Build a Boundless Story:
To write for Boundless Stories, you need a good grasp of the concept.
Boundless Stories are
stories with branches. The player (the person reading the story)
wanders through the story and makes
choices that affect the story. These choices can be as simple as going
either left or right at a fork
in the road, or as complex as deciding how to negotiate with a tribal
chieftan. Each choice takes the
player along a different branch in the road. (Remember the old "Choose
Your Own Adventure" books?
Boundless Stories are very much like that.)
In addition, players will have characters with skills. These skills
determine a player's ability
to do certain tasks. You, the writer, can set the tasks and the
difficulty of these tasks within your
story.
To write a story for Boundless Stories, you need to use our software.
You are, of course, welcome
(and encouraged) to draft your story pages in your favorite word
processing program first. Our program
doesn't have a spell check function, so we highly encourage you to use a
program that does. However,
once your page is written and edited to your liking, you need to
transfer the text into our online
application.
To use our storymaking application, you must first register.
Registration is free! Registration
creates a unique account with a password that only you can access.
HOW TO USE THE SOFTWARE: Create
a new story by choosing a name for the story. The software
will now prompt you to create the
first page. Type in (or paste in) the text for your first page only.
You may also add a picture to this
page, if you wish - but you don't have to. At the bottom, you will have
the option to write in some options.
This is your first branch. Write in the text you want the player to
see, and name that page. Save your work.
You can then navigate to one of those pages and type in the text for
that.
When you reach a final page (a page that ends the story along that
branch), check the check box that
says "end page" at the top of your work page. This creates a "hard end"
that tells the software that you
have reached a final page. Note that the software checks to make sure
that all pages either have at least
one branch leaving it OR have a "hard end" marker. You will not be able
to submit a work that does not have
all paths closed off in this manner.
Learn more.
PAYMENTS: Once accepted
and published, you are entitled to royalties on your
work. Your royalty will be 30% of
the sales price of each copy sold.
Example: Your story sells for $1. Your royalty is 30 cents per copy
sold.
If you have multiple authors involved in the project, you will be
able to split that royalty in any
manner you see fit. If, for example, you split your royalty 50/50, then
you will each receive 50% of
the royalty amount. So, if your story sells for $1 and your royalty is
30 cents, then you will each
receive 15 cents per copy sold. Note that total percentage given out
must equal 100%. This means that
a 3-way split can assign 33.333% to each.
You can also assign any percentage of your royalty to a specified
charity. (Note that this is not
yet implemented, but is planned.)
SIGN UP AS AN AUTHOR:
From here, you can login if
you already have an account.
Or, you can register
for a new account.
BE AWARE: At this time, the
software is in its early
development. It is a beta product at this
time. You may find it a little rough to use. We hope to improve it
over time. If you have any suggestions
for improvement, please drop us a note and let us know what would make
it easier to use.
BE AWARE: The Skills database is up and running, but it is
woefully incomplete. If you need a particular skill that isn't there,
please email and ask that we add it to the database.
