Are There Any Special Requirements For Publishing Story Games?

This FAQ is intended for authors planning to publish Interactive Story Games on Literotica.

First, you should know that readers of Interactive Fiction and readers of traditional fiction have different expectations. Understanding the expectations of your Interactive Fiction readers is important if you want your work to be well received on Literotica (or anywhere else that you publish).

It sounds simple, but readers of Interactive Fiction want interactivity. Readers want to be actively involved in the story and have a high degree of control over the narrative throughout.

Taking one of your traditional stories or novels and adding a few random Choices or side plots will likely not result in a work of Interactive Fiction that most readers find compelling. We call our Interactive Stories “Story Games” for a reason. Authors of Story Games should prioritize a compelling “game play” experience for readers - from the planning stage of the story through the writing, editing, and play testing/user feedback.

Because readers expect Interactive Stories to be interactive, we may send back Story Games that do not meet the following minimums:

• 20 Knots (story blocks) per story - Because of the branching nature of Interactive Fiction, each reader will only see a fraction of the Knots you write (depending on their Choices), so you need enough to tell a compelling story. (Knots FAQ)
• 40 Choices per story - Each Knot should have at least two Choices (preferably more), so the actual number of Choices in popular Story Games is likely to be in the hundreds, if not thousands. (Choices FAQ)
• 1,000 words of narrative text per story (excluding game code) - In traditional fiction, readers see all of the text you write. In Interactive Fiction, they see a fraction of the text (depending on their Choices). Successful interactive fiction authors write more text so that each of the many possible narratives is compelling for a reader.

In addition, we highly recommend that authors review the full Interactive Story Writing FAQ to learn about core features like Conditionals and Variables, which make the game play experience much more immersive for readers.

These are not hard limits - experienced authors may use Tunnels or other advanced features allowing more interactivity with less Knots, for example - but we reserve the right to send back (for more editing/writing) any story that does not have sufficient narrative text and interactivity.

In addition, Literotica Interactive Adult Stories (Story Games) are required to follow all of the same content rules (all characters must be 18+, etc.) as other stories published on Literotica. Please review our site wide Content Guidelines for more information.

If you’re interested in helping test and give feedback on the new Literotica Interactive Story Games, either as an author or a reader, please read this thread in the Literotica Forum: Interactive Adult Story Testers Needed.