🧩 How Stories Fit Together
The core mechanics are the rules that turn single stories into topics readers can follow, branch through and finish. This page will guide you through the shape of a topic, the rules every writer works within, and where each mechanic is explained in full. Read it before you open the Studio, since a well-planned topic is far easier to write.
The Studio is open to the site owner only for now. This section describes how writing works, so future writers can plan their topics in advance.
The shape of a topic
Every published story belongs to a topic. A topic starts with its opening story, and it is one of two kinds:
- A thread: stories joined by choices. The opening story offers up to three choices, each of those offers up to three more, and so on. The first choice is the main path and the others are side paths. A crossroad links across to a published story elsewhere on the site. A story with nothing placed under it is an ending, and each published ending earns readers a gem.
- A series: dated entries, newest first, with no choices. Readers move by previous day and next day.
Around the topics sit planned stories, which hold a title and teaser until you write them, and Briefs, short posts that scroll in The Wire and belong to no topic.
The rules at a glance
- A story must belong to a topic before it can be published or scheduled.
- A story offers at most 3 choices.
- Paths never loop back: a story cannot lead to a story that comes before it.
- Each published ending in a thread is one gem on that topic's belt.
- A series has no choices. Its entries are ordered by covers date.
- Briefs are never part of a topic, and the Android app does not show them.
The mechanics, one by one
Best Practices
- Sketch the tree first: a few boxes on paper show where the endings and side paths are.
- Keep the main path strong: many readers follow only "Continue the path".
- Read Designing good threads before your first large topic.