Fiction Branches is an online software engine which allows the production of multi-plotted stories. Each story is divided into episodes comprising a single page of text. Each page will have a title, a link back to the parent episode and the story text for that episode. At the end of each episode there can be one or more links to subsequent episodes, plus the option to add another branch to the story at that point.
A new episode can be added to the story by clicking on the 'add new episode' link at the top or bottom of each episode. After doing this a form will be displayed enabling the user to add text for the new episode. When this has been done the parent episode will display a link to the new episode with the link text entered in the add new episode form.
You must be a registered user and be logged in in order to add new episodes to the story. However, registering does not require you to give up any personal information. You may adjust user preferences by clicking the "Preferences" link on the index page once you have logged in.
Episodes may be edited by the webmaster to remove any inappropriate content, correct errors or delete parts of the story which are non-canon. Writers should try and write new episodes which are in line with the style and characters of the story up to that point. Although note there is no need to make new episodes consistent with other story branches parallel to the one you're adding.
HTML tags will be stripped from text entered into episodes, but it is possible to do simple text formatting in the following way:
Text surrounded by *asterisks* will become bold in the output.
Text surrounded by _underscores_ will become italic.
It is also possible to insert links to other pages and embed images in the episodes.
To insert a link, enter the URL enclosed in carets (^). For example ^http://somesite.com^. You can also name your links using an ! after the address as follows ^http://yahoo.com!Yahoo^.
To embed an image in the episode, enclose the URL for the image in pipes (|). For example |http://othersite.net/~user/pic.gif|.
