interactive fiction one, even if it's more akin to 'CYOA'.

Gotcha both. :)

It's just that I'm new to interactive fiction and many stories are told from that perspective. So, I just worried about readers not being able to get into a 3rd person perspective story.

And it's funny really, Drakilian, my motto always is to not worry about 'rules' or what others think. Yet I'm doing just that here.

Anyway, thanks! I won't worry about it. :)

As the topic asks, how would people feel about a non-2nd person story, likely 3rd person, reminiscent of choose your own adventures? Except the story is quite serious and while there is branching, there's no mad cap adventure, and minimal, if any deaths.

That means choices would be relegated to choosing character gender you control (possibly), you choose the dialog and actions the character takes, but that's all.

The reason I ask is because I do find that I'm fearful of writing poorly from the second person perspective. Tense slip-ups as an example, but I also think my actual writing would be better when not using the 2nd person perspective.

Of course, the downside is that with 'you' not being used, players may not feel as involved, as in not thinking they're the character. But plenty of computer games ask you to name the character, and people don't seem to have many problems when it comes to enjoying their story or roleplaying. As I play games myself, it's never bothered me nor do I sit there and think I'm the toon. I'm just sat there making choices on behalf of a character, seeing where the story goes, and I enjoy the games fine.

So, any thoughts? I'll possibly try and publish a short story here from the 2nd person, but I simply don't have high hopes for it. If people are against the idea of writing with 'he/she said', then it looks like I'll have to get much better at it. (As an aside, I've been looking into it a bit. There's an ebook on Kindle http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Adventures-Whatley-Tupper-ebook/dp/B00408ASO6/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1381857555&sr=1-2&keywords=whatley that uses 3rd person narration. Doesn't seem to receive any complaints. Then there's more literary stuff that can be found from Inklewriter, like Frankenstein http://www.inklestudios.com/frankenstein and The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual, a Sherlock Holmes story, http://writer.inklestudios.com/stories/musgraveritual told with the 1st person perspective.)

Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback, especially as I'd like to sell some interactive stories at some point. Hence me wanting to make sure it's something that appeals to people and I figure you're some of the best people to ask. :)

Edit: I've also noticed that there's one or two stories on this site that aren't told from the 2nd-person perspective. Doesn't seem to have negatively impacted the ratings, if I remember correctly.

Thanks for the welcome, everyone. :) I look forward to getting to know you and looking at your work.

Oh and Manchester United aren't doing so well at the minute. I have a feeling they'll start to get better now though. Don't really watch football however. If anyone asks, I'm a Man City fan, though I wouldn't class myself as one with rarely watching it or following the news.

*Hops off to continue his playthrough of the Gamebook Adventures 3: Slaves of Rema app before bed*

Thank you. That's that then. Glad to know it wasn't due to me being clueless! (I normally am clueless, but don't tell anyone. ;) )

Hey folks.

Just wanted to introduce myself as well as ask a question. I'm a writer from Manchester in the UK, and I'll be 28 this year. I am published already, so I'm not new to writing. Interactive fiction, however? That I am pretty new to, though I like gamebooks, rpgs, choose your own adventures (and the choice of games if you know them). So, I am pretty knowledgeable when it comes to knowing how they're put together and such. I just need to get the practise in when it comes to writing them, particularly using second person writing. I also like watching movies and reading books obviously. One of my favorite films would be Taken, and series wise? I like Person of Interest, Arrow and Justified.

So yeah, that's pretty much me. I don't have a preference when it comes to preferred writing/reading genre. I'll write and read anything. When it comes to the site, I'll be looking to provide enjoyable games, most likely in the form of 'stories' rather than more gamey ones. I don't know if they'll have plenty of sudden ends because of wrong choices being picked. I'm leaning towards no, though that doesn't mean the choices won't have to be thought about. Making them more story like will allow me to port them over to kindle as well in ebook form where I publish my work, should I so desire. If you can look at my profile and see that I'm working on a game, just ignore the title and such. It's very much just me testing things and I have no idea what I'm going to write first. It'll likely be short too while I get my feet wet.

Right, so this leads me to my question.

I've pretty much explored many of the functions available when it comes to designing a story, which I was familiar with due to using Twine, and even got to grips with some of the advanced editor stuff. It's pretty easy actually, which is surprising to me with having no programming knowledge. Anyway, the one function I can't find is how to set your game's length? I can see pull-down menus for setting the category, difficulty, and maturity level. But none for the length. So, is that automatically set once the story's published, or? (Also, I'd like to know if there's a way of seeing at a glance how many pages you have for each story alongside a word count. That's no biggy though, as I can just use Twine or MS Word to do that.)

Anyway, thanks for answers and welcomes. I hope to contribute some fun stuff here. While the first one will likely be short, I eventually expect to do long works.