Formatting Question / Thinly Veiled Plug

L

loki

Virgin
So honest question but it's probably so simple it's going to come off as a plug anyways. I have a story I'm working on, each chapter is more or less independent, but they all share a common theme. I've started it as all one branch, I'm wondering if it would be better to do it breadth first rather than depth first? So have each one be it's own branch? I hadn't really considered this because I was thinking each one of these stories would easily fit in one chapter. My latest update though is split into two, and I don't know where this might end up going.

You could probably give valid feedback that this isn't the appropriate platform for this format, but I really only write when I'm drunk and horny so I'm here for other reasons and this way I've actually done non-zero writing stuff I've been wanting for years, so I'm going to shorehorn it one way or another.

https://chyoa.com/story/Yet-Another-Hunter-S--Thompson-Wannabe.43575/map
 
Doing "breadth first", as you say, would surely advertise each one of your short stories individually. It would be like a table of contents. Not that bad, since your stories are mostly unrelated and certainly not consequential.

Doing "depth first" would probably force your readers through some less appealing chapters. You may want that, I don't know.

Usually, people around here want to know what they are investing their time in before reading.
So while I can understand the desire to do things the way you want, be a little obscure maybe, that's usually not very well received.
Usually.
Maybe you don't want usual people to read your stuff.

It's really up to you.
 
Yeah, I'm really not sure what this is to be honest. I didn't plan for any particular kinks or niche but I'm realizing now as I've started to get this stuff out of head that most extreme bits come out first, which makes sense, and it can be a bit jarring. If I wanted to switch to doing the "breadth first" approach, can I like relink these chapters in that way without recreating them? I'm certainly starting to feel that would probably make more sense.
 
Yes, you can link existing chapters to the introduction.
You have to create new chapters from the introduction, click on "link chapter" and write the name of the chapter you want to link from the existing ones.
 
I would say no.

It's extremely rare that I check a story out that doesn't have at least a token amount of depth. So if I found an interesting sounding story on the front page and it says "2 chapters deep" I usually ignore it.


I get it that you want to go for a short story collection type of deal, but the "link from introduction" + one long path sounds like the ideal solution here
 
loki said:
If I wanted to switch to doing the "breadth first" approach, can I like relink these chapters in that way without recreating them?
Click to expand...
From my understanding, I assume that you want to move all current chapters to be child chapters of the introduction. (Or small branches coming after the introduction.)

It's currently not possible for authors to do that.
If necessary, Friedman could do that manually.
 
Gambio said:
I would say no.

It's extremely rare that I check a story out that doesn't have at least a token amount of depth. So if I found an interesting sounding story on the front page and it says "2 chapters deep" I usually ignore it.


I get it that you want to go for a short story collection type of deal, but the "link from introduction" + one long path sounds like the ideal solution here
Click to expand...

Agreed. There are an astounding number of "stories" on the site that are just ideas with no content, and most don't go anywhere. I don't know if the authors were hoping someone else would pick them up, or planned to continue, but were turned off by the lack of interaction that comes from releasing a story without sufficient depth. Who can say? But a ton of them never go anywhere. Even worse is when they're FULL of level 1 chapters that don't go anywhere, so you have chapter spam without any payoff. @loki - Yours doesn't sound like this, but you might want to avoid LOOKING like it, because I think a lot of people avoid them.

I'm writing two stories of my own right now, with about 60 chapters complete, but unpublished. One thing I've thought a bit about is, when it comes time to publish, how many chapters to publish initially. I want enough depth and content that people A) actually open the story and read it and B) get enough of an idea what it's about that they track it and come back for later updates, but I also want to keep back enough content so that I can release chapters on regular intervals to keep people engaged, gain new readers from showing up on Recently Updated, and make the story look active enough that perhaps new authors feel like it's worth trying their hand.

So...yeah.
 
gene.sis said:
From my understanding, I assume that you want to move all current chapters to be child chapters of the introduction. (Or small branches coming after the introduction.)

It's currently not possible for authors to do that.
If necessary, Friedman could do that manually.
Click to expand...
I've got a story that I think is messed up (at least partly) due to it being broad where it should be deep. I figured I would just manually copy and paste them into the right format, creating new chapters, and once done, delete the originals. Seems straightforward enough, although I assume I'll be losing what few likes the originals have garnered and possibly annoy what few readers there were of it, by having them think there's new content when its just re-shuffled.
Is there anything else wrong with this plan?
 
Thanks for all the feedback! This story really is more for me than anything. The range of subjects right away makes is unlikely to appeal to any one niche. I was more curious about the right way to structure it in general. It seems like kind of doing both is the right approach. Keep the depth to get noticed and link them on the front as well for quick access.
 
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