Here’s a quick reference for some of the most common features in Twine.
- Wrap words or phrases in [[double brackets]] to create links.
- First lexia must be named Start.
- Spelling and capitalization matters!
- Give lexia these special titles to add meta-detail: StoryTitle, StorySubtitle, StoryAuthor, StoryMenu
- [[fear|The Nature Of Fear]] will create a link that appears as “fear” linking to a lexia named “The Nature of Fear.”
- Two built in styles (change through Story > Story Format menu option): Sugarcane (better for link-based work) and Jonah (better for choice-based work or stretchtext).
- Jonah only: Create exclusive choices like this:
- * <<choice “Go through the door”>>
- * <<choice “Hold back”>>
- You can display different text than the name of the lexia like this:
- * <<choice “What should be displayed” “Name of lexia”>>
- Basic text styling: ”word” for word, //word// for word, __word__ for word. Make a horizontal line with “—-“
- Create conditional text with <<if $variable>>Text to show if $variable is true<<else>>Text to show otherwise<<endif>>.
- Set variables with <<set $variable = true>>.
- Variable names must begin with $ sign, can’t contain spaces or special characters, are case sensitive.
- To include CSS styles, create a new unlinked lexia of any title and give it the tag stylesheet.
- Some useful CSS selectors:
- #sidebar — The column of text on the left (in Sugarcane)
- #snapback — The “Rewind” link
- a — Links
- a:hover — Link color when mouse is over
- .passage .content — The main body text
- Some useful CSS styles:
- body { background-color: red } — List of named colors
- (or): background: #3a202a — Hexadecimal color selector
- background-image: url(file.jpg)
- color: red !important — foreground color.
- font-size: 150%
- font-weight: bold — or “normal” to turn off bold
- If you know HTML, you can include arbitrary HTML within any lexia by enclosing it in <html> tags. So for instance to include an image:
- <html><img src=”mypic.jpg”></html>
- (image should be in the same folder as your project file)
- More advanced features possible: see the Twine documentation
