Postmortem - Writing a Twine stories as a beginner

Introduction

Hello everyone, Cardigan here. I thought it’d be fun making a Postmortem about my first interactive writing experience. More than just recording my circumstances, I want this document to maybe help you create your own things; to flee the little box of insecurity you might be trapped in. So let’s start!

Part 1 - What even is this “game?”

“Three Furry Encounters” (3FE) is a collection of interactive short erotica featuring, you guessed it, three tales. More than that, each of the stories follows a specific interactive story style.

“Meeting with an unicorn” is about finding an unicorn bathing in the forest. In an erotic twist, instead of wish for money or fame, the human protagonist asks for sex with the mystical being. After bathing together, the player can choose to top or to bottom for the horse man. This is what I called a linear or kinetic fiction. 

In “Dungeon of the accursed sword” sword you'll have to escape dark ruins bearing a sword with a strange curse. The player can engage in sexual activity with the monsters of the place, which might lead to a “bad ending.” Otherwise, the protagonist evades or attacks the enemies, and flees the crypt. I called this one semi-linear fiction.

The main character of “Betting at the Club” is in a race against time and his boyfriend to see who can get more partners in one night. The player is put in separate situations where they must choose wisely in order to find the sexual scene belonging to each character. I branded this nonlinear fiction.

As you can see, each form of fiction relates to a specific way to get the gratification that are the sex scenes. We’ll talk more about these later but for now…

Part 2 - How did we get here?

My first attempts at creative work were drawing based, and those did not go well for years and years. For a while, I even gave up on creative work altogether. That was when I came across the wonderful visual novel Minotaur Hotel. Long story short, it gave me the will and confidence to try writing instead.

When I started writing at the very end of 2020 (literally December 12th), I got the invaluable advice of not starting big. So, I started with a small, holiday-themed fanfiction based on that visual novel. To my surprise, the work did quite well and inspired me to continue writing.

So, being the plan-heavy man I am, I started to formulate the steps that’d lead me to my actual interest: interactive fiction. I wrote many short stories on the website SoFurry before trying my hand at a larger project: a short series. 

“Your Lancer” is a four-part story about an apprentice that falls in love with an army captain in a Greco-Roman inspired world. That series is the springboard of my current skill level. It taught me many techniques needed to carry on longer stories in a more engaging way.

And that’s how we get to 3FE. I built confidence in my skills step-by-step. Fanfiction to original short stories to a short series to interactive short story collection. If nothing else, I want you to take from all this that you don’t have to start big and don’t be afraid to experiment. A lesson you (and I) might have to learn over and over.

But enough about me. Let’s get back to the game.

Part 3 - Why is 3FE like that?

As I said before, there are three different types of interactive fiction. I intentionally chose to make three stories and to have each follow one of those “frames.” The reason is simple: I wanted to experiment making them in a shorter format and I wanted to become familiar with their production styles.

Starting with the linear story, it’s the simplest of three. At the cost of the player’s agency, you have something much easier to write and design. Having little to no choices at all might be a detriment to your tale, especially if it’s a solely text based one. Simply put: why is it an interactive story in the first place if the choices don’t matter? Personally, unless you have something else, like an amazing narrative or great art, I don’t find this the best form to present your interactive story.

Then, in the nonlinear story, you find a tale of segregated instances that, connected, form a larger narrative. This might be enticing, as it allows for a larger amount of content without having to focus on a singular story; however, a trap one might fall in making it so disconnected that little or nothing coalesces into an idea in the end. Basically, you might create a bloated, disjointed tale with an unsatisfying conclusion. I recommend this for smaller projects and experiments.

Finally, we have the semi-linear story; a tale that proceeds with slight variations based on the player’s choices. This is what’s usually thought of when one conjures the mental image of an interactive story, and for good reason. This has the best of both worlds, a bonded narrative player and writer can keep track of with ease and lets the player see their input reflected in the story. Alas, it cannot be perfect. Of the styles I tried, this was the hardest and most time-consuming. Mine was simple design-wise, but the larger the project, the harder this already hard style will become. That said, pull it off and you’ll be praised. Whenever someone talks to me about 3FE, it’s often about Dungeon of the accursed sword.

There might be more styles of writing interactive works I didn’t think of, but these are enough for you to gauge how well you can do with writing interactive works.

Part 4 - Was it all smooth sailing?

Hell no!

One thing that’s always going to be true, whatever project you might partake in, is this: things will go wrong.

I like planning; a lot. And things slipped through the cracks. The biggest hurdles were a lack of experience with Twine, not deciding the final story ahead of time, and the time I lost a decent chunk of progress.

Twine is a fascinatedly accessible platform that allows people to make text-based interactive stories with ease. That said, it’s not without limitations or challenges. The basic structure the program provides you is simply too barebones for you to work upon without some coding knowledge. There’s a plethora of tutorials and how-to’s on the internet, but finding what you need is time-consuming; testing even more so. Twine isn’t the best for mobile either. Most of the work I had close to the release was making sure 3FE even ran on mobile without breaking completely. Regardless, there’s an active community still there to provide support when you need it.

All the stories you find in 3FE were as they appear from their very inception except “Betting at the club”; and to me, it shows. The way you deal with your development will always change the final product. So not having that final story on the ready, led to sloppy design and something of a disjointed finale in my eyes. There was a character that was cut entirely from the story because my planning was “incomplete.”

Save early and save often. Every platform or program you work with has the risk of corruption or other forms of data loss. To combat that, I highly recommend multiple backups in multiple devices. Never be unprepared to lose progress either. Losing a good chunk of what I did get me demotivated, but after a pause I was ready and clear minded enough to push through it.

Yes, things go wrong, and it sucks. But you must keep calm and be prepared. Every project goes through that and it’s fine. You can pull through.

Conclusion

And that's the bottom line. You can do it. And not some hypothetical “you,” I mean you right here, the one reading this. It’s not always easy or fun, but I believe you can make it.

If you told me something like that in September, I probably wouldn’t believe you, but it’s true. Unless you’re literally impeded from doing the project you want (interactive story, creative effort or something else entirely) I believe you can make it. Perseverance isn’t easy, but once it gets going, nothing can stop you.

And that’s it for this little document. I hope you learned something or were at least entertained. Big thanks to the communities that led me here. 

I hope you’ll do the thing you want to, because I think you can make it.