Chapters breaks - Solving the story map problem. Sort of.

[RicoLouis]

My current story is around fifty chapters long and is getting complicated on the story map. Luckily I did add sort of traditional chapters every so many pages but I wish I had made the front page sort of an introduction page and then have the story begin with a first branch and run for however so many chapters and then once I had finished that chapter. Each chapter lasting a day in the story go back to the front page and start a new chapter and add a link to the end of the first. Problem is though the story would loose some interactivity if another author wanted to add to it later but on the plus side I would be able to find things a lot better on the story map. Just me rambling but would like to hear others thoughts on the matter.

 

[Aman Onfy Mous]

Which story? Picture Perfect is the right length, but doesn't look particularly complicated, unless you're referring to draft chapters we can't see.

 

[RicoLouis]

At the moment yes it is still manageable as I am getting close to the fifty chapter mark. Though I do have to scroll left and right some and the side branches will become harder to figure out the more I add. Though a couple of my stories in the hundreds chapter range get more complex on the story map and a hundred chapters seems to sort of brake the story map. I actually ended one story once, the journey begins, and started a second volume after it got over a hundred chapters. Some of the major stories on chyoa make the story map almost useless as you have to scroll up and down left and right with large areas of white.

 

[Aman Onfy Mous]

Yeah, agree that's an issue. I can/have thought up multiple solutions, but none that wouldn't take a bunch of work by Friedman, assuming they're possible on the site at all. They'd pretty much all require that the story map be significantly more dynamic than it currently is.

 

[Elist]

I've seen this used in game books, where a following book directly asks the reader whether they took a specific action in a previous book. If you want any decisions affecting subsequent chapters, I think you could just incorporate this method.