My gf/editor and I come from linear fanfic writing backgrounds, and we’ve struggled to effectively work together to edit my games.
I don’t know if it’s a limitation of Twine as an engine or if we just aren’t experienced enough to figure out gitlab/other potential collaboration tools, but it’s been a struggle at times to communicate everything from the location of a spelling error to inconsistencies in story beats.
So….
Any tips on the editing process for Twine or similar Choice-based games?
My partner and I collaborate on Twine games and edit each other’s work, so I think I probably have some useful tips for you, but I’m not very clear on what you’re asking. “How do you edit a non-linear work?” vs. “How do you communicate where edits need to be made in a non-linear work?” vs. “What are some tools that make it easier for two people to collaborate on IF?” would all have different answers.
Fair! I guess I could have made my questions clearer!
Do you have tips on approaching editing a non-linear work? How does it differ, in your experience, from linear works?
Having an agreed-upon structure helps, because “page 2, para 5” no longer makes sense in nonlinear fiction.
I try to name my Twine passages consistently like chapter4-3-angry, where it’s chapter 4, linear section 3 but the angry path. This falls apart with less linear progression, but in that case I keep a naming style that groups them together. In Hand Me Down the end section has a lot of hub-and-spoke organisation, each group put into its own file. This helps edits and location.
I do ally Twine via tweego, which allows me to break things up over files. Chunky bits like a minigame get their own file so it’s easier to edit in isolation (or jettison if needed). I also use git but I’m the sole editor. That workflow could work for multiple, disparate, tech-savvy writers, but it’s not for everyone.
You can also always write/edit all of your passages in an external document for easier reference before pasting them into the structure, once you have a clear-ish idea of where you’re going. Planning is, I think, smoother in some sort of mind-mapping/flowchart tool like Miro rather than Twine since you can see the text more clearly.
Does Twine have any kind of debug mode that would let you include passage numbers of some kind?
As the partner in question, one big thing that helps us is using Tweego & VSCode instead of the default Twine editor. There’s a little more technical skill required but it is much, much easier to collaborate with. Being able to see all your nodes in one text file (or multiple text files, if you want to split it up) makes it much easier to find things, especially if you use descriptive passage names as mentioned earlier in the thread.
Here’s a good article on what Tweego is and what the advantages are, and here is a Tweego starter guide put together by @JoshGrams if you’re interested in checking it out.
Sorry for asking the question and then disappearing—I had a migraine. Encorm pretty much covered everything I would want to say about the collaboration piece of things, but as for actual “how do you edit” stuff:
The answer depends a little bit on what level of editing you’re talking about. On the level of proofreading or even rewriting lines, I think ideally rather than editing differently you want to set your project up so that you don’t have to edit differently. Mostly that means that if you have identical text that appears/can appear in multiple places, you should consider storing it in a variable, using the <<include>> macro in SugarCube, or otherwise making sure that the text itself is only in one place. That way if you find a typo or decide that you want to rephrase something, you’re not hunting down multiple copies of the same text to fix it.
If you want to keep using the Twine editor, there’s an option to export a proofing copy that’s just text, which might help. If you start using VSCode there are spellcheck plugins which may also be of interest.
When it comes to higher-level stuff—moving scenes around, changing or excising plot points, tweaking characterization—it is a little more different from editing a linear story. I think mostly it helps to have a good sense of what affects what: What scenes are/can be downstream of the one I just rewrote or cut? What are all the places where this character appears? And so on. There’s a thread right now talking about various tools for diagramming a branching story, but honestly I just use a combination of a detailed text-only outline and drawing things out by hand on graph paper. How you organize your project can also potentially help with this, whether that comes down to arranging your passages in the Twine editor or splitting Twee files by route or whatever else.
I also completely disappeared, but thank you so much to everyone!
I’ll look into VSCode and such for future projects, but I think for my current one the best approach is the Twine proofreading option.
Thanks in particular to Emery, I appreciate your higher-level editing tips!
Editing is super intimidating to me, so anything that helps make it go easier is amazing!