Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Since I realized that my story that I've been working on probably would take a long time, I decided to start small for my storygame and create a short Choose Your Own Adventure. A better term for this would be flash CYOA, and I'm interested in the idea. 

People would think that storygames that are short would be easy to make, but for me it's really hard. If I like one of my ideas then I would like to create a long story about it, and if I don't, then I completely give up on it already. Not only that, but how are you able to gain character development, and other important elements of a story in such a small amount of pages? The reason why I stick to longer stories or novels are because they offer more words to read, but in flash CYOA's, that's clearly not the case.

I believe that Bucky hosted a flash fiction contest last February, and created a storygame similar to the concept of flash CYOA made in a weekend for the chaos contest. An idea that comes to my mind is to impose a strict word and page limit to myself to not create the second longest and best storygame that I probably won't finish. 5000 words and 27 pages seem like a good limit, but the second doubt in my mind arises.

Linearity. If I make a flash CYOA, then how do I make it so that choices do matter to what ending you get? The illusions of choices appear to be a really good idea, but I want to create choices that impact the ending of the story. I'm pretty sure that the choices in bigger stories branch out to other endings, but I'm not sure if I'm able to do that in a flash CYOA.

I guess what I'm trying to ask is, how do you create a short storygame that consists of only 20-30 pages, but make it memorable and have a high rating (and not linear)? Sure, some of you can just say, "SHUT UP AND JUST WRITE DAMMIT!!!" But that would be no help to me. Do any of you guys know any other Choose Your Own Adventures that qualify as a flash CYOA, aside from Sethaniel's Snow, and Bucky's It's Raining Again ? I'm not looking for the ones where the author lazily puts a sentence on each page and asks the reader to make a choice or the linear ones where each choice not optimal to the story leads to unpredictable end links. Opinions about the topic is appreciated too.

Here you go, flash CYOA

https://infinite-story.com/story/info.php?id=1665

This... is sick. That's an understatement when trying to define your stories, as I never did find the correct term to describe them.

It's true that a shorter story can be more difficult to involve proper emotion and character development, but that just gives us a great opportunity to learn and grow.

See, the art of flash writing isn't as simple as just writing 10-20 short pages. Hell, it can be way more diverse then that. What really matters is the word distribution, because flash pieces must be well rounded to be considered good.

Generally, a short CYOA can be considered about 3000-4500 words with about 20-45 pages maybe.

The character development, see, isn't as big of an issue as it seems. You don't need dozens of lengthy descriptions completely pinpointing each and every aspect of a characters personality, but rather sticking with the highlights and going through them vaguely throughout a story can be the right way to go.

For example, on the first page, just give a name for a character, and a gender. As the story goes on, the character needs to have a consistent personality, otherwise it will seem as if there are twenty characters jammed into a single name.

Remember to reveal things about characters in some places, so we can get to know characters better, and it doesn't require multiple high-length descriptions.

Hope that helped.

5000 words is surely way more than you need if you're embracing the idea of flash fiction. And a sentence or two on each page is actually fine, you can say a lot with very little if you're using your words effectively. If an entire story can be told in 300 words, how many do you really need to cover one scene?

Flash fiction and even regular short stories are difficult, but it's all about getting into the mindset where every word matters.

As for your page limit, all you have to do is map the story out in advance, and you should be able to tell before you do any of the actual writing whether you've got enough for a memorable plot.