Hello all! A bit of shameless self-promotion here, but this year I’m trying to get my competition up and running! The site is Choose Your Own Novel Month (http://www.chooseyourownnovel.webs.com), and the goal is to write a piece of interactive fiction (text adventure or choose your own adventure) in the month of January. There are no word goals, just the goal of completing any piece by the end of the month.
I really want to get as many people as possible! If you’re even remotely interested, please sign up as a member of the site and tell anyone you know that may be interested.
You’re clearly NaNoWriMo inspired; is the idea to both start and finish the game in January, or is it OK to finish a CYOA you started earlier? (I’ve got a vested interest, since I have a half-completed CYOA.)
Yeah, this is inspired by NaNoWriMo (sorry I forgot to mention that earlier!). It is perfectly fine to finish a project already started. I too have a few uncompleted projects, and figured this would be good motivation to finally finish them…
Another question–choose-your-own novel makes it seem as though maybe a person is only allowed a discrete number of choices, like from a CyoA book. Will this be the case? I may not have looked closely enough at the rules to tell.
Participants either have the option of creating games where the player has list of certain choices (like CYOA books) or a text-based adventure game where the player can perform any action. Information on how to make both kinds of games is available on the site.
Other kinds of games would probably be acceptable too – the only requirement is that the player is able to make some kind of choice within the game. The intention is for writers to explore interactive fiction and its potential, and to begin to think beyond the linear structure of typical stories.
Only two days left before the writing begins! If you’re interested please sign up as soon as possible. Everyone is welcome. Even if you know nothing about interactive fiction, there are lots of tutorials and programs on the site.