Writing Interactive Fiction

First published: Feb 13, 2014

Back in 2014, self-published science fiction and fantasy author, Michael La Ronn, wrote a short post for the Alliance of Independent Authors about a genre he had recently adopted: Interactive Fiction.

This was at a time when much of mainstream publishing thought of interactive fiction as just for the kids but Michael wanted to change that.

Self-published author Michael La Ronn in 2014, when he first ventured into interactive fiction

If you were a kid like me in the 80s or 90s, it was hard not to like Choose Your Own Adventures (CYOA). They invited you into an exciting, dangerous world where you, the reader, had to make decisions that meant life or death. They were interactive fiction at its finest.

I'm an adult now, and my reading tastes have changed. I wanted an interactive reading experience, but with grown-up characters and storytelling.

I didn't see a novel like this in the marketplace, so I wrote one: How To Be Bad

He was launching his book into a market where this genre had barely registered on adult readers' radar. Publishers weren't paying attention. Critics weren't either. The form was almost exclusively kids' fare or gaming culture. LitRPG as a genre didn't even exist.

What a difference a decade makes.

Today, Michael is a member of the ALLi team and the global interactive fiction market is valued at USD 1.42 billion, projected to reach USD 4.12 billion by 2033.

In 2024, the bestselling author Peng Shepherd published a full interactive novel — with branching paths and reader-determined endings — through HarperCollins, to starred reviews in Booklist and coverage in Town & Country, NPR, and the Washington Post.

And Choose Your Own Adventure, that original childhood touchstone, is now available for readers as young as five.

What Michael sensed in 2014 has turned out to be one of the most interesting undercurrents in contemporary publishing. This article maps that decade, asks questions about the genre's future, and considers what it all means for indie authors today.

What Is Interactive Fiction?

Interactive fiction — sometimes called “decision select” fiction, branching narrative, or choice-based storytelling — is any narrative in which the reader makes choices that determine how the story unfolds. At key intervals, the reader is presented with options. Choose one, and the story takes that path. Choose differently on a reread, and you find yourself somewhere else entirely. There are multiple endings. Sometimes dozens.

The form is older than most people realise. Its digital roots lie in Colossal Cave Adventure (1977) and Zork (1980), text-based games in which players navigated worlds entirely through typed commands. Its print roots lie in Edward Packard's Choose Your Own Adventure series, which began in 1976 and went on to sell over 250 million copies. The genre has always existed at the intersection of reading and play — which is, perhaps, why it has taken mainstream literary culture so long to take it seriously.

But the tools, platforms, and cultural conversation have all shifted.

Interactive fiction today spans:

• Print novels with branching page structures (the CYOA tradition, expanded and reimagined)
• Digital ebooks formatted for e-readers with hyperlinked choices
• Narrative games on PC, console, and mobile — including visual novels, parser games, and choice-based adventure apps
• Interactive film and television (Netflix's Bandersnatch being the most prominent example)
• Web-based and app-based platforms (Twine stories, Choice of Games titles, Episode, Choices) reaching hundreds of millions of readers

The distinctions between these formats matter less than they once did. What unites them is a single, powerful idea: the reader is not a passive recipient of the story. They are, in some meaningful sense, inside it.

Interactive fiction has one major distinction: at certain intervals, the reader is presented with choices that determine how the novel continues. The novel then forks into many different paths, each with more choices, and there are several endings. 

Simple to describe. Vastly more complex to execute well — which is precisely why those who do it well stand apart.

Interactive Fiction for Adults

In 2014, Michael figured there was  a gap in the market, an answer to his own creative hunger to write a book like this.

How right he was.

The global interactive fiction game market was valued at USD 3.84 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12 per cent through to 2032 — a trajectory that outpaces the broader fiction books market, which is growing at just 2.4 per cent annually. Within that market, the adult segment commands the largest share. Analysts note that the adult category accounts for more market revenue than children's in visual novels and narrative games — a fact that directly contradicts the assumption that this is primarily children's territory.

The mobile interactive fiction space is perhaps the most vivid demonstration of adult appetite. Episode — a platform built on choice-based stories — has accumulated over 10 billion episode views across more than 150,000 stories, with over 25 million registered creator accounts. Its audience skews heavily towards adult women.

Choices, from Pixelberry Studios, operates on a similar scale, with a devoted readership willing to pay for premium narrative content. These are not niche communities. They are mass audiences, quietly demonstrating that adults will engage deeply with branching narrative when it is crafted for them.

And a significant signal came from mainstream publishing in 2024. Peng Shepherd is the kind of author traditional publishers build careers around: award-winning, nationally bestselling, with novels praised by the Washington Post, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal. When she published All This and More in July 2024, she wasn't experimenting in a vacuum. HarperCollins backed the book, and the literary establishment received it warmly.

The novel follows Marsh, a woman who at forty-five has given up on her dreams — until she is selected as a contestant on a reality TV show that uses quantum technology to allow her to revise her past choices. The twist: the reader makes those choices for her. The book is structured as a genuine interactive novel, with page-jumping prompts that redirect the reader to different narrative paths, and three official endings.

Booklist gave it a starred review: the novel “deserves to be a smash hit.” Library Journal noted that the mechanics of following the story were “almost as interesting as the story itself.” Town & Country called it a “powerful, thought-provoking story about the choices we wish we made.”

The book was positioned — deliberately — alongside Matt Haig's The Midnight Library and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life: literary fiction about lives unlived, paths not taken. Interactive fiction, in other words, as a natural home for the deepest questions adult readers carry.

What does the indie author do now that the mainstream has shown up?

Children's Interactive Fiction

Before we continue mapping the adult market, it is worth pausing on children's interactive fiction — because its extraordinary longevity is not incidental. It is the proof of concept that everything else rests on.

Choose Your Own Adventure is the fourth bestselling children's book series of all time, having sold over 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998.

The brand was relaunched by Chooseco and is now actively expanding: there are series for readers aged nine to twelve (the classic format, with up to 44 possible endings), a Junior series for five-to-eight-year-olds with full colour illustrations, and new titles being released regularly. The series has been translated into 40 languages.

This is partly nostalgia but it is also something more structural. Children respond viscerally to agency in narrative. They want to know what happens if they choose differently. The combination of reading and decision-making lights up something fundamental in how young minds engage with story. The success of the format in children's publishing is a 50-year experiment with consistent results.

What Michael and other adult IF pioneers were asking in 2014 was: does that response survive growing up? Do adults still want that agency — or do they graduate to purely linear fiction as they mature?

The answer, it turns out, is that they never entirely let it go. They just needed stories that were sophisticated enough to deserve the form.

What Makes Interactive Fiction Work?

Michael was clear-eyed about the genre's failures in 2014.

The genre hasn't caught on with older audiences because they view it as gimmicky—for good reason. They also resist the genre's infamous second person POV (point of view).

Michael La Ronn's interactive fiction How to be Bad (2014)

Michael's approach to his own novel was methodical:

I dislike gimmicks, too, so I approached the genre differently. I eliminated what didn't work: false endings, second person POV, and shallow storylines.

I ditched print books altogether and formatted my book specifically for e-readers and tablets. I had something that felt fresh yet familiar.

• • Reader immersion Readers don’t just read an interactive novel; they participate. My novel is about a woman who accidentally makes a deal with a demon and must steal three innocent souls to break the contract. If she doesn’t, the demon will take soul of the man she loves. She (ie the reader) has to make increasingly unethical decisions, and when it’s over, the reader shares in her outcomes.
  • Built-in engagement My heroine has several arcs, all equally viable and satisfying in their own right. Because of this, every reader experiences the story differently, and the novel becomes something different to each person. Combined with the ethical theme of the novel, this becomes a vehicle for discussion. (“Hey, what did you choose in Chapter 5?”, or “What did you think about the ending where…”)

A decade on, those observations and instincts hold up. What the intervening decade has added is a richer vocabulary for talking about what “craft” means in this specific form.

What constitutes a gimmick in interactive fiction? False endings that punish the reader for curiosity rather than rewarding exploration. Shallow branching that gives the reader the illusion of choice while funnelling them toward a single outcome. Second-person POV deployed reflexively rather than deliberately. Choices that feel decorative rather than consequential — where the story will end up in the same place regardless of what you select.

In short: anything that makes the reader feel like the form has been applied to the story rather than grown from it.

Michael described his heroine in a way that has become one of the most useful frameworks for thinking about interactive characterisation:

“I like to imagine my heroine as a darkened portrait. Every decision the reader makes illuminates a section of the portrait that another decision can't. The reader doesn't see the whole picture immediately, but when they do, it's a complex image — one that grows richer with subsequent rereads.”

This elegant model reframes the branching structure not as a tree of alternatives but as a mosaic of revelation. No single path shows you everything. The character is only fully understood across multiple readings — which makes rereading feel like discovery rather than repetition.

If every path leads to an equally complete story, why would a reader go back? The portrait model creates inherent incompleteness not as bug, but as feature.

Moral Complexity as the Adult Differentiator

What specifically makes interactive fiction suited to adult readers, as opposed to children? Several things — but the most powerful is moral complexity.

Children's IF is fundamentally about adventure and consequence: will you survive, will you find the treasure, will you make it home? The stakes are external.

Adult IF, at its best, makes the stakes internal. The question is not whether your character escapes the monster but whether you — the reader, who has made the choices — can live with what you chose.

This is what Michael built into How to Be Bad. His protagonist must steal innocent souls or lose the man she loves. Every choice is ethically compromised. There is no clean path. And because the reader made those choices, the moral weight lands differently than it would in a linear novel.

You cannot simply observe a character making a bad decision. You made it.

The philosopher's term for this is “moral stakes with first-person accountability.” The interactive form creates it more efficiently than any other narrative medium.

Interactive Fiction: Today's Tools

For indie authors interested in the form, the technical landscape is far richer than it was in 2014. The major options are:

• Twine — Free, open-source, browser-based. Requires no coding knowledge for basic stories, though it supports variables and logic for more complex work. The go-to for newcomers and literary experimenters. Free at twinery.org.
• ChoiceScript — Built by Choice of Games, the industry standard for commercial interactive fiction aimed at adult readers. Simpler to learn than most alternatives, with a built-in publishing ecosystem. The Choice of Games and Hosted Games labels actively publish quality IF and pay authors royalties. See choiceofgames.com.
• Ink / Inky — Developed by Inkle Studios (creators of the award-winning 80 Days), and released as open-source software. A more powerful scripting language designed for professional narrative game development, but also usable for literary IF. The official guide is available at inklestudios.com/ink.
• Ren'Py — Primarily designed for visual novels, with strong community support. Better suited to projects that include illustration or visual elements alongside text.

For indie authors already comfortable with ebook formatting, the simplest entry point is ChoiceScript or a Twine project exported to HTML and packaged for distribution.

Both can be produced without programming knowledge.

Interactive Fiction and AI

Interactive fiction sits in an interesting and uncomfortable relationship with artificial intelligence. On one hand, IF is the form AI can most plausibly approximate: generate branching text, track variables, respond to input. AI-generated narrative games already exist, and the technology is improving rapidly.

For writers, the question is unavoidable: is this a genre that AI will colonise?

The honest answer is: partly. AI can generate branching structures and produce coherent narrative paths, with ease. It can simulate the mechanics of interactive fiction with increasing fluency.

What it cannot do—at least not yet, and perhaps not ever in the way that matters—is bring a human sensibility to the choices.

And in interactive fiction, the choices are everything.

The reason Michael's portrait model works is not that it generates branching text efficiently. It is that a human author decided what the darkness in the portrait means.

Decided what the reader should feel when they finally see the whole picture. Decided which choices illuminate which aspects of a character's soul, and why.

That architecture of meaning — the deliberate curation of moral weight across multiple paths — is not a technical problem. It is a literary one. A human writer who has thought deeply about what it means to make a particular decision, what it reveals about a person, and what it costs, is part of the process.

The practical implication for authors: the AI complication is not a reason to avoid the form. It is a reason to bring more of yourself to it.

The human author in an AI-saturated publishing landscape is most valuable when the work requires exactly what a human brings: moral imagination, emotional truth, a conscious architecture of consequence.

The Indie Advantage, Revisited

In 2014, Michael ended his interactive fiction piece with a clear-eyed observation:

“Self-published authors are in the best position of all to take advantage of this uncrowded genre because publishers haven't caught on to its potential.”

Trad publishers have now caught on. Does that change the calculation?

Yes and no. The arrival of corporate publishers validates the form and expands the readership — both good things for indie authors working in the genre. But the structural advantages that made interactive fiction a smart indie bet in 2014 have not disappeared. They have, in some respects, strengthened.

Format flexibility remains an indie superpower in this space. Traditional publishers publishing interactive novels in print face genuine logistical constraints — the page-jumping structure is cumbersome in a physical book, and the ebook ecosystem, while better suited to the form, is still navigated more nimbly by indie authors who can format for e-readers and apps without a committee decision. Michael identified this early: he formatted for digital from the start, building the interactive experience into the reading device rather than working against it.

Speed is the second advantage. The technology stack for interactive fiction — Twine, ChoiceScript, Ink — is accessible, inexpensive, and increasingly well-documented. An indie author can write, build, and publish a quality interactive novel in a timeline that no traditional publisher can match. In a form where the audience is still being educated and expanded, being early and frequent matters.

The third advantage is the community. The interactive fiction community — centred around IFComp (the annual Interactive Fiction Competition, one of the oldest and most respected literary game festivals), Spring Thing, the Choice of Games Forum, and platforms like itch.io — is vibrant, collegial, and actively seeking new voices.

It is indie spirited and there a debut author can receive substantive critical feedback, develop a readership, and win genuine recognition without a publishing deal.

The the economics of commercial mobile incarnation — Episode, Choices, the vast app ecosystems — is that of those platforms have consistently pushed storytelling toward the shallow end. Monetised choices, premium outfit unlocks, diamond systems — the incentives work against moral complexity and narrative depth.

Independent authors are under no such pressure. They can do what Michael did: strip the gimmick, apply craft, and make something that deserves the form.

What to Ask Before You Write Interactive Fiction

For ALLi members considering their first interactive fiction project, here are the questions to ask

1. Does your story actually need to be interactive?
   • Not every story benefits from the form. The branching structure creates power when the choices are genuinely loaded — when what a character decides reveals something essential about who they are, and when the reader's investment in that decision is personal rather than casual. If your story is best served by a single, inevitable arc, write it that way. Interactive fiction is not an upgrade. It is a different instrument. Use it when the music requires it.
2. What does each choice reveal?
   • The portrait model is the test. Before writing a branching point, ask: what does each option illuminate about the character, the world, or the reader's own moral compass? If the answer is “nothing in particular — it just sends them to a different plot,” that is a gimmick. If the answer is “this choice reveals whether the reader values loyalty over justice, and the consequences live in the story's texture for many pages,” that is interactive fiction working at its best.
3. Are your multiple paths equally inhabited?
   • One of the most common failures in IF is the “thin branch” — a path that the author clearly cares less about, which readers can feel immediately. Every path must be written with the same care and investment as the primary path. This is harder than it sounds. It is also the work that separates literary IF from the gimmicky kind.
4. What format will best serve the experience?
   • Digital is almost always the right answer for adult IF. The page-jumping structure is awkward in print; hyperlinking is seamless on screen. Think about your reader's device and build the experience for it from the start.
5. Have you read widely in the form?
   • The IF tradition is rich. Before writing your own, read Inkle's 80 Days (2014), Peng Shepherd's All This and More (2024), and several Choice of Games titles in your genre. Play Zork if you want the deep roots. Read Emily Short's critical writing on interactive narrative design (emshort.blog) — it is the most rigorous thinking about the form available anywhere. The community is generous with its knowledge. Use it.

Last Word: Back to Michael

Michael La Ronn was not the first person to write interactive fiction for adults. He was not even the first indie author to try it but he was writing at a moment when no one else was making the argument that the form deserved serious literary treatment — and he made it, clearly and without apology, from the evidence of his own creative practice.

When he wrote in 2014 about what interactive fiction could uniquely achieve, he was describing something that would take another decade for mainstream culture to fully recognise.

His heroine's “several arcs, all equally viable and satisfying in their own right” — each one a different answer to the same moral question — is exactly the architecture that Peng Shepherd brought to All This and More ten years later.

His observation that “the novel becomes something different to each person” and “becomes a vehicle for discussion” is precisely the quality that is making the form suited to book clubs, writing communities, and the social reading habits of 2026.

The genre is no longer uncrowded but the core of what La Ronn said in 2014 holds: indie authors — with their format flexibility, their speed, their freedom from commercial pressure, and their willingness to take a form seriously before the establishment arrives — remain the writers most likely to find out what “anything” actually means.

Interactive Fiction: Further Reading and Tools

Notable Adult Interactive Fiction Works

80 Days — Inkle Studios (2014). TIME's Game of the Year; four BAFTA nominations. A masterclass in literary interactive design.

All This and More — Peng Shepherd (2024, HarperCollins). The clearest proof of mainstream adult IF's arrival. Starred Booklist review.

The Wayhaven Chronicles — Mishka Jenkins. A phenomenally successful indie IF romance series, demonstrating the loyal readership available in the genre.

Choice of Games catalogue — A deep library of adult IF across multiple genres, including fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, and more. choiceofgames.com

Community and Competitions

IFComp — The annual Interactive Fiction Competition, running since 1995. The most prestigious independent IF festival.

Spring Thing — Annual IF festival focused on larger, more ambitious works.

Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling — The essential critical resource on IF craft, theory, and design.

itch.io / Interactive Fiction tag — The largest open platform for independent IF, with thousands of works across all genres.

Interactive Fiction Database (IFDB) — The definitive archive and catalogue of interactive fiction works.

Tools

Twine — Free, open-source choice-based story creation. No coding required to start.

ChoiceScript / Choice of Games — The commercial IF standard, with a built-in publishing pathway.

Ink by Inkle Studios — Open-source scripting language for professional narrative development.

Ren'Py — Visual novel engine with strong community support.