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

It is a strawman. No one said anything about not respecting what came before. Taking the story in your own direction (within established plotlines, characters, style, genre, universe...) is not the same as ignoring what came before in the story. Not wishing to follow railroad options from the other author is a very different thing. Sure, the owner of the story is the king. If they have a railroad in mind - it is their absolute right. But this is the opposite of promoting creativity and encouraging other people to add. There is nothing fun in the "Do you do A, B or C?" when you have an idea for D. Nothing.

 

Again, agree to disagree. For myself, if I don't like the options presented and ignored what someone else had wrote to write my own chapter, then I wouldn't feel I'm respecting their contributions to the story...and it would beg the question as to why I was adding a chapter at all. If I wanted to deviate from what someone else has done, I might contact them and actually discuss it and collaborate a little.

 

If I see a chapter that ends with a very simple prompt like "How do you fuck her now?", I assume that the author won't actually mind if I write a chapter without immediate sex. Chances are, they didn't even consider alternative options, focused on their future own plans. There is zero disrespect to his contribution in that. And the question "Why do I add a chapter at all?" won't even cross my mind. I add it because I like the story and have an idea that (in my opinion) fits it. And I had many chapters rejected but never because of "your chapter doesn't follow the last prompt."


Besides, we are moving away from the topic. You claim that limited options promote creativity. I can't disagree more. Less is not more. Creativity is improved when you are limited in HOW not in WHAT. And if you need instructions for what to do or else you are "paralyzed by choice and end up choosing not to write at all" - you are not that creative in the first place.

 

Let's find a middle ground here. I agree that it isn't right to completely hijack a story or shit on preceding chapters but some story owners can be too limiting, too strict. I think "What happens next?" is acceptable but if one can come up with a better, open-ended question, one should.

 

One of the problems we have to deal with is that there are some people who don't want to write but want writers to write thing catering to these lazy people. These people often hang around interactive story sites. You can recognize them by a few tendencies they have including:

1. They are the ones most likely to completely hijack a story where they completely ignore or undo everything that happened in previous chapters.
2. They often write chapters using the fewest words they can get away with and not really saying anything. They might use exactly 250 words to say that "Todd met Sally."
3. Their prompts are often not questions but commands. They might write a prompt like, "Tell me how they fuck?

 

I have an anecdote related to the thread question.

I had written a story that was (for me) a good ways in and was using a strange chapter story web element where a number of events happened and then reversed. In other words, they were threads not designed to go anywhere, just to loop back to the original main "reality" thread.

Someone decided they wanted to continue off a premise established in one of these dead threads.

As food for thought, this meant the main premise of their work would be something that was only a side focus in mine, and would only loosely connect to everything I had written before, with no effect on my continuity.

Still, that person asked, and I was able to easily edit the prompt question that would have restricted them and accept theirs where a branch previously wouldn't have fit. And I was glad and flattered to do so.

All of this is to say is that if what is keeping you from writing in a story you want to is that the writing doesn't quite fit the prompt, maybe message the original author and see if they're willing to bend the strict-seeming rules a little bit for you! In my case, I would never have thought without being asked that such a harmless little tweak would let someone write something they were really interested in, and wouldn't have thought to make it if they hadn't asked. I've got multiple anecdotes where this ended up working to no one's detriment.

 

I tend to agree, unless it's a matter of the choice at hand being a binary one or a clear matter of multiple choice. Such as, "Do you take them up on the threesome offer?" or "Which tit do you suck on first?" or "Red door, blue door, or yellow door?" (Hey, they can't all be sexual.) However, I do find sometimes that customizing the prompt even when it boils down to "What's Next?" can help keep the story flowing better. It can also keep things from going off the rails if you're looking for submissions; a question like, "Which strip club will you go into?" can create limits on where the story goes next.

 

If, for some reason, I decide to railroad the plot into the protagonists going to a strip club, I'll never do it with a prompt alone. I'll end the chapter with some variation of "he entered a strip club".

The most important part of branching is how you end the chapter, not what prompt you write.