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Best way to proof each possible storyline? Harlowe, Twine 2

It's entirely possible that there is no good answer to this question, but I figured it was better to ask just in case.

I've finished a first draft of my choose-your-own-adventure story. It's 266 passages, with three POV characters and five endings. Obviously, there's a lot to proofread. Most of all, I want to make sure the story makes sense no matter which choice readers make, especially since readers can skip from one POV to another. The best way to do this would be to read each possible storyline by itself, to ensure that readers don't miss information even if they don't read every passage.

Is there a good way to read each storyline separately? Or do I just need to figure out all the possible configurations manually?

Comments

  • There are many good answers to this question, but no absolute, "right" answer. For starters, you could try installing special proofing software in Twine. The one I'm currently using is called, "Illume" and you can find it here: Illume. This might help organize things for you to begin proof reading it. However, in my opinion, the best answer is to get your friends and family to beta test it for you. Ask them to make note of any grammar/spelling errors, or areas of confusion. To help everyone during the beta testing phase, you can create a footer passage and have it print out the passage title for people to reference the passage directly. I'm sure there are ways to do that through SugarCube, not certain about Harlowe, but confident you can find a way.

    Other than that, with 266 passages and so many different options, a lot of it is just gonna be tedious testing, I'm sorry to say.

    Hope this helps, and best of luck!
  • edited January 2017
    Oh, that's a really good idea about the footer with the passage title in it. I do have people lined up to read it, but I know there's a lot I can fix first.

    I just installed Illumine and it looks really useful. Thanks for the tip!
  • edited January 2017
    MeekoSoup wrote: »
    To help everyone during the beta testing phase, you can create a footer passage and have it print out the passage title for people to reference the passage directly. I'm sure there are ways to do that through SugarCube, not certain about Harlowe, but confident you can find a way.
    I would have thought that a header passage would make more sense here, but whatever floats your boat.

    You can accomplish this in both Harlowe and SugarCube (v2) fairly easily.


    Harlowe

    Create a new passage, tag it with either header or footer, and place something like the following within:
    <!-- This line intentionally contains only a comment as a bug workaround. -->
    #:: (print: (passage:)'s name)
    
    SEE: heading markup, (print:) macro, (passage:) macro, header special tag, and footer special tag.


    SugarCube (v2)

    Create a new passage, name it either PassageHeader or PassageFooter, and place something like the following within:
    !:: <<print passage()>>
    
    SEE: heading markup, <<print>> macro, passage() function, and PassageHeader & PassageFooter special passages.

    Beyond that, SugarCube's websites contain some debugging add-ons (under: Downloads > Add-ons). In particular, the <<bugreport>> macro.
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