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Good practices

Habits that keep your novel quick to load, small to share and easy to test.

Keep scenes small

A scene's actions are loaded when the scene starts, and again when a reader loads a save made in it. The more actions a scene has, the longer that takes, especially on older phones. A scene with a few hundred actions can make readers wait several seconds after loading a save.

  • Split long scenes. A natural break, like a new place, a time skip or the end of a conversation, is a good spot. Aim for scenes of a few dozen actions rather than hundreds.
  • Keep the stage between scenes. Turn on Keep previous scene assets in the next scene's settings and the background, characters and music carry over, so the reader doesn't notice the split. See Chapters and scenes.
  • Folders don't make a scene lighter. Actions inside a folder still belong to the scene and load with it. Folders are for organizing, not for splitting.

Get rid of what you don't use

Every character, scenery, piece of music, sound effect and cutscene in your library is part of your novel's files, even if no action uses it. Unused files make backups, shares and uploads bigger and slower.

  • From time to time, go through the editor's tabs and delete what you no longer use.
  • Deleting an asset also removes every action that uses it, so check before you delete. You can undo it from the top bar. See Undo and redo.
  • Delete character expressions you replaced too. See Characters.

Keep files light

  • Resize images before importing. A background doesn't need to be bigger than the screen it's shown on.
  • Prefer MP3 or M4A audio. WAV and FLAC are converted to M4A when you share, export or upload, but they stay full size in your editor and backups.
  • Trim silence at the start and end of sound effects, so they play right on cue.

See Importing images, audio and video.

Sound effects

  • A sound effect with Hide text boxes holds the story until it ends. Keep those short, or readers wait with nothing to do.
  • Use Hide text boxes for sounds that should play on their own, like a door slam between lines. For sounds under a line of dialogue, leave it off.

Test as you go

  • Preview a scene or a whole chapter right after you change it. See Previewing and testing.
  • Play every branch at least once, including what happens on a wrong answer and when a timed choice runs out.
  • Play the whole novel from the start before you share or upload it, and load a save or two along the way.
  • Test on the kind of phone your readers use, not only the newest one.

Back up often

Make a backup before big changes, and keep a copy somewhere other than your phone.

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