How do you pick between contributing to a branch vs making a new story?

I figured I'd ask the crowd!

Say you've got a new writing idea and you know a story or two it would fit onto as a branch, but you also think you could set it up as its own story. What sways you one way or another?

My own thinking...

The obvious positives with a branch: you don't have to do the initial setup or handle ongoing moderation. You absorb a bit of existing readership from those who favorited the story or those who manage it. Plus, you could get another boost whenever somebody posts in that story and bumps it up. You might get easier collaboration with others writing for the story, too.

The obvious downside is you might be subject to moderation, wait times, or losing creative control, etc. Your branch might also be seen as the "spinoff" and get less traffic since it isn't the original author's writing.

But I want to get into some more niche differences...

Does anyone else feel like you make a branch when you want the writing to be perceived as more distant / disassociated from you?

Example: I'm considering writing some smut about a gacha game I kind of like. However, I'm thinking of somebody going through my stories list and seeing it. I'm like, "Yikes, I don't want people to think I liked this so much I had to make a story about it. This is going to make me look like I've got bad taste! I have a reputation to upkeep!" I know that's probably not true, but I think it anyway.

What makes you start a branch vs a new story?

 

I know myself well enough to know that I can't sustain a story, but I can add branches to stories where others also contribute.

 

Technically, any story can go in any direction; one could start a story with a guy heading off to college in Europe and have it branch off into a trip to the red-light district with new friends on one side, and an alien abduction on the other. But, I think a story is best when it sticks to one general theme; if it starts off as a story of a college guy having college guy adventures with sex, then it should stick to that premise and not go way off into left field.

So, if I find a story I like which has a plot and setting for which I have ideas, I'll contribute there. If I have an idea which I don't see anyone doing (or if it's a similar idea which I think I could do better), I'll make a new story.

 

Some creators do put up guidelines or limits of what kind of chapters they want in the story, because they have a vision of themes and things they want to explore in the story. Even if it has choices and branches, the creator may want to put some rules down.

 

I think if you're contributing to a story, it has to be with an interest towards continuing the ideas and themes of the story. If you want to do something else, you should make your own story.

 

This is... disruptive and counterproductive. When readers open a story they expect certain content based on the category, title, subtitle, first chapter, etc. Adding something that the target audience won't like means you wasted both their time and your time. Because the most likely outcome is that people who came to read a college romance story will abandon your branch in the beginning. And people who want to read about an alien abduction won't get to your branch because they won't start the story in a different genre. Only a small subset of those who like both will reach it and read it.

 

You did read the rest of my post where I essentially agreed with that, right?

 

I rarely, if ever, contribute a thread to another persons story, I always prefer writing my own. Perhaps it's the control I have over my work or maybe I just want to keep the lime light to myself, I'm not too sure what the reason is really. I wouldn't rule it out in the future, but it would have to be something very tempting indeed. I can appreciate why others add to stories though, for the reasons you've laid out above.

Good luck with whatever you decide, I hope it turns out well.

 

I am pretty much the opposite. Creating a story takes a lot of work and many of the story ideas I get are just not worth the effort. I have started one story that after writing one chapter, I abandoned because I just wasn't interested enough in it to put in more effort. I prefer adding my ideas to someone else's story if that story is similar enough.

I have started two stories in CHYOA and am currently working on starting a third. I started Revenge because it was a unique enough story that I could not find any story similar enough to add it to but Revenge is the story I abandoned. I started Ganymede University because it was a much fuller, more developed idea that was worth the effort. Then life caused me to be too busy to continue with it but I might go back to it and work on it again. It is a lot of effort but Ganymede University is worth the effort. Now, I am trying to create The Erotic Adventures of Todd as a more flexible story idea where I could write branches exploring several of the story ideas that come to me. That way, when I get a story idea that doesn't fit Ganymede University or anyone else's story, I should be able to work it into The Erotic Adventures of Todd which has a central theme but is very flexible.

I hope this helps you understand why I might start a story instead of adding to someone else's. I usually prefer adding to someone else's but if it's unique enough or fully developed enough, that's when I will create my own story.

 

It's interesting to see how other people approach writing for CHYOA, I love the little peek behind the curtain of how you do things. I'm kind of the opposite in my approach I think. Right now I have a list of about 10 story ideas I want to write, all of them are just basic kernels of an idea right now, but I know all of them could make a good stand alone story give the time they need to develop them. Hence why I don't really add to other stories, I've got more than enough of my own to be getting on with!

The one time I seriously wanted to add to another story was on MY Daughter's New Boyfriend, by Wilparu, who I'm very friendly with. One of the characters takes a holiday in the UK and I thought I'd write a spin off branch about some of the characters they meet in the UK. It was, and remains, a viable option I may do in the future. But when I began work on the idea it some how morphed into a completely separate stand alone story that I wrote and published here (Triquetra- The Power of Three). It's weird how things work out on CHYOA, I think that story is my best work, yet it totally bombed and didn't get much attention from readers at all.

 

It's impossible to judge what resonates with readers at any particular time. Literally just throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, sometimes.

 

We can make some educated guesses but yea, I've received a lot more positive feedback for a story I wrote about Scott getting revenge on bullies than I have from anything else I've written. I wasn't expecting that.

 

The number one rule is: reader don't upvote chapters they don't read. It can be the hottest sex scene and their deepest darkest kink, but if it's at the end of an unpopular branch, they're probably not going to see it, much less like it.

 

Or similarly, if they scroll through the story map as I often do, they won't read a chapter that has a pathetic title. I am amazed at how often I will see chapters with titles such as "Yes", "No", or "4". If I'm skipping several boring chapters, how am I supposed to know a chapter like that isn't just another boring chapter?

 

Which is, circling back around to the thread topic, why it is important in a story to have a solid prompt question at the end of a chapter. A question with a "Yes or No" answer invited only two obvious branches, the default "What's Next?" doesn't give any idea of what should come next at all. Ideally, a question at the end of a chapter where other authors participate should be open-ended enough to suggest several branches, if people want to write them.

 

Heh, I grew to dislike elaborate prompts and opt for "What's Next?" often. Prompts rarely give useful information or ideas and act like a restraint. Restraint that most people tend to ignore anyway.

 

I agree. Prompts are like the bajillion alternatives to "said": people read past them. In dialogue, the focus is on what the character said, not how they said it. In prompts, the focus should be on the answers, not on the questions.

 

Agree to disagree; a good prompt gives shape to the answer. Yes, that's limiting, but that's the point. People are at their most creative - and most inspired - when working within limits. If you open things up to anything, often folks are paralyzed by choice and end up choosing not to write at all.

 

It is a limit only if the editor\owner enforces it. They rarely do. Chyoa has A LOT of chapters with names that have nothing to do with the preceding prompt. Often coming from the very same author who wrote the prompt

And it is a lame limitation. You need to write the next chapter in a particular way with these characters , within rules of the universe, matching a certain style, etc. - interesting limitations that foster creativity. You can take the plot only in the direction chosen by the author of the chapter you are adding to. - Not interesting at all.

 

That's the game. How many times have folks been unhappy when someone tries to hijack a story into a completely different direction? Or shits on the preceding chapters that someone else wrote? If you're working within a private or moderated story, some moderation is to be expected - and it's not necessarily a bad thing, to play well with others and try and make a story that stays central to its core concept. Otherwise, why contribute to the story at all, if you're just going to ignore what came before? Why not just go make your own story?

Obviously, not everybody does that, and not everybody cares for chapter prompts. You do whatever you want in your own stories; I won't give you shit about it. But some of us aren't keen on non sequiturs.