A Quick Guide On POVs And Tenses

Selective Mutism (SM) is a situational anxiety disorder. Those with SM speak fluently in some situations but remain consistently unable to speak in others. Outside of speech, all forms of communication may be inhibited, such as writing, body language, gestures, and facial expressions in some people.

Good Links: DSM, NHS, iSpeak, SMIRA

SM is not very well known, therefore there are many misconceptions about it.

1 - Selective Mutism is NOT a choice.

People with SM are unable to speak in certain situations, or with certain people. They do not refuse to speak. 

2 - People of ANY AGE can have selective mutism. 

SM usually begins during early childhood, most commonly before the age of 5. Many people believe that it only affects children and that they will ‘grow out’ of it. This is not always true. It can still persist into adulthood, especially without treatment. 

3 - Selective Mutism is NOT always due to trauma.

There is no evidence that people with SM are more or less likely to have experienced trauma or mistreatment than people without SM. As stated, SM is an anxiety disorder, not a trauma disorder. Although some people with SM may attribute it to trauma, this is not the case for the vast majority of people with SM.

4 - Selective Mutism is NOT a symptom of, or the same as, autism.

Selective Mutism is classed as an anxiety disorder and can be ‘recovered from’. Whilst autism is classed as a neurodevelopmental disorder, or neurodivergence, which someone will always have.

The two conditions are commonly comorbid. However an important distinction is that SM is mutism that is specifically caused by anxiety, not by autism (or by delayed speech or language impairment). In each case the mutism will have fundamentally different causes, and require different ways to treat and respond to each person. This is an important distinction, as misdiagnosing one as the other can be potentially harmful.

5 - People with Selective Mutism always have ‘lesser’ language abilities.

There is no correlation between SM and an individuals language development.

How to write a cane user character

(Written by a cane user)

A few months ago, I wrote a small guide on good disabled characters and why they were good that gathered quite the attention, and I thought that doing another more specific guide this time would be interesting for writers or just people that are curious ! This guide will include general informations, some things to do, some things to avoid and some ideas that might revolve cane users's lives.

Things to know about cane users

Cane users are pretty diverse, and putting us in little boxes usually isn't the best idea if you want to make a character that has substance and isn't just "the disabled one". Here some infos about cane users that might be helpful knowledge !

Canes don't have ages. Most cane users in media are portrayed to be old, but truly, anyone can have the need to wield a cane ! I've been using mine ever since I was 17.

Can users can have a large variety of problems for their canes. Some canes are used to avoid pain from effort. Some canes are used for balance purposes. Some canes are to make walking less exhausting (works the same as walking sticks !) And sometimes, it's multiple problems at once.

Not everyone needs their cane 24/7. Some always need it, some can make small efforts without it but overall often need it, and some people, like me, can spend quite a lot of time without it. I almost never use my cane in my house, and mostly take it outside !

People with canes can run. We're not necessarily slow, I'm even faster than a lot of my friends.

Not using a cane can come with consequences, but not always. Some people might be able to walk without a cane but then suffer horrible consequences, but for others, canes are just a commodity for specific occasions.

Canes don't have to be looked down upon. Look at some characters with canes that look cool as hell ! Arsène Lupin, Roguefort Cookie, Brook ... Their canes serve their style !

We can be pretty healthy. Some people can have canes just because they were born with a bent leg and that's it. Our cane doesn't define our health status.

Canes aren't a curse. Think of them as something positive. It's a tool to make our lives better. You don't see someone sitting on a chair and think "awh, it's sad that they need a chair". It's more something like "hey it's cool that this chair is here so they can sit down"

Things to do

Make them use their cane. And when I mean use, I mean that canes are just funky long sticks usually made out of metal. Have fun with it ! Let them use it as a weapon ! Trust me, one hit in the knees with a cane and you're DOWN. Use it to reach stuff that's too high for everyone ! Have fun. Be creative.

Let them decorate their cane. It's an extension of their body ! You usually put on clothes that you like, don't you ? It's the same for a cane. If they like cutesy stuff, let them paint in it pastel colors ! If they like a more flashy style, add some stickers on it ! If they're a fancy person, give them a beautiful crafted cane with jewels on it !

You can make them a little shy or uneasy about their cane. Some people don't feel worthy of confident enough to wield one. It's not rare to see people think they're "not disabled enough to do so"

But on the other hand, you can do the complete opposite !! Make them proud of that cane ! Make them act like they're feeling pretty and more confident with it ! One thing i like to think about with my own cane is that I look like a cool gentleman. That boosted my confidence immensely.

Things to avoid

Don't make it their whole world. And by that, I do not mean that their cane shouldn't be a defining trait of their personality. Think of Toph from ATLA. She is blind, and you usually can't think of her character without describing her as blind. However, that isn't her entire personality trait. Make cane users have a goal in life, friends who enjoy them for who they are and not just pity them, have fun ... Don't just make them the disabled one.

Don't try to make the character's life just a plain disaster unless it's the focus of your story and you really know what you're talking about. Having a character who's always in pain, who feels bad about relying on their cane and/or who's angry at the entire world for being disabled is a REALLY tricky subject to use if you don't want them to be either a mass of unhappiness and angst for no good reason or some inspirational porn of the character who inside is deeply tortured but outside keeps up a facade because they shouldn't cry to avoid making others uneasy.

Do not, and I repeat, do NOT try to heal them, especially in a magical way. Bad idea. A lot of disabled people's goal isn't to be healed. It's to live a normal life. Making it so the ultimate goal for them is to be healed makes it as if they were worthless as long as they were disabled. Making their situation better physically or mentally is one thing. Curing them completely is really bad. "But some disabled folks want to be cured !" True, true. But if you are able bodied, I'm not sure if you can have the right mind to understand all of the complex details about this situation that leads to someone's life choices and the end result may look like you think the only thing that can make disabled people happy is being freed from their condition. I think it's best to just avoid it altogether. If you need a more nuanced idea, try to give them a solution that still has a few downs ! For exemple, a prosthetic that feels like a real arm, acts like a real arm and basically replaces it perfectly is a full cure. But a prosthetic that takes time to adjust to, needs repairs sometimes and doesn't look 100% like an arm can be a better narrative choice

Smaller thing, but don't make the handle uneasy to wield if you draw the character design. You can decorate most of the cane, but if you have chunky spiky decorations on the place you're supposed to clench your hand over, you're gonna hurt yourself. I've seen quite a lot of jewel handles or sculpted metal handles and usually their not good. If it's detailed metal, your hand will end up cramped in little parts and it can hurt. If it's a jewel, it's so easy for it to slip out of your hand it's unpractical.

List of tropes/ideas of scenes/details about canes to help you write new situations !

If you walk with a cane during winter, you can't put your hand in your jacket to get warm and there's a high chance your hand will get freezing. So after a long walk, you get an excuse for another character to hold their hand and warm them up.

If the handle is metallic, you get the opposite problem during summer. You can burn yourself so easy ! Easy accident if you want someone to help and get closer to the disabled person without it necessarily involving their disability.

Canes are SUPER useful when you're walking upon heights. They make things really easy, just like hiking poles on mountains ! I live on volcanoes and whenever we clim on a harsh slope, I'm always the first to get up there. Good moment for your character to get a boost of confidence if they get all the way up somewhere before their friends !

The first time using your cane feels magical. If you have chronic pains, it makes you feel like your pain disapear. If you can't walk right, it feels like everything is suddenly alright. The moment where a character chooses to wield a cane can be huge for character development. It's a moment of fear because of the impact a cane has on their appearance, but also a moment of confidence and relief.

Canes fall. All the time. And after a while, it becomes fucking comical. Trust me, putting a cane against the wall, seeing it fall and doing it three times again in a row while it doesn't want to stay up makes you embarrassed but also makes you want to laugh because of how stupid it looks.

When you get a cane, you stop being invisible. When you walk outside, generally speaking, people don't look at you. They don't care about you. But when you get a cane, people start to stare at you for no other reasons that you have a cane. Half of them are just curious, especially if you're young. The other half has a very specific look. The "oh, you poor thing" look. Which is, trust me, particularly awful to get, especially when you're just existing and doing nothing special. How does your character react to this ? How do they feel about it ?

I believe that is all I had in mind. I may add some more details in the future if I get other ideas, but this should already be a good start. I would be thrilled to answer questions if you have some, either in my askbox or through DMs.

I will tag this post with characters holding canes that aren't necessarily considered cane users but that some people may be interested in writing as such. Feel free to tell me if you'd like to see tags being added !

Edit : I'm highly encouraging everyone to look at the tag section under this post where a lot of other can users are sharing their experiences !!

I hate I when I get an idea for a novel. Like oh no here starts the slow sad slip n’ slide to dissapointment again.

Make your margins wider in your writing

Writing what feels like a dozen pages only to figure out after that you haven't even gotten through half a page is a universal experience across all writers.

What I'm about to tell you is one way I've found helps getting through that psychological toll.

One day I was writing my novel (a-luchador-detective-versus-a-lady-vampire sort of affair) when I got a certain idea. I picked up my copy of Authority by Jeff Vandermeer that I had on the desk and decided to make the line length in my work the same as that paperback edition. Margins were widened and line spacing was adjusted, leaving me with a sort of narrow manuscript.

You've no idea how much my productivity went up.

Logically, finishing a line became much faster, which lead to quicker finished pages, which produced a longer-looking manuscript. Of course, this doesn't mean that my writing was immediately faster per se,

but the feeling of being faster placebo-ed me in a way that increased my output.

Now I'm hitting my daily word-count much more consistently and I believe this was partly responsible.

Humans like numbers going up, if we wouldn't both videogames and billionares wouldn't exist. Seeing my page count increase is a reward to my brain which gives me a boost to get to the next page. By decreasing the length between rewards I'm put in a more constant progression loop, no longer feeling the slog of going up a hill and being met with a thousand more.

And at the end, if I want to check my actual progress, the real gauge will forever be the total word count, which we shouldn't obsess over, anyways.

The journey to create a novel or other piece of long-form media will always be more of a marathon than a race, and should be undertaken with the mindset of a marathon. All progress is incremental, and you should not be emotionally punishing yourself for not finishing a quarter of your book in the last week, as if that were somehow possible.

The length of a novel is such that any time-saving and efficiency-increasing life hacks we apply would only be reducing our-time-finish by weeks at the most, so why the rush?

I believe the key to writing faster is to write constantly first.

Can't be fast without stamina. So go ahead; write and make writing easier on you.

So you want to write a deaf/HoH character

Photo © Durgesh Kumar, all rights reserved

Admittedly, this isn’t something I’ve done myself. I’ve never written a deaf or hard of hearing character, but I’ve had people ask in a Discord server I’m in “hey, does anyone have any resources on how to write a character that is deaf or hard of hearing?” and I took the chance to find some resources for them – ones that turned out to be pretty valuable, and that I want to share here. 

I love when people include disabilities in their writing, whether visible or invisible. To me, it makes the characters feel more alive and adds another layer of depth to who they are as a person, even though they’re… not real. Adding that aspect to characters gives something for a group of readers to relate to, and can help them feel seen where they might not be seen otherwise. 

It can be difficult to write about a disability that you yourself have never experienced, and with the fact that you haven’t experienced said disability is something that can lead to stigmas and stereotypes that aren’t necessarily accurate, especially if you’ve only viewed what outside media has shown you, or what you’ve observed in public settings. Research is so important for topics like this, especially to find resources from people who do experience it on a daily basis, whether it’s something that has developed over time, or something that they were born with.

Without further ado, the resources I’ve discovered.

https://www.tfrohock.com/blog/2016/9/12/writing-deaf-characters - this blog by T. Frohock is very to the point. She begins by saying she doesn’t normally write “how-to’s”, but this one is an exception, and works to provide her own experiences, open about the fact she uses a cochlear implant to hear those around her – or not hear, if she chooses to “turn you off” in her “about” on her blog. She gives a short overview of types of hearing loss, and communication, and also recommends reaching out to an audiologist to learn more about the types of hearing loss. She also gives two links to .org websites if you’re looking for sources. She’s also written two companion pieces to this initial post. The first one is for hearing authors, and the second is about sensitivity readers. I’ve linked both of these in this section, so check them out as well if you’d like a more in-depth look at T. Frohock’s advice.

https://www.sfwa.org/2021/03/23/how-to-write-deaf-or-hard-of-hearing-characters/ - this post by Melanie Ashford on the sfwa website gives a good guide on how to approach deaf/hoh characters. Melanie herself is a hard of hearing author, so her advice is profound and solid, as she is a primary source on how to approach writing these characters. She makes a point in her introduction to say she’s been using hearing aids for 4 years (at the time of posting the article in 2021) and reminds the reader that everyone experiences hearing loss differently, and has different feelings about auditory assistance devices, such as the cochlear implants and how many people in the Deaf community believe them to be controversial and unwanted. She references the social stigma surrounding the Deaf community, and also reminds the reader that deaf characters should be just as well rounded as hearing ones. Though her article isn’t in depth, it’s a great guideline to follow.

https://www.tumblr.com/concerningwolves/168567651639/writing-deaf-characters-speech-is-speech - tumblr user concerningwolves posted this in 2017, and with more than 19,000 likes and nearly 14,000 reblogs, it’s a valuable resource for those who want to write HoH characters. Though a tad aggressive, concerningwolves makes it a point to be, well, to the point and separates their post into two separate posts. I’ve yet to find the second one, and honestly, digging through 7 years of blog posts to find the second one is a little overwhelming, but even this one post is a goldmine of do’s and don’t’s for this particular community.

https://deafaq.tumblr.com/post/190549529559/comprehensive-guide-to-writing-deaf-characters - deafaq on tumblr has a comprehensive guide to writing deaf/HoH characters. This blog in itself is not meant to be for writing help, but they had gotten enough questions about it to make this post back in 2020. Compared to concerningwolves’s tumblr post, this one has less than 2,000 likes but is still full of good and valuable information for the reader.

Reasons For Characters To Go From Lovers To Enemies

A: Characters A and B both think they’re doing the right thing at the cost of their relationship. 

B: Character A feels abandoned by Character B. Whether the abandonment is genuine or perceived is up to you. 

C: Character A sacrificed the world for Character B, and Character B can’t accept what happened. 

D:  Character A sacrificed Character B to save the word, and Character B can’t move past how easily they let them go in the name of righteousness. 

E: Despite the love between them, Character A just couldn’t stop being afraid of Character B. (Double angst points if it’s reasons that Character B couldn’t control. Lile they have incredibly strong powers that could level cities if they choose to use them that way.) 

F: Character A got everything Character B ever wanted without even trying. 

More Undercut

Keep reading

Signs of Attraction

Mirroring your movements unconsciously.

Frequent light touches on your arm or back during conversation.

Persistent eye contact, with pupils dilated when looking at you.

Quick glances at your lips while talking.

Frequent, almost nervous laughter in response to your jokes.

Finding excuses to start or extend conversations.

Revealing personal details in hopes of creating a deeper connection.

Sudden interest in your hobbies or activities.

Adjusting clothing or hair when they notice you looking.

Offering compliments not just about your appearance, but your qualities or achievements.

Standing closer to you than to others in a group.

Making plans for future meetings without a specific reason.

Writing tips # 6 - The Body

Hey, hi everyone! I'm back again with yet another segment of Writing tips. Today I'm going to chat about something many struggle to describe. The body. Below will be several categories containing words synonymous with descriptors used when explaining someone's body. Hopefully, now y'all won't end up struggling for an hour like I have trying to figure out a socially correct way to explain that this particular character is obese :D

Thin

Angular, bony, emaciated, dainty, ethereal, frail, gangly, lanky, lean, malnourished, narrow, petite, puny, rawboned, scrawny, skeletal, skin-and-bone, skinny, slender, slight, slim, stick, twiggy, underweight.

Heavy

Beefy, big-boned, bloated, brawny, broad, bulging, bulky, burly, chubby, chunky, dense, elephantine, full-bodied, gargantuan, heavy-set, husky, lumpy, massive, obese, oversized, paunchy, plump, plumpish, portly, potbellied, pudgy, robust, rotund, round, shapeless, solid, stocky, stout, thick, wide.

Short

Compact, dwarfed, dwarfish, little, low, miniature, pint-sized, runty, squat, stunted, stubby, stumpy, tiny, undersized, wee.

Tall

Alpine, beanstalk, gangly, giant, lanky, lofty, skyscraping, stick, stretched, towering.

Weak

Decrepit, delicate, effeminate, emaciated, feeble, flaccid, fragile, frail, puny, sickly.

Strong

Beefy, brawny, burly, firm, herculean, huge, hulky, husky, muscular, powerful, ripped, robust, rugged, shredded, solid, stalwart, stout, strapping, tough, well-built.

Fit

Athletic, hardy, healthy, hearty, shapely, robust, toned, trim.

As always I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day and let your days be blessed as the best! <3

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

Glucosify's Quick Start Guide to Twine's Sugarcube for Interactive Fiction

Or GQSGTSIF for short.

Very simplified guide to making interactive fiction on Twine, using Sugarcube. This won't cover how to change the UI or anything like that, it's really the bare bones on how to make passages, variables, choices etc. There are multiple ways and syntaxes to do these things, I'm covering the ones I use but it's really not the only way to write code and to do these things ^^ This is not a replacement to the documentation, I'll link relevant parts of the documentations throughout the guide but it's really going to be your best source of information Let me know if there's anything else you think I should add in there ~ 1. Passages & StoryInit 2. Variables 3. If statements 4. StoryMenu (bonus)

First of all, assuming you've already downloaded Twine and opened a new project, make sure that your default story format is Sugarcube (in the top left of the window, go to Twine -> Story Formats and click on Sugarcube then at the top left 'use as default format')

Now, go back to your project. In the top left, click on Passage -> New : this is how you'll create new passages.

Passages are what makes the game essentially, it's where you write your story. Whenever you play an if and you click on a choice and it progresses to a new passage of text, that's how it's done. Make sure to name your passages in a way that makes sense to you, two passages can't have the same name. It's probably best the names aren't super long either considering the names are what you'll type in your code to make the player go to this or that passage.

Special passages :

there are some passages that have special functions. Create a passage and name it StoryInit : this passage is used to store variables. Whenever a new game is started, it will load up the variables states as they are in the StoryInit passage. This is essentially a default state where no progress has been made in the story so for example : all stats would be at 0, all relationships points would be at 0, the MC wouldn't have a name yet etc. We'll store our variables there. Variables are attached to values, these values change as the player goes through the story. A variable's value can be many things, it could be a string which is anything that you'd write inside double quotes "" and would be printed as is in the string. For example :

<<set $mcName to "">>

$mcName is a variable. Its value changes to whatever the player chooses for the MC name. As you write your code, you just have to type $mcName and it will be changed to whatever name the player has set it to. A variable's value can also be a number, in this case, you wouldn't write it in double quotes.

<<set $confidence to 50, $maxConfidence to 100>>

It can also be a true or false statement.

<<set $IrisRomance to false>>

Figure out what needs to be a variable in your story and add them accordingly in your StoryInit passage, you'll add more variables as you go. Remember to give them a value, even if the value is 0 or "". Common variables would be for the MC's name and different physical traits, personality stats, pronouns, character's relationships stats etc. For this tutorial, write in your StoryInit :

<<set $mcName to "">>

Now, let's test our variable. Create another passage, call it start. In the top left bar, select Start Story Here : you should now see a little green rocket attached to your start passage. This is the passage the players will first see when they launch your game.

Inside the "start" passage, let's make a way to enter your own name with a simple text box.

<<textbox "$mcName" "Enter your name">>

Under it but still inside the "start" passage, let's write a simple link that will let us go to the next passage when we click on it.

<<link 'click here to confirm your name' 'next'>><</link>>

((the first string in the single quote is what will be displayed on the screen as the link, the second word in quotes, in this case 'next' is the name of the passage this link should direct you to))

Now make a second passage and call it next. Inside that passage, write this :

My name is $mcName.

Let's see if it works : in the top left, go to build -> play.

It will open an html file in your default browser. Considering we haven't touched the UI, it will have the default Sugarcube UI. You should have a textbox on the screen and a link under it in blue. If your link is red or if you have an error, go back to your code and check for misspellings or make sure you have the right amount of quotes etc.

Type whatever name you want inside that text box then click on the 'click here to confirm your name' link. It should now have changed the $mcName we wrote in the next passage into the name you input in the box. Congrats, you've learned how to set, change and display a variable :^) Now, let's say you want personality (or relationship) stats that change when you select a choice. Back in your StoryInit :

<<set $confidence to 50, $maxConfidence to 100>>

If you want to have a visual elements like actual bars and meters, I would suggest making it easy on you and just getting Chapel's meter macro. You just copy the minified code inside your Javascript file (top left -> story -> Javascript) and then write in your StoryInit and in your relationships / stats / profile page as explained on his demo. Go back to your "next" passage. Under the first sentence, let's write two choices link, one that will lead to an increase in confidence and one that lowers it.

<<link 'You are not confident. Life is hard.' 'sadface'>><<set $confidence to Math.clamp($confidence - 10, 0, $maxConfidence)>><</link>> <<link 'You are very confident. Life is great.' 'happyface'>><<set $confidence to Math.clamp($confidence + 10, 0, $maxConfidence)>><</link>>

((Math.clamp might look intimidating but don't worry too much, it's just to make sure your variable's value doesn't go over the min and max allowed so you can't go below 0 or above 100 in this case. You write the variable you want to change then a + or a - followed by how many points you want to remove / add - in this case, 10. Then the 0 is the minimum and the $maxConfidence is the maximum value.))

Now create two new passages, one called sadface and one called happyface. To make sure your variable changed, type $confidence in both of the new passages and play your game.

On one of the statement, it should now say 40 instead of 50 and 60 in the other one. Congrats you've learned how to change a stat. :^)

But what if you want two choices to lead to the same passage but to display different informations depending on how high / low a stat is? Welcome to the world of if statements. Back in StoryInit, you know the drill :

<<set $idiotLove to 0, $idiotMaxLove to 100>> <<set $idiotRomance to false>>

New passage, call it LoveCheck. Go back to your "next" passage :

<<link 'Click here to get 25 love points with the idiot.' 'LoveCheck'>><<set $idiotLove to Math.clamp($idiotLove + 25, 0, $idiotMaxLove)>><</link>> <<link 'Click here to get 50 love points with the idiot.' 'LoveCheck'>><<set $idiotLove to Math.clamp($idiotLove + 50, 0, $idiotMaxLove)>><</link>> <<link 'Click here to get 100 love points with the idiot.' 'LoveCheck'>><<set $idiotLove to Math.clamp($idiotLove + 100, 0, $idiotMaxLove)>><</link>> <<link 'I\'m allergic to idiots.' 'LoveCheck'>><</link>>

((you need to add a \ before your apostrophe when it's supposed to be part of the string, otherwise, the program will just think that's a closing single quote and not an apostrophe))

Alright, so now go to your newly created LoveCheck passage and let's write your first if statement. An if statement is basically a condition that you set, if the statement is 'valid' so like if it's a match then the program will ignore every other 'if' possibility. This is important because it means the order of your if statements matters. An if statement can be as simple as :

You are a person. <<if $idiotRomance is false>>You are not in love with an idiot.<</if>>

((this means that if the variable is false, then the second sentence will be displayed but if the variable is true, then the second sentence wouldn't be displayed to the player.)) An if statement can have an else :

You are a person. <<if $idiotRomance is false>>You are not in love with an idiot. <<else>> You love an idiot, I'm sorry. <</if>>

Note that this is the same as this, using elseif :

You are a person. <<if $idiotRomance is false>>You are not in love with an idiot. <<elseif $idiotRomance is true>> You love an idiot, I'm sorry. <</if>>

What this does is, if the variable is true, it will show the third sentence and not the second one and vice versa if the variable is false - because an if statement will only display the first statement that matches, if the variable is true then it will ignore any statement that require the variable to be false. As I said earlier, the order of your statement matter especially with variables tied to numerical values. You'll understand better once you try it - let's do it in the wrong order first (still in your LoveCheck passage), we'll print the $idiotLove variable to see its value :

$idiotLove <<if $idiotLove gte 25>> You like the idiot a little. <<elseif $idiotLove gte 50>>You like the idiot quite a bit. <<elseif $idiotLove gte 100>>You've fallen for the idiot, it's too late to save you. <<else>> You don't even know who the idiot is, good for you.<</if>>

Click play and let's look at the problem. If you click on all the links, the number will be different but the sentence will still say that you like the idiot a little, even if you have 100 points. That's because gte stands for greater than or equal to, 100 is greater than 25 so the first statement is always valid so long as you have at least 25 points. The program sees the first statement matches and is valid so it has no need to read the rest of the if statements. To remedy this, we just change the order :

$idiotLove <<if $idiotLove gte 100>>You've fallen for the idiot, it's too late to save you. <<elseif $idiotLove gte 50>>You like the idiot quite a bit. <<elseif $idiotLove gte 25>>You like the idiot a little. <<else>> You don't even know who the idiot is, good for you.<</if>>

Now it works. If statements will be your most used tool I imagine, especially if there's a lot of variations in your story. You can use if statements for pronouns, for stat checks, romance checks etc.

I can always make another guide for the UI but for now, I'll just show you how to add another link in the sidebar of the default UI, using StoryMenu.

Make a new passage, call it StoryMenu :

<<link 'relationships' 'relationships'>><</link>> <<link 'stats' 'stats'>><</link>>

Make two new passages called relationships and stats. Write whatever you want in them, if you're using Chapel's meters, you could use the <<showmeter>> macro here to display your stat bars.