Story Challenge: Rule of 3

Zekar

Zekar

Really Experienced
More of a structural challenge to help people get used to branching stories. I’ll go into a story’s map and see that it’s one long path and might as well just be a normal story.

Here is the challenge:

You can only go one level deeper into the story if you have three chapters connected to a previous chapter. Challenge is complete when you are 3 chapters deep with all chapters at that level possible.

Example:
Starts off like this…
Introduction
• Option 1
• Option 2
• Option 3

Then…
Introduction
• Option 1
•• Option 1-1
•• Option 1-2
•• Option 1-3
• Option 2
•• Option 2-1
•• Option 2-2
•• Option 2-3
• Option 3
•• Option 3-1
•• Option 3-2
•• Option 3-3

Finally the entire story should look like this…

Introduction
• Option 1
•• Option 1-1
••• Option 1-1-1
••• Option 1-1-2
••• Option 1-1-3
•• Option 1-2
••• Option 1-2-1
••• Option 1-2-2
••• Option 1-2-3
•• Option 1-3
••• Option 1-3-1
••• Option 1-3-2
••• Option 1-3-3
• Option 2
•• Option 2-1
••• Option 2-1-1
••• Option 2-1-2
••• Option 2-1-3
•• Option 2-2
••• Option 2-2-1
••• Option 2-2-2
••• Option 2-2-3
•• Option 2-3
••• Option 2-3-1
••• Option 2-3-2
••• Option 2-3-3
• Option 3
•• Option 3-1
••• Option 3-1-1
••• Option 3-1-2
••• Option 3-1-3
•• Option 3-2
••• Option 3-2-1
••• Option 3-2-2
••• Option 3-2-3
•• Option 3-3
••• Option 3-1-1
••• Option 3-1-2
••• Option 3-1-3
 
A lot easier said then done. In my experience readers want content over choice. I even ran a poll on it once. So the longer The more story lines you create the less appealing it will be for a reader to keep coming back and having to remember each individual story line. Also someone who has book marked a chapter versus someone who has favorited a story will not see the new additions. In my own stories the newest chapter in the longest branch always gets more likes then a branch chapter. Plus the more chapters you create the more dead ends you make which can also turn off a reader.
 
The only story I've seen that pulled this off was Breaking the Amazon, and even then the story is rather straightforward. The Choices just dictate the how, not really diverging the plot significantly. (Not a criticism, the story is great)
 
RicoLouis said:
A lot easier said then done. In my experience readers want content over choice. I even ran a poll on it once. So the longer The more story lines you create the less appealing it will be for a reader to keep coming back and having to remember each individual story line. Also someone who has book marked a chapter versus someone who has favorited a story will not see the new additions. In my own stories the newest chapter in the longest branch always gets more likes then a branch chapter. Plus the more chapters you create the more dead ends you make which can also turn off a reader.
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That’s why ya got to make it worth their time by the 3rd chapter. Plan is to stop at the end of the challenge and just be done.

Not looking for a story to continue and drag people in. Just one where the choices matter.
 
I miss the really wild, unpredictable stories. One of my favorites was Aaralon's Discoveries. A recent story would be Trudging the Cessponds.

The annual NaNoWriMo story attempts this, but I always find it difficult to add to that story. Having only three options to the first chapter means that there can only be three main story threads, especially if they are not written to be open ended.

Another issue is if you're a solo author, having many branching paths means an exponential number of chapters to write. With a 1 to 3 challenge, if you wanted a 10 chapter depth story, which is not very long at all, you would need to write... 29,524 chapters. Yeah. Good luck.
 
Zekar said:
More of a structural challenge to help people get used to branching stories. I’ll go into a story’s map and see that it’s one long path and might as well just be a normal story.

Here is the challenge:

You can only go one level deeper into the story if you have three chapters connected to a previous chapter. Challenge is complete when you are 3 chapters deep with all chapters at that level possible.
Click to expand...
I have an idea for something that might use a structural gimmick like this, although I have to give it some thought. A change of pace from LLNO might be good for me (and there's a story you can't accuse of being "one long path!")
 
Actually just outlined a story. It's pretty stupid, but I might write it anyway; after all it's only (1 + 3 + 9 + 27) 40 chapters. I could squeeze that out in a week or two.
 
Zeebop said:
I have an idea for something that might use a structural gimmick like this, although I have to give it some thought. A change of pace from LLNO might be good for me (and there's a story you can't accuse of being "one long path!")
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Here is something interesting about LLNO. If I go to the Story Map I can't see the Lex Luthor or Poison Ivy story paths on my screen. they won't load.
 
There are too many chapters to load them all at once, so it only loads like the first 1000 or so. You need to scroll down to the bottom, wait for it to load, and then continue until you reach the end. Drawback to being a far too prolific story.
 
RicoLouis said:
A lot easier said then done. In my experience readers want content over choice. I even ran a poll on it once. So the longer The more story lines you create the less appealing it will be for a reader to keep coming back and having to remember each individual story line. Also someone who has book marked a chapter versus someone who has favorited a story will not see the new additions. In my own stories the newest chapter in the longest branch always gets more likes then a branch chapter. Plus the more chapters you create the more dead ends you make which can also turn off a reader.
Click to expand...
On the other hand the first thing I do is check if a story has branches and if it doesn't I unfairly disregard it because I'm not on chyoa for linearity.
 
What I have found works best for me is to start off the story with 4-5 choices off the introduction, then two or three after that, and then pretty much go straight linear until the conclusion. I still include many places where choices can be made so that others can submit new branches, but by and large my plot is pretty well decided after the first two or three options.

The problem with having multiple options after each chapter is that the tree branches REALLY fast. It's exponential growth, the kind of process which literally makes a nuclear bomb work. Even with just two options at the end of each chapter, one ends up with over 1000 threads after ten chapters. With three options, that number balloons to almost 60,000 threads! So, unless the story is very short, that's just not practical.

I have been considering other ways to branch the story. One would be to cross threads over each other, so that it's possible (for example) to have a thread where you go to Miami, then New York, then London, while another thread might go from Chicago to London (the SAME London thread as the above) and then to Paris, and another might go from Boston to Miami (again, same one) and then to New York (essentially, the same path as the first thread except one goes to Chicago first). The tricky part with this setup is that if one wants to have a plot progress through any given thread, it is necessary to have conditional text which shows up or not depending on where you've been before. It would probably be necessary to first map out all the possible paths along with the progressively changing conditions, and it would be VERY complicated. Even though that sounds interesting to me, I just don't have the time.

Another thing one can do, of course, is to just go ahead and write "THE END" from time to time. It is remarkably rare to find stories on CHYOA with endings.
 
My current story will feature something similiar, only two choices per chapter but it's in the style of a match, meaning you get one point for the good choice, while taking the bad choice gives your opponent a point

In order for the protagonist to win five points are needed, but failure only requires 3

That means the maximum depth this portion of the story can go is seven chapters and the minimum is three

Turns out that I really should have done the math before starting this project, because this results in close to a 100 chapters lol
 
Zeebop said:
You say that like 100 chapters is a lot.
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There's no one on the site who can say this with more authority and confidence than you. :P

Gambio said:
this results in close to a 100 chapters lol
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Denoting a win as W and a loss as L, you can have at most 4 Ws and 2 Ls before ending on either a W or L. If you've done this kind of thing before, you can see we're dealing with permutations here: the order in which the Ws and Ls appear matters. And since there are can be multiple Ws and/or Ls, it's permutations with duplicates. However, it's not just one set of permutations, because WWWWW (5 Ws, 0 Ls) and LLWWL (3Ls, 2 Ws) are also possibilities: you don't always get exactly 4 Ws plus exactly 2 Ls (plus 1 ending W or L). So how many branches end with player victory? We can't calculate that in 1 go, we first have to split those possibilities into 3 groupings: those in which the opponent gets 0, 1, or 2 wins. Not 3, of course, because that means they'd win, and only one side can win (we'll look at player defeat below). Here are the branches ending in player victory:

WWWW + W = 1 branch (5 wins in a row, gg ez no re)
WWWWL + W = 5 branches:
Why 5? Because the L can happen in 5 places: LWWWWW, WLWWWW, WWLWWW, WWWLWW, WWWWLW. It can't be WWWWWL, though, because after 5 Ws the player has already won: a W must be in the last place. Since we can't touch the last W, this is equivalent to or 5! / (4! * 1!) = 5
WWWWLL + W = 15 branches (same math: 6! / (4! * 2!) = 15)

How about branches ending in player defeat? The permutations will always include 3 Ls, but the number of Ws can vary. We use the same approach, this time splitting the possiblities into 5 groupings: those in which the player gets 0, 1, 2, 3, or 4 wins (but not 5!):
LL + L = 1 (3 losses in a row, are you even trying?)
WLL + L = 3! / (2! * 1!) = 3 (like before, you can have your 1 win in the first, second, or third chapter, but not the fourth, because by then you've already lost.)
WWLL + L = 4! / (2! * 2!) = 6
WWWLL + L = 5! / (2! * 3!) = 10
WWWWLL + L = 6! / (2! * 4!) = 15 (note that this is the same as the WWWWLL + W case we looked at above, except with an L in the last place. This makes sense: when both sides are 1 point away from victory, either side scoring 1 more point will end the game, meaning the next/last chapter is the deciding one.)

That's 1 + 5 + 15 = 21 ways to victory for the player, 1 + 3 + 6 + 10 + 15 = 35 ways to defeat for the player, and 21 + 35 = 56 endings in total.

That's just endings, though. How many chapters is it? Not all branches have the same number of chapters. LLL only has 3, but LLWWWWW has 7. The math is a little easier this time around, though: we just count the Ws and Ls in each branch:

[edit] WRONG WRONG WRONG, see next posts!

WWWW + W = 1 branch * 5 chapters = 5 chapters (ie, the lone branch with 5 Ws and 0Ls has 5 chapters, corresponding to scores: W1/L0, W2/L0, W3/L0, W4/L0, and W5/L0)
LWWWW + W = 5 branches * 6 chapters = 30 chapters (I won't write them all out, but LWWWWW is W0/L1, W1/L1, W2/L1, W3/L1, W4/L1, W5/L1)
WWWWLL + W = 15 branches * 7 chapters = 105 chapters
LL + L = 1 branch * 3 chapters = 3 chapters
WLL + L = 3 branches * 4 chapters = 12 chapters
WWLL + L = 6 * 5 chapters = 30 chapters
WWWLL + L = 10 * 6 chapters = 60 chapters
WWWWLL + L = 15 * 7 chapters = 105 chapters

5 + 30 + 105 + 3 + 12 + 30 + 60 + 105 = 350 chapters!

...Plus the very first chapter, of course, W0/L0, when neither side has any points! That makes 351 chapters in total.

TL;DR: thank you for coming to my TED talk.
 
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you bloody bastard just made me spend 30 minutes trying to figure out why my storymap doesn't add up with your math lol

I finally got it.

Your counting the same chapters twice

Example


WWWWLL + W = 15 branches * 7 chapters = 105 chapters
WWWWLL + L = 15 * 7 chapters = 105 chapters


One branch might end with a W and the other with a L but the paths to got to them is the same. Meaning the true count of that would only be 106 chapters, which might actually be pretty close to what the chapter count ends up with, but I ain't doing the proper math for that lol
 
Ahh, you're right! The first 'W' and first 'L' on every branch gets counted a bunch of times, because after all, there are only 2 options: you win or you lose.

No longer trusting in my ability to do math, I just wrote out all the possibilities:
Code: 
   1234567
 1 WWWWW
 2     LW
 3      LW
 4       L
 5    LWW
 6      LW
 7       L
 8     LWW
 9       L
10      L
11   LWWW
12      LW
13       L
14     LWW
15       L
16      L
17    LWWW
18       L
19      L
20     L
21  LWWWW
22      LW
23       L
24     LWW
25       L
26      L
27    LWWW
28       L
29      L
30     L
31   LWWWW
32       L
33      L
34     L
35    L
36 LWWWWW
37      LW
38       L
39     LWW
40       L
41      L
42    LWWW
43       L
44      L
45     L
46   LWWWW
47       L
48      L
49     L
50    L
51  LWWWWW
52       L
53      L
54     L
55    L
56   L
   1234567
How do you read this? It's a tree. Start in the first column. Choose if you win (W, line 1) or lose (L, line 36). Ignore the tree below the other option. Say we pick W (we like winning after all). Now go to the second column, again pick a W again (line 1) or L (line 21). Keep going until you reach the end, at which point you'll have either 5 Ws or 3 Ls, but never both. The fastest way to win is pick W every time, which is shown on line 1: 5 Ws. The fastest way to lose is to pick L every time, which is the 'line' at the very bottom: L in column 1, line 36, L in column 2, line 51, L in column 3, line 56.

That's 56 lines, so 56 endings, of which 21 end on a W (player victorious), and 35 on an L (player defeated). I got that part correct, at least.

To count number of chapters, now that we've hidden all the duplicate Ws and Ls, we simply count how many Ws and Ls remain in this tree: 55 W chapters, 55 L chapters. Plus chapter 0, for when you haven't made any choice yet (0 Ls, 0 Ws), that makes 111 chapters.

How about how many chapters at each depth level (ie, in each column)? At depth 1, there's only 1 W, 1 L. At depth 2, there's 2 Ws (WW, LW) and 2 Ls (WL, LL). The rest:
Depth 0: 1 scoreless chapter
Depth 1: 1 L chapter, 1 W chapter
Depth 2: 2 L chapters, 2 W chapters
Depth 3: 4 Ls, 4 Ws
Depth 4: 7 Ls, 7 Ws (why not 8+8? Because one of the branches ends at depth 3: LLL. If it didn't, that branch would also have a W and an L chapter)
Depth 5: 11 Ls, 11 Ws (3 more branches end at depth 4 (WLLL, LWLL, and LLWL), so 14+14 is even farther away)
Depth 6: 15 Ls, 15 Ws
Depth 7: 15 Ls, 15 Ws

Again, that's 111 total chapters, which makes sense, because we just counted Ws and Ls again, just in a different manner.

I assume that's what you got as well? :P
 
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That definitely sounds about right, but I'm still not doing the math ;P

But once 90% of these chapters will inevitably get ignored by the readers I will be very happy to know that I at least provided someone with a mildly entertaining math problem. lol
 
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