User blog:Vngel W/Enhance Your Wiki Experience: Choose Your Own Adventure Stories

So, for awhile now I've wanted to showcase ideas I thought would help enhance the overall experience for users on this wiki. I decided the best method would be through a series of blogs dedicated to introducing these ideas to the community. Now, whether these ideas will be implemented is up for debate, but regardless, I thought it would be a cool way to fire up the wheels of the ole noggin' for fun!

For this first blog, I wanted to showcase a method I think would benefit any and all who wanted to write a "Choose Your Own Adventure" style story. Here's a quick explanation for those who've never heard of this format before: The reader assumes the role of the protagonist (usually through second-person point-of-view) and makes choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The story usually includes multiple endings varying from good and bad. This often requires the user to skip around based on the foot notes of their current chapter.

With that in mind, some of the challenges with having multiple endings is having them all shown on one page. I've read past suggestions that pieces of the story be given its own page, but that risks violating one of the rules involving Unfinished Pages. Fear not though for my technique involves having the entire story listed on one page without having each part or ending revealed unless the reader is ready!

Sample Story:

Chapter 1
Jeff awoke to a screaming alarm clock. Irritated, he quickly smacked the snooze button and rendered a lengthy yawn.

"I hate Mondays..." he mumbled under his breath as staggered to the bathroom.

Still half a sleep, he stared lazily into the mirror and reached down for his toothbrush without looking.

Reach to the left, go to Chapter 4.

Reach to the right, go to Chapter 8.

Chapter 12
That's it in a nutshell!

The only "problem" I couldn't solve was collapsing a chapter once you wanted to return to the beginning again. It's a minor annoyance, but it's the best that can be done -- at least not without jumping heavy in the coding. However, the tabs all collapse on the refresh of the page.

Not let's take a look under the hood!

NOTE: It's a bit tedious to setup, but for those who are dedicated to crafting a CYOA story, this gives you the opportunity to do so. It is highly advised that you test your setup using the magic button called Preview prior to publishing your work to ensure every thing functions how you want it to. Also, this isn't the only method to make this work; this is one I felt was the best way to implement it. If you think of a better way or even an enhancement to my process, let me know in the comments.

Okay, now onto the formatting!

Basically, it's a combination of using the feature for collapse,, and navigation,.

Results from the Syntax Above:
(Let's create some breathing room so you can see the magic)

Chapter39
Test Chapter 39 content. Blah Blah Blah Blah

NOTE: If you don't like the "square" around the text simply remove "article-table" from the code. The same if you don't like the header.

So, that's it!

Again, this is one way to do it, and probably not the best one, but it's what I currently came up with lol. I have a ton of other ideas -- some easier than this one, others... whew! I thought it would a nice little series to give back to community and to test myself. Let me know what you think and if this type of content is something you'd like to see more of moving forward.

Thanks for reading!