Boundless Stories

Build a Boundless Story: To write for Boundless Stories, you need a good grasp of the concept. Boundless Stories are stories with branches. The player (the person reading the story) wanders through the story and makes choices that affect the story. These choices can be as simple as going either left or right at a fork in the road, or as complex as deciding how to negotiate with a tribal chieftan. Each choice takes the player along a different branch in the road. (Remember the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books? Boundless Stories are very much like that.)

In addition, players will have characters with skills. These skills determine a player's ability to do certain tasks. You, the writer, can set the tasks and the difficulty of these tasks within your story.

To write a story for Boundless Stories, you need to use our software. You are, of course, welcome (and encouraged) to draft your story pages in your favorite word processing program first. Our program doesn't have a spell check function, so we highly encourage you to use a program that does. However, once your page is written and edited to your liking, you need to transfer the text into our online application.

To use our storymaking application, you must first register. Registration is free! Registration creates a unique account with a password that only you can access.

Note that, if you wish to share the creation of a story with someone, you will need to share an account and a single password with that person. At this time, it is not possible to create two accounts that each have access to one particular story.

You may share author benefits (credit and royalties) with as many people as you wish. Each author listed on the account can be assigned a certain percentage of the royalties. You can adjust the percentages in any way you all feel is fair. Note, however, that all stories on the same account all give each person listed on the account the same royalty percentage designated for the account. This means that if you want to share one story 50/50, but another story 75/25, then you will need to create two accounts to reflect this difference.

You may have more than one account if you wish. This would be useful in two situations: First, if you wish to create one story as a joint project with a friend, and a second story as a personal solo project, then you will need two accounts. You cannot have one "private" and one "joint" story on the same account - but you may have two accounts, one which you keep private and one which you share. Second, if you wish to write under more than one pseudonym, you will need one account for each psuedonym. Each account can be associated with only one pseudonym, and all stories in that account will be published using that pseudonym.

A pseudonym is the name under which you choose to publish your story. This is the name the players will see. You can only have one pseudonym for the account. This pseudonym can, of course, name multiple people. For example, your account's pseudonym can read "John Engles and Mary James" if you wish. It can be the same as your real name (or names), but it does not have to be. You can publish your stories under the name "Barkblodd the Hungry" if you wish. We don't mind.

(Note, however, that you are prohibited from using someone else's pseudonym. Yours must be unique to you.)

HOW TO USE THE SOFTWARE:Create a new story by choosing a name for the story. The software will now prompt you to create the first page. Type in (or paste in) the text for your first page only. You may also add a picture to this page, if you wish - but you don't have to. At the bottom, you will have the option to write in some options. This is your first branch. Write in the text you want the player to see, and name that page. Save your work. You can then navigate to one of those pages and type in the text for that.

When you reach a final page (a page that ends the story along that branch), check the check box that says "end page" at the top of your work page. This creates a "hard end" that tells the software that you have reached a final page. Note that the software checks to make sure that all pages either have at least one branch leaving it OR have a "hard end" marker. You will not be able to submit a work that does not have all paths closed off in this manner.

PAYMENTS:Once accepted and published, you are entitled to royalties on your work. Your royalty will be 30% of the sales price of each copy sold.

Example: Your story sells for $1. Your royalty is 30 cents per copy sold.

If you have multiple authors involved in the project, you will be able to split that royalty in any manner you see fit. If, for example, you split your royalty 50/50, then you will each receive 50% of the royalty amount. So, if your story sells for $1 and your royalty is 30 cents, then you will each receive 15 cents per copy sold. Note that total percentage given out must equal 100%. This means that a 3-way split can assign 33.333% to each.

You can also assign any percentage of your royalty to a specified charity. (Note that this is not yet implemented, but is planned.)

SIGN UP AS AN AUTHOR: From here, you can login if you already have an account.

Or, you can register for a new account.

BE AWARE: At this time, the software is in its early development. It is a beta product at this time. You may find it a little rough to use. We hope to improve it over time. If you have any suggestions for improvement, please drop us a note and let us know what would make it easier to use.

BE AWARE: The Skills database is up and running, but it is woefully incomplete. If you need a particular skill that isn't there, please email and ask that we add it to the database.

Note that you may give your password to as many people as you wish. We are NOT RESPONSIBLE for any tampering or malicious damage done to your stories. The security of your password is solely your responsibility.