Get ready to do a “Choose your own (spooky) adventure” again this year!
Hey everyone! On October 1st, get ready to jump back in on my annual Halloween serial “interactive” fiction!
How does it work? Why the scare quotes? Well, I’ll put up a proper instructions post the night before, but in the meantime you can read 2024’s instruction post for full details of how this works. It’s not traditional pre-written, video game-style Interactive Fiction — rather, it’s a live story where you help make the choices! (Think old forum “Quest” threads.)
But, to summarize: I put up a section, YOU make suggestions for the protagonist, and then I write the next section taking those suggestions into consideration (along with the protagonist’s established personality, abilities, and resources). Most sections are around 1000 words, and by the end you’ll have both read and helped drive a story to its conclusion!
This year’s is going to be a bit of an unnerving haunted house story, with the protagonist uncovering dark secrets and having to make difficult choices about the things they learn and people they encounter. (And of course, it’ll be queer.)
While you get ready, feel free to take a look through our “Interactive fictions” from previous years, or check out my other books 🙂
3 Comments
matrixagentssjb
*Shang Tsung Voice* IT HAS BEGUN!
(Excited to participate again this year! Thank you again for your willingness to do this! Have a wonderful rest of the week and upcoming weekend! 🙂 )
(P.S. Kinda wanna suggest “Kid Vid” from the “Burger King Kids’ Club” as the protagonist, or at least someone who looks like him 😉 )
MeredithKatz
Welcome back!! I’m so happy you’re excited, looking forward to it!
SDFgh wow, Kid Vid, there’s blast to the past. I’ve decided some things about the protagonist already* and we’re leaning more towards horror and less towards adventure this year, but while I don’t think I can make the protag Kid Viddy I bet I can throw in a little nod to him somewhere in the house, hee hee.
(* The way I plan for these is that I come up with thematics, then a list of characters and their connections to that theme — both the protagonist and secondary characters — then add a key location, and what the villain wants, and then I sit tight and refuse to plan or write ahead on anything so I don’t overdirect the actual story part, I just know the framework everything will happen in!)
Char/Charles Aznable/Hieronymous Di Colonna/Hieronymous Zephyrinus/MatrixAgentsSJB/Skivx/SpiegelGeist
Completely understandable. My apologies for the out there thought, when it comes to horror protagonists my mind is surprisingly blank! Aside from stuff like the masons (Harry and Cheryl/Heather) from silent hill (and James Sunderland!) and Mulder and Skully from the X-Files, when I think horror protagonists I mainly think of the detective types from call of cthulhu and the g-agents from delta green.
Though…one thought does come to mind…..Dr. Herbert West, Re-animator! Someone like him would be perfect for such a story, and would fit the queer theme too (at least the movie version, i read a vampirella vs re-animator comic where I guess he was Bi?).
Can’t wait to read what you come up with!
Thanks again for making my october so entertaining! 🙂