How Interactive Stories Work

FlowBoard can turn cards into an interactive story: branching fiction, a visual novel, or a game’s dialogue. You write scenes as cards, connect them with choices, add backgrounds, characters and sound, and play the result in Play Mode. When it’s ready, you can export it as a Ren’Py visual novel or as an Ink script for a game.

Story cards and ordinary cards

Most cards are ordinary content: notes, drafts, research. A card takes part in the story only when it has a story type. Only story cards play in Play Mode, so you can keep notes and drafts on the same board as the story.

Type	What it is
Scene	A passage of the story: narration and dialogue
Choice	A decision for the reader. Each choice option has its own text and leads to its own scene.
Ending	Finishes a path through the story. On the map its label reads End.
Author note	A note inside the story structure that readers never see. On the map its label reads Note.
Standard	An ordinary card with no role in the story

One card is marked Story starts here. Play Mode begins there. Any Scene or Choice can be the start; on the map it reads Start, or Start · Choice.

Story Map shows two further labels for cards created with advanced markup: Rejoin and Alternate.

How scenes connect

Scenes are joined by connections. A Scene continues to the next scene, and a Choice offers its options, each leading somewhere different. Several paths can rejoin at a shared scene. An Ending closes a path.

Connections can cross columns and boards, so a story can be spread over as many boards as you like, for example one board per chapter.

What a scene can show

• Narration and dialogue. Every line of a scene is shown in turn. A line written as Name: text is spoken by that character, if Name is a character you’ve defined. Any other line is narration.
• A background and characters, each with an expression and a position on screen.
• Music, sound and voice.

What a story remembers

Variables hold what the story needs to remember, such as how much a character trusts the reader, or whether a key has been found. A scene can change a variable when it begins, and a scene can be shown only when a condition is true. See Variables and conditions.

Where characters, images and sound are defined

Characters, backgrounds, expression images, audio files and variables are defined once and reused throughout the story. The definitions are cards in a board’s Reference column. If a board doesn’t have one, FlowBoard creates a Story library column when you add the first definition. Definitions made on any board can be used by the whole story.

Which cards play

What Play Mode plays is decided by board, then column, then card:

• Boards: each board’s context menu has a Play Mode option. If no board in the document has it set, Play Mode plays the board you’re working on. As soon as one board has it set, only the boards switched on take part.
• Columns and cards can be included or excluded individually. On a card, use Include in Play in the Story Inspector, or Play mode in its context menu, with the choices Play, No play and Inherit. Inherit follows the column and board.
• A board that is switched off stays off, whatever its columns and cards say.

Excluded cards are shown with a dotted border. They’re also left out of Read View and Linear view.

Two ways to build a story

• In Story Map: select cards and set their type, options, backgrounds, characters, sound and conditions in the Story Inspector. You don’t need to know any syntax. See Build a branching story.
• In the card text (any device): the same information is stored as markup at the end of each card, for example ::#type/choice. You can read and write it directly. See the story markup reference.

Both edit the same document, so you can mix them freely.

Story Health

FlowBoard checks the story as you work: a missing start, scenes nobody can reach, a choice without options, a variable that was never defined. The results appear under Story Health in the Story Map footer, in the Story Inspector’s Story checks, and in Play Mode. Select a problem to jump to the card it concerns.

Next

• Story Map is the workspace for building stories.
• Build a branching story walks through a first story with a choice.