Forums » Writing Workshop » Read Thread

Can someone (or more) help me preview this story? I didn't want to publish this, so I just posted the link here. Thanks everyone!

http://chooseyourstory.com/story/final-destination-i-(preview)

Personally, I don't think Final Destination would translate well to a CYOA. I feel like all of the important choices would be entire random crap-shoots. The premise of the movies is that literally anything can kill you, so how is a reader supposed to make a good decision? This may work better if you add your own personal flair to the story structure and adapt this to some kind of survival game where life and death choices have some kind of logical bearing. For example, you could research real-life survival skills and incorporate that into your game vs. the sheer random death of Final Destination.

There aren't a ton of options to open this story with, but here is some things you can work on in the first few pages. Most of this advice can be utilized on your other pages as well.

Page 1: Describing characters by having them look in a mirror is unbelievably lazy and corny. Also, unless it has some importance to the overall story, how tall the player character is (or any character) is irrelevant, along with most physical traits. No one will remember or care about a laundry list of traits. Pick one or two that either have some importance on the plot or that mark your character as particularly unique and describe them in the flow of the story. Show. Don't Tell.

Page 2: "Walking away from the mirror, you are met with a nice room. Like, really really nice. You remember that you own a 10 million dollar mansion, complete with a pool."

Come on. I know you can get more creative with your description that this. What is so nice about the room? And no one would forget that they own a mansion, especially if they live there year round. That's silly.

Page 3: Why exactly are my items sentimental? Is everything I own of sentimental value? Why?

Things to work on that will improve the quality of your writing in general:

1) Use stronger nouns and verbs to help improve your imagery and eliminate generic blandness.
2) Read your story out loud, and if sounds awkward, you need to strongly consider re-writing those sections.
3) Start the action of the story sooner. Nothing important happens on the first three pages.
4) The story, in its current state, is rather linear. Utilize plot points to create meaningful choices.
5) Every sentence should serve to either advance the plot or add characterization. If a sentence does not fit this standard, it should be stricken from the story or replaced with something more relevant.

On a positive note:
1) Your grammar looked pretty good.
2) With some work, I think you could develop a nice voice for your story.

Also, since you already published this, when you republish the completed story, it will not appear under the new games category. You will want to put the completed story in a fresh editor.

I also recommend reading some of the featured stories on the site - take note of how the choices fall on relevant plot points and how the syntax of the story works to create strong imagery.

Good luck.