I write a lot of short stories but often they are unrelated to each other and not really long enough to put on a place like CHYOA ... however, what I'm working on right now has already grown into several scenes and I can see it continuing to grow so I'm thinking of trying to re-organize it as a CHYOA style story and posting it. However, I need some advice on that ... The overall premise of these stories right now is an exploration of a repressed and damaged male in a culture of toxic-masculinity who can face his issues and overcome through the devotion of a woman who loves the entirety of him. Because I have multiple interests I have been approaching this from several points of view ... a human/android variation, a human/demon variation, a father/daughter variation, and a dom / sub variantion. In some ways, each one is the same story, in other ways they are very different stories. My challenge at the moment is deciding if I put this on CHYOA ... do I put them up as a single story and just use the multiple choice to let people choose a path ... or put them up as completely separate stories? To me, these are the pros and cons of the two options, but please correct me if I'm wrong. Since it has a common overall theme and many scenes are almost the same between the stories, it would seem to be less of a duplication of content to put them all under one story. On the other hand ... The differences they do have are pretty different in terms of how I see stories organized on CHYOA ... one is sci-fi, one is fantasy, one is incest, and one is more boy meets girl ... so it will probably be easier for people to find the variation they are looking for if they are separate ... with separate tags and separate names ... it might just be too 'muddy' to put them all together. If its a single story it will show as having a lot more chapters than if those chapters were distributed among several different stories. CHOYA seems to be very focused on promoting stories with a high number of chapters, so high chapters seems to be a goal. On the other hand... It could make readers who are looking for story length feel betrayed if they find the story only to discover that the 'length' is really more in variations of the same content rather than in a lot of different content. Having it all together could also make CHYOA options within the individual stories and scenes much more complicated to organize and navigate. Doing them as separate stories would allow me to organize and release them one at a time and explore the differences between them at my own pace, rather than feeling like I needed to keep them in sync. On the other hand, if I got to a significant point in one variation and then released one of the others as a separate story with much fo the same content ... it could feel even more like a cheat to readers. Right now, my feeling is that they should probably be completely separate stories. Does that seem right? Am I missing something? Thanks for listening and thanks for any help.
For how I understand your idea, even if you put it all in one single story, it will end up being a collection of separate stories, which is totally fine by the way. From the standpoint of your organization it may feel a little more confusing to manage 4(?) separate stories rather than one. From the reader standpoint on the other hand, it may attract only those intrested in those specific contex/fetish/setting, which is kind of a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you see it. As example, I would : -proably never even touch a story about subs and doms -probably consider the father/daughter incest as a non-factor -proably be at least a little curious about the android & demon situations If you put it all together you will probably lose potential readers who will pushed away by one of the settings/kinks, like me in this specific case. You will also attract more potential readers who may end up liking your stuff.
I think your thoughts on it seem just about right. Personally, I prefer separate stories. But that doesn't mean it's better or worse.
Well the story I’m writing currently, has the story branching into completely different kinks, settings, and characters, yet it’s doing fairly well in my opinion. It really depends on your goal with the story/s. If you want greater organization and focus, I’d go with many. If you desire instead greater simplicity and popularity, I think a single story will work fine. I feel like most people wouldn’t mind only liking a single branch of your story, but it’s up to you.
A single story will get more visibility on the recent stories page as you update your various storylines on the common theme. If you're aiming to reach more new readers, single story is more visible compared to writing the same chapters to separate stories.
What @gene.sis says. You described the trade-offs very well. I encourage you to choose a way that's easiest for you as a writer. For me as a reader, an intro chapter on your theme, plus maybe a reader's notes chapter, would make a single story plenty friendly. For separate stories, you could note the common theme and link a forum thread or your other related stories. Or tag each separate story's first chapter with "redemption arc", "redeemed by love", or something distinctive to your theme.
To be precise, a single Story (in the CHYOA sense) with new stories (in the general sense) being added would get slightly less visibility than the total visibility of all of those stories organised as separate Stories. This is because creating a new Story for each story means that those stories get the New Story tag for a time. Additionally, if you were to update two different stories at around the same time, they would as separate Stories get two slots under Updated Stories (one for each story), while if the stories are combined under one Story, that anthology Story merely gets bumped up to the top of Updated Stories twice. However, a unified Story would end up attracting more attention regardless. This is because when you update a story in the Story, all stories in that Story will receive traffic from the front page. You are ultimately correct that such a method would reach more new readers, but it wouldn't be more visible, exactly. The difference depends on the uncertainty of users seeing all of your stories and not just one, which is guaranteed under one Story but unlikely under separated Stories, where they would need to visit your profile for whatever reason.
I have an anthology of all my previous works for multiple reasons 1) I had to quickly port over all of my work as the site I was previously using was going to get shut down, so I just threw everything together in one story. and 2) I had the same thing where there were stories that weren’t really long enough for individual stories, but I still wanted to share, so I came up with the anthology idea and ran with it. I think as long as the title indicates that it’s a collection or anthology, then it’s fine to keep it as such. There’s no need to make 200 different stories for something that’s only going to be 2 chapters at most. You can also create alternate versions and have that indicated in the title. Example: Naked Adventures (First Person Alt) Naked Adventures (Third Person Alt) Naked Adventures (ABDL alt) etc. providing alternatives also gives readers the choice of preference. If you like writing about diapers and stuff, there’s going tot be a portion of people that will get turned off, and might not like to read that, but if you have a neutral alternative, they can still read your story without the turn off. Likewise if you like writing non-consent or other stuff that might be controversial, you can provide the reader with the alternative. I think it’s the best way to do it without causing a clutter of new short stories and you always have the choice to then expand on the story.
