How to Write Interactive Fiction and Interactive Audio Stories

In the traditional fantasy gamebooks from the 80s and 90s, deaths of the player character come quickly and frequently. This creates permanent tension which can be very appealing, something that is not much of problem when reading a book since the reader can choose how fast they read, and they can simply turn back to the last entry and make a different decision.

In interactive stories for Voice, players cannot simply turn back to a previous page. Therefore you should avoid Player Choices that can lead to an early end of the story. Having the player character die, is usually a convenient way for authors to insert Player Choices without having to spend extra time and effort on writing a completely new story path. But is it a constructive approach? In most cases not. You want your story to be played and you want your players to have fun doing so. So do not let your player characters die early on, and in particular do not have them die in an unnecessary way, or without pointing out beforehand the dangerous consequences their decision might have.

Also, use choices that can lead to the death of the protagonist very sparingly. In the interactive story “Die Meisterin” (“The Mistress”), in five cases out of twelve, the first three Player Choices lead to an abrupt end of the story, without warning or the chance to avoid this. Later in the story, deaths are frequent and sudden as well. You only reach one of the two truly positive endings of the story if you are very lucky. Consequently, in their reviews in the Amazon Alexa Skill Store, players criticized it for being a rather frustrating and disappointing gaming experience.

We recommend you avoid letting the player character die before you are at least two thirds into the story, or before players have reached the next episode. And even then, not without pointing out to the player the probably dangerous turn their decision can take. Do not let them pick an option that seems completely reasonable but which in fact just leads to a random death.

A premature end of a crime story, for example, could be that the player fails to identify or capture the true killer because, though they manage to rescue one of the victims, they missed an important clue or made a bad decision along the way. In this case, players would miss the last part of the story, but they would still end the story with a conciliatory partial success after a sufficiently long playing time.

Of course, we have made such mistakes ourselves. In our very first story, “Der Zauberwald” (“The Magic Forest”), the second Player Choice was whether the player wanted to go on an adventure. If they said no, the skill would just end, which players perceived as very negative, and rightly so. This resulted from our own complacency and lack of forethought. We had not worried about how we would want to draw players into the story, how the beginning should be structured, and what a premature ending would mean to the player. Furthermore, players had absolutely no idea that the answer, “I do not want to go on an adventure,” would lead to the immediate end of the story. We hope that this guide will help you to avoid mistakes like this.

Does this mean that early failure in interactive stories is not permitted at all? No, of course not. You, the author, decide the rules of your own stories. It is very easy, for instance, to turn a supposed weakness into a deliberate strength by elevating failure to the core concept of the game. The video game series “Dark Souls”, that sold a gazillion copies, advertises itself with the fact that every wrong move or decision will result in death. Here, the high level of difficulty is a consciously designed part of the gaming experience and thus works extremely well.

If you want to write a challenging story where death looms behind every corner and is the rule rather than the exception, you should communicate that clearly in the story’s description or in an intro text at the beginning. Go with a dynamic narrative pace and carefully devise your story. For an interactive audiobook, an approach like this would certainly be exciting and innovative.

You should also use save points. In TWIST, you can easily set such save points to give your players the opportunity to jump back a short way in the story and continue from there with a different decision without having to play the whole story again. Do not hesitate to make use of this feature. In Voice, unlike in a book, it can be tedious trying to find and reach a certain point in the story again; this can be frustrating for players and might lead them to abandon your story.

If you want to make it especially interesting, you could write alternative texts for your save points. Choices that led to the death of the player character will not be offered anymore once they reach that point in the story a second time. This certainly means more work for you, but it will provide an incredibly fascinating gaming experience to the player because the story will react dynamically to their decisions. (For a detailed explanation of the practical implementation of save points, we offer coaching to our authors; see Chapter 21: Coaching for Writers.)