Hey, I have a few stories on the site and, in many of them, I try to pepper in choices that lead to "Bad Ends" like one would see in classic Choose Your Own Adventure stories or certain visual novels. I think it's a good little touch, but, usually, I end up getting a bit tired of writing two or three different threads when only one of them continues the story and the others are dead ends. So I was just wondering what other writers and readers on the site thought about Bad Ends. Are they worth writing and reading or do they just break the flow of the story and are better off ignored to instead focus on continuing a story line?
I personally like having a bad end, a good end, and a few middle of the road ends. Though what constitutes a bad ending can be a subjective term. As long as it's bad for the character and not for the narrative I say go for it.
From what I've seen Bad ends are rare on Chyoa and having a few more of them might actually be good variety. No one is required to like every single thread on a story and the very purpose of a choose your own ending story is that you can choose the options that you like and ignore the ones you don't like.
I use "bad ends" a lot in my "Happy Maid" story. Simply because I see the story as a real challenging game type of story, so there will be probably only one "good" end, but several ones which end the story prematurely. That being said, speaking from a typical CHYOA reader perspective, I must assume that the "bad" ends are, in fact, good ends, because they often contain sex and submission, whereas the "good" end will, according to the goal of the story, let the protagonist escape the setting of sexual mind control. I also think that in general "ends" are good. It's good to reach a point where a certain branch of a story is closed, rather than branching out in all directions and never reaching any ending at all. So I appreciate endings, no matter if they are labelled good or bad.
Personally i love to read the bad ending more than good ending,it's usually more fun getting to the bad ending.especially when you can visualize the ending actually happening in real life situations!
I think bad ends are a valuable tool for CHYOA writers, particularly if you have an element of danger in your story. I like it when there is some sense of logic to the consequences rather than a "pick from three identical doors and one drops you down a pit." I also like a premature good ending. It's okay to have a happy ending early in your story. That doesn't mean the story has to end, it can just branch in different directions.
Only one real "bad end" in my story thus far, and it was mostly because the idea amused me. It may have been a little mean of me, but I couldn't resist the temptation of puncturing the cliches of power fantasy with one moment of almost slapstick reality (i.e., you don't want to try to put your anatomy in the mouth of someone who was trying to kill people like you perhaps twenty minutes ago). My other endings... I think many would consider some "better" than others, depending on what you hope to "get" out of your interaction with the primary character. A couple are relatively up-beat; others are rather grim. But the nature of the scenario is that the protagonist himself is in relatively little danger. To my mind, the big thing is that there should be some level of "signposting"; the reader should generally have some idea that an action might lead to its consequences, rather than "You go through the left-hand door? Oh, well, then- you die." At least the nature of the form in this format is that a "bad end" rarely means more than hitting the "back" button on a browser a couple of times, but it's still unsatisfying and jarring.
I typically like just multiple outcomes as opposed to Good/Bad. In some games people think because they failed a check they have to reload the previous save. The true trick as a designer is making the failures just as interesting as the successes. Sure a character mighty get thrown into a vat of toxic goop, but maybe that gives him super powers. Endings are always good. I can't stand reading something and seeing that the protagonist has fucked another woman in the same exact way as he did the previous X number of times.
I may be fucked up in this but for most of my stories I actually use a pen and paper to map them out, very unsexy I know. The reason is to cut down on dead ends, I heavily use linked chapters and try and prevent users from ever going back in a story like a game. I try and have an ending "area" where maybe like four or five endings are nested. The issue is for a lot of stories with "bad endings" like mind control the readers want to read it, even though it is an end. It is horrible uninteresting to write that such and such did indeed get fucked again because you really just run out of ways to say dick. Stories about sex cannot sustain themselves long term, they need to be about something else with the sex woven in for something more than 25ish pages long. I adopted a few older stories and find in IMPOSSIBLE to avoid dead ends on a lot of them, without the planning and without wanting to take and axe to content it just isn't possible sometimes. When using a bad ending or just an end point I always try and make it clear it is the end and I won't be adding anything more, maybe add like a section where in broad strokes you talk about what happened after. The nature of these stories is that they often follow sexual desire which is about as far from long term planning as you can get. Don't be afraid or dead ends but clearly mark them and consider linked chapter check points in them so a reader doesn't have to dig back to restart.
Most of my dead ends I plan involve the player/main character getting tricked in a way that ends in sex. That's the plan but scope creep gets in the way sometimes when I have writer's block.
Honestly, as long as there´s some sex involved, bad endings are fine. However, making people read a bunch of texts with a slowly wilting stiffy, just to get blueballed by a Bad End and start all over is a bit rude imo. I´d say the definitive example on how to do them well is Hematoma´s "The Virgin Heroine". Even if you get the bad endings, you still get what you came for.
