fingerskier / chord

A hypertext narrative engine

Chord Engine

Chord is a hypertext narrative engine that links together myriad characters, places, items, ideas, and events. The author creates these things and expositions (story snippets). The engine delivers pages for each and links them to other pages based on their content.

Thing ID: varchar Type: varchar Link ID: varchar Blah: json

Nouns

Characters, places, items, ideas, and events are all objects stored in the database. These are all treated similarly but may have distinct properties.

Exposition

An exposition is essentially a story snippet. The engine will automatically link to/from any noun which is defined in the database. In addition an exposition may have either a timestamp or sortorder.

Pages

Pages are rendered automatically based on expositions of characters and other things in the story. Expositions are pre-written by the author. Noun pages are written automatically containing contextual links to all instances of that noun. The timeline page shows expositions in chronological order. Registered nouns are rendered as links to other pages. In addition, links are provided to other expositions which are adjacent in time or location. Words not defined in the database are simply shown as plain text.