Some Dim, Random Way: a choose-your-own-adventure Moby-Dick

[kevandotorg]

This year I'm converting an existing public domain text into a choose-your-own-adventure story by breaking the text into numbered sections, and pulling out sentences that could serve as decision branches that connect them, allowing the reader to skip through the book as they wish.

A few hours in and the basic concept seems to be working alright, with Moby-Dick as a source text:

-- 1 --

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and 
nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of 
the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find 
myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find 
myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and 
especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to 
prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I 
account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a 
philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing 
surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very 
nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.

* To think that here was the very spot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee, turn to page 7.
* To know no one in the place, turn to page 5.
* To begin to twitch all over, turn to page 12.
* To resolve to spend the rest of the evening as a looker on, turn to page 10.

[kevandotorg]

Now finished.

Source code: https://github.com/kevandotorg/nanogenmo-2021
Example HTML output: https://kevan.org/nanogenmo/2021

The text of the linked draft is 247,354 words.