To end or not to end, that is the question.

[Dansak]

I'm someone who's never really embraced branching. In my head, there's always only one story line that's correct. I have a goal in mind, and the plot line that gets there is right, and the ones that don't (or do so inefficiently or weirdly or or or) are wrong.

"Why are you telling us this, TheLowKing?"

Because even in a single canonical story line it can be impossible to keep track of things. For example, in the most recent chapter of the story I'm currently working on, the protagonist goes to a masked royal ball. Except halfway through I forget everyone's masked! Ever tried eating someone out with a face-covering ceramic mask on? Oh, and during which encounter was it again that his lover lost her anal virginity? Was that before the big bad appeared or after? And why is the character ostensibly pretending to be a slave chatting with high aristocracy like they're equals?

Oops.

And so I respect the hell out of everyone who can keep even 2 separate branches consistent, let alone dozens like some of you crazy people.

This is exactly how I feel!
Knowing my own limitations to remember the finer details I have found a half arsed solution that works for me. All my stuff is written on a word doc, at the very bottom of the page, just under where I'm currently writing, I have huge big red heading 'REMEMBER'. Under the heading is bullet points, they are so helpful, they are usually things I've written for a character to do later in the story that I need to follow up on, like John mentions he's going to get a haircut, so I'll bullet point -send John to get hair cut. If I get plot ideas for future chapters I'll quickly put them in a bullet point too and then carry on writing. It's a really helpful tool for me.

 

[TheLowKing]

All my stuff is written on a word doc, at the very bottom of the page, just under where I'm currently writing, I have huge big red heading 'REMEMBER'. Under the heading is bullet points, they are so helpful, they are usually things I've written for a character to do later in the story that I need to follow up on, like John mentions he's going to get a haircut, so I'll bullet point -send John to get hair cut. If I get plot ideas for future chapters I'll quickly put them in a bullet point too and then carry on writing. It's a really helpful tool for me.

Yes! I have 3 separate sections for exactly the same purpose:
- 'Past' (summary of things that have happened)
- 'Future' (things that I've already decided will happen, soonish)
- 'Plot ideas' (more longer term ideas that I might or might not include)

Having your entire text in a single document is also helpful, because you can search for things a lot easier that way than if you first have to find the right chapter on CHYOA. As an added bonus it also protects you from the site going down, or your story getting deleted, or your browser crashing halfway through writing a 1000 word chapter.

 

[Dansak]

Yes! I have 3 separate sections for exactly the same purpose:
- 'Past' (summary of things that have happened)
- 'Future' (things that I've already decided will happen, soonish)
- 'Plot ideas' (more longer term ideas that I might or might not include)

Having your entire text in a single document is also helpful, because you can search for things a lot easier that way than if you first have to find the right chapter on CHYOA. As an added bonus it also protects you from the site going down, or your story getting deleted, or your browser crashing halfway through writing a 1000 word chapter.

100% agree!
It's definitely good to have it all in one doc and saved as a back up. I also use the Chapter headings, so the navigation pane, then headings and save the chapters there. My doc is like 150k words so using those headings gets from one chapter to another quickly. I don't name the chapters, I number them, which I find helpful to me, but I also put a timeline in the chapter heading. So it'll be like 'Chapter 20 - Early June, day 68'. The 'day' in there is how long the story has been running in the characters timeline. For me, 100k words feels like a long time and I can often make the mistake of having characters being over familiar with each other, when in their world they only met a month ago, so the time line helps to keeps things in check for me.

I like the way you split yours into three sections, I may do that too now.

 

[Cuchuilain]

If I can just return to endings for a moment, the problem I have with them is relevancy. If you write a story that may have say 100 chapters, you are giving it 100, approximately 2 hour slots of publicity on the front page spaced over whatever your deployment routine is. Over this period, it is a living thing, visited by your followers and those who have bookmarked or favorited it when they are next online. Once you then decide, that's me I'm done and put a final ending on it, it ceases to live. Your ending may be a beautiful work which ties up all of your loose threads, but unless you leave some dangling and branch off somewhere later, that's it. You're story only exists for those who go digging for whatever fetish you've managed to tag it with and its views quickly dry up.

This thought frightens the hell out of me and really prevents me from finishing anything properly.

 

[gene.sis]

Having your entire text in a single document is also helpful, because you can search for things a lot easier that way than if you first have to find the right chapter on CHYOA.

I have a text file for each chapter/draft stored in folders for the respective stories.
It has it own workspace in Notepad++, so I can search within all files within a folder.

(Though having a search feature on CHYOA for authors to search all ancestors would be nice. Not sure if there's already a suggestion about that.)


For visualization of branching, I use diagrams.net.
(You could copy a shortened version of what happened before from the parent node, add the stuff that happens in the current node and hand it down to the child nodes. That's a lot redundancy but might help organizing chapters.)

For structural things like the meaning and behavior of variables, spreadsheets are handy.

 

[Dansak]

If I can just return to endings for a moment, the problem I have with them is relevancy. If you write a story that may have say 100 chapters, you are giving it 100, approximately 2 hour slots of publicity on the front page spaced over whatever your deployment routine is. Over this period, it is a living thing, visited by your followers and those who have bookmarked or favorited it when they are next online. Once you then decide, that's me I'm done and put a final ending on it, it ceases to live. Your ending may be a beautiful work which ties up all of your loose threads, but unless you leave some dangling and branch off somewhere later, that's it. You're story only exists for those who go digging for whatever fetish you've managed to tag it with and its views quickly dry up.

This thought frightens the hell out of me and really prevents me from finishing anything properly.

I really feel this too. And the characters are like friends, ending the story feels like I'm cutting friends out of my life. It was suggested earlier that there is a way to have your cake and eat it too, by ending the story then going back and branching off from an earlier point, or writing a spin-off with some of the characters. I'm going to give these options some thought as I can't bare a complete end and nothing else.

 

[pwizdelf]

I'm someone who's never really embraced branching. In my head, there's always only one story line that's correct. I have a goal in mind, and the plot line that gets there is right, and the ones that don't (or do so inefficiently or weirdly or or or) are wrong.

From someone who from a storycraft perspective has what doctors call directional insanity, I've tried to imagine before what this kind of sense for true north might feel like. It sounds so cool and useful. I don't want to give up the way I write now because it's kind of fun and unexpected when I don't have specific goals in mind, but boy I'd love to add "real story sense" to my tool kit.

Because even in a single canonical story line it can be impossible to keep track of things. For example, in the most recent chapter of the story I'm currently working on, the protagonist goes to a masked royal ball. Except halfway through I forget everyone's masked! Ever tried eating someone out with a face-covering ceramic mask on? Oh, and during which encounter was it again that his lover lost her anal virginity? Was that before the big bad appeared or after? And why is the character ostensibly pretending to be a slave chatting with high aristocracy like they're equals?

Yes! Around a year ago I had this thing in my fantasy detective story where I just needed to link a bunch of pre-first-time-fucking narrative to first-time-fucking narrative, just needed a couple thousand words to get there, then realized that if Character A picked up the bonded interrogator's magicians guild badge from the rubble in the interview room bombing, which she had to do for X plot point to work later, then her secret evil wizard husband's mind control magic would be majorly and unexpectedly disrupted. Well goddamnit. Some time later she and her partner are dismembering evil wizard husband's dead body and still no sex.

And so I respect the hell out of everyone who can keep even 2 separate branches consistent, let alone dozens like some of you crazy people.

Whispers: directional insanity

 

[pwizdelf]

I really feel this too. And the characters are like friends, ending the story feels like I'm cutting friends out of my life. It was suggested earlier that there is a way to have your cake and eat it too, by ending the story then going back and branching off from an earlier point, or writing a spin-off with some of the characters. I'm going to give these options some thought as I can't bare a complete end and nothing else.

Same. I have characters I invented years ago that I revisit sometimes because I don't want them to... disappear completely? I really relate to this. I think that's why the multiversal aspects of the branching really appeal. I have too much trouble letting a thing be done. I remember being a kid and not wanting books to end either. At some point I'd read every Anastasia Krupnik book Lois Lowry had written up to then and I remember being keenly hungry for more shit about this character. Like I don't give a fuck, I might be 12 but I want to read about what Anastasia is doing at age 40. hahahah!

 

[TheLowKing]

what doctors call directional insanity

Haha, that's amazing!

And likewise! I've tried to do the whole "write for breadth, not depth" thing several times. I get as far as "OK, this is a good branching point. I could do X, Y, or Z... Oh, Y is so cool! let's start with that"... and then I never get around to returning to X or Z.

Same. I have characters I invented years ago that I revisit sometimes because I don't want them to... disappear completely? I really relate to this. I think that's why the multiversal aspects of the branching really appeal. I have too much trouble letting a thing be done.

My take on stories ending is heavily inspired by 1/0. It's an old webcomic (20+ years at this point) that lacks a fourth wall, so all the characters know about the outside world and can talk to their author, Tailsteak. It's heavily meta and they go into a lot of philosophical issues about what it means to be. Highly recommend.

"Once upon a time there was an infinite number of people who lived perfect, blissful, eternal lives. The end."

The reason I link it is for the ending. (Don't worry, this is only lightly spoilery.) At some point Tailsteak begins alluding to the comic's impending end, and they talk about what that would mean for the characters: do they cease to be when the comic ends? But then what about the times between each comic? Between each panel? Tailsteak doesn't painstakingly detail every moment of their lives. Does that mean the characters experience life as just a series of disjointed moments, between which their existence is null and void?

The conclusion that they reach, and that I agree with, is that no, their existence continues even when Tailsteak isn't actively working on the comic. They live on, both in the author's mind, and more importantly, in those of the readers. We don't end our stories with "Epilogue: and the next day they all got killed by a run-away bus"! We end them with "And they lived happily ever after". And so they do.

Also, I just get bored of working on the same story after a while.

...But it's 99% the philosophy thing and not the laziness thing, I swear!

 

[pwizdelf]

I have a text file for each chapter/draft stored in folders for the respective stories. It has it own workspace in Notepad++, so I can search within all files within a folder.

I have been using NP++ for quickie composition shit and I was considering this route. It might be my best bet really, because the longer I go on the more I realize I really need something text searchable. I'm going to check out diagrams.net like you suggested too.

The annoying thing is when you try to commit to one approach thinking, yep this is all I'll need, and then you wind up with "Well this would be great if only I could attach an image to it!" (or whatever new use case thingy emerges).

I also put a timeline in the chapter heading. So it'll be like 'Chapter 20 - Early June, day 68'. The 'day' in there is how long the story has been running in the characters timeline. For me, 100k words feels like a long time and I can often make the mistake of having characters being over familiar with each other, when in their world they only met a month ago, so the time line helps to keeps things in check for me.

Not that I exactly set out trying to plug a premium software thing like Aeon Timeline too hard but the reason I finally shelled out for it a couple years ago is that I had too many stories set in the same fantasy world where they all wind up in the same main city setting. As soon as characters started to run into each other, even just casually or as a cameo in each other's stories, it suddenly mattered how their timelines converged because obviously interactions might go really differently depending on where people are in their own personal journey. I had one character who was a couple hundred years old so that also complicated things. AT has features like that let you tag characters or places or other elements to chapters/scenes which is unbelievably useful when you can make a chart that shows you exactly what age and place characters are in at a certain date in your setting. Your day count thing is SUPER useful sounding.

If I can just return to endings for a moment, the problem I have with them is relevancy. If you write a story that may have say 100 chapters, you are giving it 100, approximately 2 hour slots of publicity on the front page spaced over whatever your deployment routine is. Over this period, it is a living thing, visited by your followers and those who have bookmarked or favorited it when they are next online. Once you then decide, that's me I'm done and put a final ending on it, it ceases to live. Your ending may be a beautiful work which ties up all of your loose threads, but unless you leave some dangling and branch off somewhere later, that's it. You're story only exists for those who go digging for whatever fetish you've managed to tag it with and its views quickly dry up.

This thought frightens the hell out of me and really prevents me from finishing anything properly.

Me too. If we were in person you'd be able to hear how fervently I agree. Haha! I'm new enough I still don't fully grasp all the underlying site mechanisms but I was beginning to get a sense that it might be good to have at least a little strategic sense for how to stay relevant.

I sure wish I was more motivated just under my own steam, and less motivated by how much it makes my day when people interact with my story. But part of why I've been enjoying the hell out of the site is that for so long I've just almost exclusively for myself. Lots of overlapping reasons underpinning that but one biggie is that it's so much easier to dry up on a story if you know you're the only person who gives a shit or will ever see it. My one-time time travel sex tourism fiction thing did okay for a while but for the stuff that was only me and not with my friend, I had so much trouble getting anybody to want to bother reading things. Especially when it doesn't silo readily. So coming here and deciding to take a chance sharing a writing style I'd sort of concluded was too weird and self-indulgent for others to really enjoy much has plunged me into total hog-heaven hedonistic glee. Weirdly enough it's been one of the most validating month-ish periods of my adult life.

I also feel like this thread has underscored for me that part of why I have reams of ongoing narrative for some of my stories, novels worth in some cases, is that I don't enjoy committing to endings, and that isn't really well-fitted to a novel-fiction structure. There is always a next thing unless your setting somehow dictates that death ends a narrative.

I was a little shy about starting out here at first so I picked a couple of sorta throwaway ideas I had, where I wasn't already so attached to the characters that I'd feel really bummed out and sad if people were like, "what the fuck ever." Now I'm pretty attached to them, and I've had such nice interactions here so far that I'm starting to feel like I could feel okay to share some of my very favorite material I've written. All that to lead up to my concluding "point" I guess.

You guys! I think this thread has really helped me organize some more of my feelings about the desire for a story to feel like it achieved something, or to seem "complete" or something. I'm liking the idea of a hybrid approach where my goal is to get more threads than not in the story, up to a point where things could leave off and a reader won't feel cheated by big important questions asked and left indefinitely unanswered, but where there are still plenty of questions left that haven't been asked yet or that can wait. The door can stay open for future visits even if they're okay to hang for a while where they are.

 

[pwizdelf]

I've tried to do the whole "write for breadth, not depth" thing several times. I get as far as "OK, this is a good branching point. I could do X, Y, or Z... Oh, Y is so cool! let's start with that"... and then I never get around to returning to X or Z.

Mine is a distressingly fractal approach and I think it's why I have ... linear story anxiety? Haha! "OK, I've evaluated X and Y and Z and I think X is the best path toward the thing that needs to happen to the characters 9 years from now. Here we go... wait a second, now that I've written 25K of X I realize there's a lot of dramatic potential if [whatever thing] and I don't know how to accomplish that without [thing that only happened in Y] and while keeping [thing that happens in X but directly contradicts a fact I need created by Z] aw fuck I should just start a new story maybe." I wind up in this weird place of trying to merge occasionally semiexclusive chains of events and get underwater and then wonder what the fuck I'm doing spending my mental energy on a story with an audience of one.

My take on stories ending is heavily inspired by 1/0. It's an old webcomic (20+ years at this point) that lacks a fourth wall, so all the characters know about the outside world and can talk to their author, Tailsteak. It's heavily meta and they go into a lot of philosophical issues about what it means to be. Highly recommend.

EEEEeeeeeeeeeeee! I'm laughing aloud because I started reading this and got as far as Even with Tailsteak's previous work I still expected a female and a) I'm an appreciator of self-indulgent meta exploration and b) you reminded me that a million years ago (12 years ago?) I temporarily did a very stupid web comic based on photos of two small stone figurines I got at a museum gift shop on my honeymoon. There weren't many and it's no longer online. If I can figure out the correct socially acceptable place for a new thread with the ones I have, I'll share. They are objectively dumb.

We don't end our stories with "Epilogue: and the next day they all got killed by a run-away bus"! We end them with "And they lived happily ever after". And so they do.

The trick is avoiding the enticing question "but what if her late husband reappears just as they settle into their new lives because he was never truly dead in the first place!!!"

Also, I just get bored of working on the same story after a while.

Yeah. I'm trying really hard to not let myself get tempted away to other fresh story concepts with characters who think differently, just for a break from the current stuff. I usually bounce back into stories at some point but it's easier to enter that new story obsessive trance state when they're new and novel. I need to come up with huge new exciting perfect fit plot ideas for it to re-achieve the same old high.

Then again maybe it's not hurting anything to have more stories even if they do dilute my efforts. Hfffffffffffffff

You know I really think the fucking adderall shortage is not helping me curb some of my more indulgent tendencies.

 

[zankoo]

Gotta be honest, I am enjoying this thread more than a lot of the stories on this site.

Really love these perspectives, thank you all for sharing so much. I've never used spreadsheets for this -- which shocks me, because in my real life, I use spreadsheets all the time.

In my branching threads, I have almost as many unpublished chapters written as published ones. I keep trying to finish all branches in full before launching into publishing any of them so I don't wind up stuck with an unsolvable thread. Surely not a very productive pattern, but what do I know?

 

[JWtts]

Also, I just get bored of working on the same story after a while.

Yeah. I'm trying really hard to not let myself get tempted away to other fresh story concepts with characters who think differently, just for a break from the current stuff. I usually bounce back into stories at some point but it's easier to enter that new story obsessive trance state when they're new and novel. I need to come up with huge new exciting perfect fit plot ideas for it to re-achieve the same old high.

This is me ALL. THE. TIME. I don't know how many Google files I have for starts of stories, story ideas, half ideas, etc. Meanwhile, my one and only story on here has been sitting idle and it's partially because I'm near the end. Which comes back to the thread topic of endings. I'm a lot like @Dansak or Matt Smith's Doctor [Who] ....

It's the idea that it's over. It's done. My friends or characters in the story are gone. Sure, they might live on, depending on the ending, but my time with them is over. But the story needs an end, so maybe instead of lurking on the threads I should go write.

 

[Dansak]

Gotta be honest, I am enjoying this thread more than a lot of the stories on this site.

Really love these perspectives, thank you all for sharing so much. I've never used spreadsheets for this -- which shocks me, because in my real life, I use spreadsheets all the time.

In my branching threads, I have almost as many unpublished chapters written as published ones. I keep trying to finish all branches in full before launching into publishing any of them so I don't wind up stuck with an unsolvable thread. Surely not a very productive pattern, but what do I know?

I'm really enjoying this too! As someone who does not write branching stories it's fascinating to hear the issues you all face!

 

[Dansak]

This is me ALL. THE. TIME. I don't know how many Google files I have for starts of stories, story ideas, half ideas, etc. Meanwhile, my one and only story on here has been sitting idle and it's partially because I'm near the end. Which comes back to the thread topic of endings. I'm a lot like @Dansak or Matt Smith's Doctor [Who] ....

It's the idea that it's over. It's done. My friends or characters in the story are gone. Sure, they might live on, depending on the ending, but my time with them is over. But the story needs an end, so maybe instead of lurking on the threads I should go write.

Lurking on the threads is good for inspiration!
I've decided I'm definitely going to end my story, although it will be a while yet as there are loose ends that need tying up. I even know how I'm going to end it, the only question I have is how to have my cake and eat it. Do I branch off from an earlier point, or write a spin-off? Or Both?
I'm going to be really evil and end the story on an unanswered cliff-hanger! But I'll set it up so that I can easily write a spin-off, like I'll have one or two characters go on their travels and the spin-off can be following their story or something. Not sure, but answering this question is now fun again, where as when I started this thread it was all very tense for me.

 

[zankoo]

Sometimes I think I'm writing more of a "choose your own variation" rather than a "choose your own adventure." In my current story, all of my threads keep reconvening at the same nodes. Each major episode starts and ends the same way, but the branches show either different perspectives or slight variations in how the action could unfold. At the moment, none of those choices are RE-defining of the narrative -- they're just alternate realities.

 

[pwizdelf]

Scooting back through here to refer back to some of the ideas and caught a couple bits I missed earlier:

I'm really enjoying this too! As someone who does not write branching stories it's fascinating to hear the issues you all face!

"As someone WITH legs it's fascinating to hear the issues you people WITHOUT legs all face!" I'm giggling aloud right now not criticizing.

Sometimes I think I'm writing more of a "choose your own variation" rather than a "choose your own adventure." In my current story, all of my threads keep reconvening at the same nodes. Each major episode starts and ends the same way, but the branches show either different perspectives or slight variations in how the action could unfold. At the moment, none of those choices are RE-defining of the narrative -- they're just alternate realities.

No idea how I missed this other than it happened to be at the bottom of a page. I don't know how to reply other than YES YES YES! This was the exact experiment I did with my Abby story and I have to say it's at least as enjoyable as it is maddening to write just a series of iterations and see what differences spin out from different points. I'm not having to do the thing where you have 6 bits of stuff you want to thread in about someone's personality or a reminiscence or something but only like enough narrative to work in 3 of them, and then have to choose which ones. I'm just saving them.

Hark! I just creeped on you finally and saw that you also have an Abbie story!

It's the idea that it's over. It's done. My friends or characters in the story are gone. Sure, they might live on, depending on the ending, but my time with them is over. But the story needs an end, so maybe instead of lurking on the threads I should go write.

Me too. On the endings and letting go bit, but also that tonight I had stuff I had to do that kept me away from my normal psychologically healthy occupation of stopping work and immediately start plotting creampie scenarios until I reluctantly go eat food and spend time with my husband. I have a half hour till I need to go to bed and instead of writing I'm using it reading through my post alerts and sparking on the good feels they give me.

 

[pwizdelf]

Not sure, but answering this question is now fun again, where as when I started this thread it was all very tense for me.

I'm really glad to have been part of it then! I like the spin-off. I think most stories have tons of opportunities for interesting backdoor pilots. (sounds filthier than spinoff)

 

[Zingiber]

This has been a fun discussion.

Mostly I land on the "don't bother to end", and also "branches don't need to be consistent with each other, but they should be consistent with the preceding chapters".

I do create story ends when it suits the arc. For example, I added an ending chapter to a storyline of AaronWebster's story "A Middle Class Orgy" ends with "and what was the result of that messy evening?". This was early in my writing career (back when this was Chyoo, a neglected branch of Literotica).

I've also added a few endings for my Boarbristle Academy story in Lusty Magical Academy, and a few in my everyone-and-their-sister-with-everyone-and-their-brother romp When The Cat's Away. Most of the ends are "where are they now, and what are their kids' names", but there's one "and she was turned into a stone statue mid-orgasm, halfway between human and monster form".