Idea: outliner novels

As in, fiction written on and intended to be read with an outliner such as Orgzly. Obviously, most readers would need to receive it bundled with a web-based viewer or some such.


See also: The outline of a game.

Epistolary novels

(Reference.) They have in common the use of short, lightly connected passages the reader can skip at first or read partially out of order without losing too much.

Problem: classic examples like Frankenstein and Dracula are notoriously verbose.

Cell phone novels

(Reference.) They have in common being a born-digital medium composed of short, snappy chapters.

Problem: the medium never caught on in English, and the few websites dedicated to it are long gone.


(See homepage.) Also other interactive fiction authoring systems that feature expanding text, such as Squiffy or some Twine story formats. In fact a short-lived experiment called Ramus 2 proved that Org Mode files can trivially be interpreted as CYOA, but it’s nothing special.





Up to this point, the above text takes up one page of printer paper (two with styles). The format is more akin to slide show presentations. It’s arguably better at exploring ideas than expressing them in a finished form. But where do you draw the line?