It seems like the vast majority of stories never end. Some are simply abandoned midway through but a lot are still going strong at 300 plus deep chapters. My question is do authors of these stories not plan an end? Or since most of these are the more popular stories on the site are they enticed by the internet points and just keep them going? Or is it some reason that escapes me? Just curious what others on here might think.
The problem with CHYOA-style stories is that due to their nature, they'll pretty much never end. The type of stories on here(especially the popular ones) are such broad spectrum that we're not writing just one story, but multiple ones. They also rarely have a clearly defined ending. While it's true that there are CHYOA-style books out there. They typically have a much narrower focus than your standard CHYOA story. Most stories on here are just so open-ended that they won't ever be completed. A couple of numbers that might be of interest courtesy of SmutMD: A Fantasy Dynasty has 133,000 words. That's roughly the length of The Silmarillion. The Gamer, CHYOA Edition has 258,000 Words. That's a little over half the entire length of The Lord of the Rings book trilogy. Which brings me to my next point. The vast majority of people who write here are hobbyists who don't do this for a living. It's one thing to write an entire book-length story and then sell it for money. It's another just to do it for fun. Real life will always take precedence. Often even other hobbies may take precedence. For me, writing is something that I use to assuage my anxiety. So when i'm not having problems with my anxiety, then I usually focus on other hobbies instead. So with those things in mind, I'm really not surprised that most stories on CHYOA never have a definitive ending.
My primary story has endings. Some people seem to like that a lot. Others find them abrupt, or at least surprising; some want a thread they're enjoying to go on. I grew up with the actual, original "Choose Your Own Adventure" books, so I rather feel that coming to an end is an important part of the format; others may disagree, and that's their right. I would guess that part of it is leaving something open-ended means never disappointing anyone, at least in a final sense: things may not have panned out the way the reader (or sometimes even the writer) might have envisioned, but it could still continue on in ways they'd appreciate. And if a story is abandoned, leaving it open-ended gives it a certain kind of immortality; *you* may have run out of inspiration/moved on/gotten bored/gotten sidelined, but someone, somewhere might take up the mantle and bring your glorious story to its proper heights once again. (Even if this very rarely happens.) I will say for myself that I find stories without ends far less troubling than stories that are basically linear narratives, despite being presented in the "CHYOA" format. Endings are optional, especially for (as merkros says) writing for fun; choice shouldn't be. It's the first letter, fercryin'outloud. And that goes double for those who write a single branch but expect other writers will fill in the barren wasteland all around it.
Yeah, I’m not knocking no endings I was just curious as to why it’s so prevalent. As for the no choice part I was guilty at first if this. A lot came from lack of planning and being a new to this style of writing.
Using the format for linear stories is a big advantage for writers as they can get feedback while writing. It is also easier to stay motivated if you can publish regularly. And if all linear stories would be published not until they are finished, a lot of good stuff wouldn't ever see the light of the world.
I think few writers here start a story with an end in mind; like the readers themselves, they may have certain ideas and scenes they want to go through, but they haven't generally plotted things out far in advance. I'm planning on having endings for Lois Lane's Night Out at around the chapter 20 mark for all storylines. But That doesn't man the story absolutely ends there, as other folks can always add on from whatever chapter they like, but it feels like a nice place to aim for, given all of the branching I'm doing.
The problem I have with planing 'endings' is that real stories never 'end'. A parent's story doesn't end when they have children, it just becomes a different kind of story, and the same goes for a child's story when they grow up, or they get married, or have kids, or their parents die. Normal stories only 'end' because of formatting constraints and audience limitations: no one will watch an 8 hour movie, and precious few will sit through a three or four hour one. Therefore, the story must 'end': but with our format, this is not the case. Consider the Diskworld series. Yes, it 'ended': because the author, (Sir Terry Pratchet*,) DIED! Each book in it had a specific arc, but most of the characters reappeared in a half dozen books at least, many more-or-less picking up about where the last one left off. *(God Rest His Soul.) Now consider a fictional book series, "The Tales Of Genma's Daughters*". This series from the EXALTED universe was written by a woman and spanned 10 Sylmarilion length volumes, then she died. However, in EXALTED, death does not always mean the end for a person's story: the writer became a ghost, and continued writing the story for over 300 years! It now spans 270 Sylmarilion length volumes, and is generally only read by the Exalted or other ghosts, who have a lifespan and resources such that they can buy a complete collection and devote four hours a day to reading it for a decade in order to catch up from the beginning, or who've been following the story for decades already... *(Which by the "current date" of EXALTED is actually about the titular characters Great-Great-Grandchildren...) This is where I see some of these CHYOA stories ending up: thousands of chapters deep and involving the grandchildren of the original main characters... As for not branching, I find that doing so weakens my ability to update consistently: the more I branch a story the harder it is to keep the chapters coming. Like most authors, I'm all about the narrative, the more the story branches, the less I can get done. Maybe when it reaches an 'end' I'll go back and start a new thread from an earlier point, but until then, I write linear. (Also, remember, depth is displayed on the front page: breadth, isn't...)
Well... I can't agree on your definition of "story". Stories usually start with a big change. There could be a war, the protagonist's mother gets ill, some evil force wants to conquer the earth, someone gets murdered, the protagonist gets kicked out of their parent's house, the crazy father-in-law moves in, the protagonist gets sucked into another dimension and so on. This initial problem leads to the need for a solution. Survive, find a cure, save the world, find the murder, find a new home, solve the daily problems, try to get back. If the protagonist has achieved the goal, the story ends, though that doesn't mean that the story has to end as well. After the parents' death, the series doesn't have to end, but the parents' story is in all likelihood told. this I just can't write that fast to branch out much. Though I noticed that there are a lot stories out there with some branches but rather short - well... probably cyoa-like - chapters.
Oh, sure, stories end, but that's not how real life works, Life goes on, that's the POINT. The basic idea of every story is that it's just a snapshot of life, the most interesting parts. No one writes a story about getting up, eating breakfast, brushing your teeth, and getting in the car, then ends it there: unless there's something super odd about how that happens. But those are the parts of the story that keep happening AFTER the alien invasion is defeated, you make it back from the other dimension, you find a job and apartment after being kicked out, and so forth. That's the REAL part of the story, the parts that most authors skip over, the parts that are just LIFE, not an adventure...
Again, a bit of personal taste involved there - I like doing frequent branches because it's a bit of a creative exercise, but the side-effect of that is lack of depth. A lot of the older CYOA-type stories on the web, you've got lots of "dead choices," people follow along for a narrative branch as long as it holds their interest, then drop it; maybe somebody picks it up later and maybe they don't. That's why on some sites you see a lot of choices at the beginning chapters, but they fall off fairly rapidly into a few long linear narratives.
That's understandable up to a point, but not if the story remains permanently linear and never branches. There are quite a number of other platforms and forums for linear writing; it's difficult for me not to feel that someone who can never be bothered to tap into the unique feature of this particular format at all isn't a) failing to stretch themselves and embrace the genre and b) denying their audience some portion of what they likely came to this particular site for. (And that sentence contains a triple negative. Feh. I need to get more sleep.) Before a story on this site is fetish, or futa, or bdsm, or interracial, or whatever other genres or tags, it is CHYOA- that is, Choose Your Own Adventure. Readers would understandably get irate if you labeled a story as one of the above and then failed to follow through; why should it be passively acceptable to ignore the "master" tag that comes before them all? Now to be clear, I'm not for a moment suggesting some sort of policy to ban or remove stories that don't branch. I'm merely stating that it seems to be missing the site's raison d' etre. And as such, is subject to my stern finger-wagging. (Which in combination with $5 will get you a latte at Starbucks.) The genre offers a unique opportunity to ask: where ELSE might this go, and where might my readers WANT it to go, and that should be viewed as an opportunity, not a liability. I absolve you, my child. Go, now, and sin no more. (Totally joking, in case that was in any way not clear.)
I don't. In the story I am writing (and may even end up publishing) I have planned a lot of things but an ending isn't one of them. and I probably never will. For me it isn't really a story; fantasy would be a better term. A good story has conflict, dynamic characters and, last but not least, an ending. I don't want that in my porn. Sure there may be a lover's spat or the occasional monster for the lady in the skimpy, easily torn bikini to fight off, but that's it for conflict. I am really more interested in the happily ever after. In some stories I have gotten little annoyed when the author mentioned all the sexy stuff the mc could now do and then ended it. I want to read all that sexy stuff in all its erotic glory. To put it another way when I imagine myself winning the lottery I only stop when I get bored or my boss tells me to stop day dreaming. Of course endings can make trim your branches to a manageable level, and there are plenty of readers that do want their erotica more complex. This is just my opinion as to why there isn't more.
