I like to read novels, but one of my biggest frustrations is starting a series that hasn’t been finished. Game of Thrones scarred me for life, waiting years, and years, and years, for the next novel. I happened to discover CHYOA today, I am shocked that it took me this long since I’ve been reading erotica for 15+ years on that other website. Anyway, an author I follow on Patreon mentioned CHYOA, so I thought I’d check it out. I found a story that looked interesting, actually settled in and read approximately 50 chapters over a couple hours, only to discover it’s not finished, and even worse, I hadn’t even gotten into any “good parts/intimacy” (great build up though). Thoroughly frustrating, in more ways than one. Which leads me to my question… I understand the dynamic nature of this site, and in theory, I think that’s pretty amazing. But if I’m looking for a well written, provocative story, that has a beginning, middle, and end, how do I find one here? I’m not familiar enough on how this all works, maybe stories are never actually “done“ if other authors can pick up the baton and carry it forward. But then what’s of connoisseur of erotica to do? Is there a notation that I’m missing the indicates the original author is done? A search term, Or maybe a filter element or flag? or is it just a risk you have to take with every story you start, that you might end up with blue balls at the end? thanks for taking the time to read my question, and maybe providing an answer. With my luck, the answer will be so obvious that I have no excuse for missing it.
You could try searches like this: https://chyoa.com/tag/ending https://chyoa.com/tag/finished https://chyoa.com/tag/complete https://chyoa.com/tag/finished+story But the reality of this kind of site is that almost all stories on CHYOA kind of just... fizzle out after a while. Only rarely do I find an actual ending, and even when one branch has an ending, others may not.
In theory, no CHYOA story is ever *finished* because someone could come along and add another branching point. That said, CHYOA's interface pushes stories to the front page when they have an update, so completed stories unfortunately tend to be harder to find than currently active ones. Your best bet is to find popular multi-branch stories, where at least some of the branches will have a conclusion.
I do think threads like this are a good reminder that for people who have finished stories, putting "finished" or "complete" in the description, the tags, or maybe even the title might be a welcome idea. It's clear from the threads posted here that there are people looking for them. If nothing else, having it in your story title or subtext will make it so that if you're writing new work and someone browses your profile's stories, they'll be able to see one of yours is complete and jump on it if that's what they're looking for.
A sincere thank you, to all three of you for taking the time to write detailed replies to my question. Much appreciated! I’ve started doing some searches, including the words “complete or finished”, with mixed results. I’m honestly somewhat incredulous that there isn’t a better method for readers to easily identify complete stories, or at least complete thread lines. After 15+ years working through most of the highly rated stories on that other site, I was super excited to discover CHYOA. But as a reader, and not a writer, the difficulty in finding complete stories may end up being a dealbreaker. I’m not throwing in the towel just yet, I can be stubborn, but if I end up down a couple more incomplete rabbit holes, my frustration may get the best of me. I will suggest one random idea… Maybe two homepages, which you can switch between. One for “readers“, and the other for “ writers”. The former, highlighting, popular completed stories, while the latter highlights popular works in progress. Once again, thank you!
That most certainly won't work. If a story on CHYOA isn't read, the author might not be motivated to continue writing the story. On the other hand, the format allows authors to grow and improve while continuing their story. If you can only publish complete stories, the author might put a lot of time and effort into it just to realize that readers don't like it and stop reading before finishing the first page.
I have a story that's currently sitting at 314 chapters long and it's not even half way done. I can only write so many chapters on something so long without life getting in the way. If your looking for full completed stories I don't think you will find many. It's just not the place for that. I believe Path of Conquest by Sidian is done I think. Is A Special Hell by brevdravis done too? I'm not sure.
