Hi!
Sorry for disturbing you.
I’m not sure if this has already been asked but what Twine formats would you recommend for a beginner?
Thanks in advance.
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Welcome!
Unfortunately it does not depend on beginner/expert. It depends on what you expect to achieve. For a story oriented project I’d suggest Harlowe, it offers branching (with links) and conditional branchings (with (if:) test). For a game project, with loads of variables, maybe some grinding, Sugarcube.
These two formats are the more likely to get you answers when you have to ask questions.
Feel free to look the documentation, you can start with @manonamora’s Twine Resource Masterlist [Wiki] .
Then feel free to ask questions here when you hit a roadblock.
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As souppi noted, the three story formats (libraries in parser-based language parlance) are tailored for the story style. I consider Chapbooke perfect for kinetic novels, allowing even for little branching/side stories but became hard to code with more branching (mainly because of its variable handling), when, as souppi noted, Harlowe has all is needed for a visual novel and multiple, even interlocked branching, and I estimate that is excellent for CYOA IF (my Harlowe learning arena quickly became a 50+ passage quasi-IF CYOA…)
On top of it, of the three libraries, Harlowe is by far the best supported (syntax colouring and “fill-the-form” macro insertion) on Twine’s visual editor.
I’m still studying Sugarcube, but I feel its debugger a bit too invasive (many of my mistakes are on layout of elements on the screen…) so I can’t confirm or otherwise Souppi’s recommendation.
HTH and
Best regards from Italy,
dott. Piergiorgio.
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Additional to what has already been stated about Chapbook, Harlowe 3.x and SugarCube 2.x …
All three of those Story Formats include in-built features that allows an Author to extend the core functionality of their runtime engines, this allows the Author to create their own custom: macros; widgets; and inserts / modifiers.
However, if an Author intends to use a lot of JavaScript features in their project, then they may want to consider using SugarCube, as it has more built-in support for that programming language than either Harlowe or Chapbook. Which is one reason why there are more SugarCube related third-party “game play” libraries for creating things like Dialogue, Items & Inventory, etc… and examples of doing such, than for the other main Story Formats.
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All formats are easy to start with. They all offer the exact same link syntax, even (they have to). So a simple hypertext game with minimal formatting can be authored the same way with either.
What differs for a beginner is the overall look and feel of resulting games. Chapbook looks elegant out of the box. It also lets you customize fonts and colors very easily. SugarCube looks the most game-like, with save slots and whatnot. Harlowe is minimal. The minimum size of a published game also differs between them. You should probably try them all and see which one you like early on, while it’s still easy to migrate.
Later, of course, you’re probably going to want more advanced effects. That’s where the real differences start.
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I’ve found Harlowe easy to use as a beginner: branching text, variables, and a scoring system. I have found it hard to do any visual design with it, but that may be down to my relatively paltry knowledge of CSS. I’m not sure if save slots are possible with Harlowe - I need to check that out if I write anything longer (as I hope to do).
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Everyone’s advice has been great, but I also want to ask – are you new to Twine, or new to coding in general?
If you’re new to coding, Harlowe and/or Chapbook are probably the way to go. However, if you have some programming experience under your belt you may find them limiting, in which case I’d recommend Sugarcube.
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Harlowe does have a “save” function that you can use; I don’t know if it supports multiple save slots, but if it doesn’t I suspect there are other ways to accomplish that. I’ve got a template demonstrating use of a single save slot here: Harlowe Menu Template by alyshkalia
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Thanks for all of your advice! 
Based on what I’ve read, I think that I might try Harlowe out.
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I started with Harlowe, which allowed me to quickly create a simple hypertext, but I soon switched to SugarCube because it makes it easier to create RPG elements, for example.
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It does. You just need to name the save slots with different names. I’ve tried to explained it in this Save Template.
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Thanks!
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