I personally believe that HTML5 will be helpful since it's about to be the new web standard.
Anyway before you start coding the app, I think it's important to understand the structure of Visual Novel(VN) and how it works.
Here's a quick start for you,
The Ren'Py Visual Novel Engine
The structure/syntax they used are simply and mostly in layman terms.
Even so, the structure is really complicated when you want to make from scratch.
For example,
Character Dialogues inside Dialogues box(Dialogue box contains Save/Load/Skip/Previous/Next Button)
Playing BGM/SFX/Voice at certain point.
Changing Scenes/Characters images
Saving & Loading.
You can approach the forums in renpy regarding any methods on vn, they're nice and friendly (: