Loom

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  Choosing between different story paths

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  Backend using MongoDB

Inspiration

I've been interested in creative writing for years, and I've always been impressed by writers continuing each other's works. The natural urge to ponder 'what if?' when reading something will never cease to exist and so, we proudly present Loom to bridge the gap between what is, and what could be.

What it does

Loom allows you to spin yarns and build on stories that others have written - flavoring them with your own unique twist. Loom breaks up stories into Chapters and presents them as a series of alternative choices that branch out from your current storyline. This intuitive framework targets children and teachers interested in creative writing and allows them to collaboratively build and explore the various paths a story can take together. At any given Chapter, Loom gives you the opportunity to branch off with your own take and contains the added functionality of liking Chapters to give feedback to other prospective writers.

While Loom was originally intended as an educational tool, we've come to realize that it has the potential for much more, from fan-fiction to all kinds of story-boarding.

How we built it

Loom was built on the MERN stack with React (JavaScript, HTML, and CSS) for the front-end, MongoDB for the database, Node as the runtime environment, and Express for the server API.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating the back and front end in time was tricky. We were ambitious, and so realized very late that we'd have to adapt our ideas to what was feasible. Routing internally using react-dom-router proved very time consuming.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A working project! We attended HOTH last year but weren't able to get far. This year, we feel like we redeemed ourselves.

What we learned

How to code quickly and mastering Git. We were efficient because we used branches and merging to parallelize development.

What's next for Loom

There's a lot we had planned that we would like to implement. Specifically, Chapter paths that eventually merge, comments, and custom user displays for liked chapters.

Built With

• express.js
• mongodb
• node.js
• react