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Okay so I made an account because I have this idea. Curious what others think:

Basically, the idea is that the story starts off with a simple sentence, like “A man walks into the room and pulls out a gun.”

Then the player is presented with a bewildering series of choices that set up what sort of story will be told. For instance they might pick a time period (modern day, future, historical era, etc), a setting (home, school, workplace, etc), a genre (horror, comedy, romance, etc), and some other ones.

Then the player is presented with (roughly) a paragraph worth of text detailing what happens next.

How does this idea sound to you? Any ideas or suggestions?

I'm not sure, but it sounds like you are asking the reader to build the story, but not be part of the story? So the reader will select the time period and then the story will continue from the man with the gun in that time period? Could be fun, but sounds like a great deal of work on your part.

Well, basically the reader will have to chose a series of different options, which will craft the "micro-story" based on those specifications. My hope is that each of these will be short enough that they shouldn't take long to write.

Much of the fun will be in unexpected results that technically fit your specifications, but in unexpected or bizarre ways. I'll have to come up with some examples, I think

Wait. Are you just making a long mad lib?

Nooooo. This I might sound dumb, but I'll try to whip up an example of how the player's choices might lead to unexpected and (hopefully) humorous situations:

 

It starts off with "A man walks into the room and pulls out a gun."

Then you are offered a series of choices for genre, setting, etc. Let's say you choose "18th century", "Mansion", and "Romance". 

 

Then the story continues with something like "The man raises the gun and whispers 'Aleister sent me.' You gasp in excitement as you take the pistol from him. What a thoughtful gift from your beloved suitor Aleister! How did he know that you always wanted a a pistol of your very own?" And it continues from there.

 

Does that maybe make more sense?

 

Ah, I see. So the reader is really out of the story, then into the story? That could be weird. Some people will like it. It make make more sense if the reader isn't the one IN the story and making the choices. So in the story, the man can do stuff, but maybe not to the reader, if that makes sense. Then the reader is completely outside the story, not jumping back and forth.

Hmm, maybe. I'll have to test it out both ways to see what reads better, I think.

The advice is usually to make the first story a pretty straightforward one that focuses on the actual writing, but if nothing else this seems like a good way to give yourself a crash course with the editor. You'd need to get really comfortable with variables and on page scripting etc.

I imagine people would play around with it a few minutes to get funny results, and then tell you they hoped you wrote something longer next time.

Well the plan is basically to keep it short and simple, in order to make it easier as a first project - while hopefully keeping it entertaining.

 

I worry that overambition in a very first project can be a death sentence. "Biting off more than you can chew", basically.

It doesn’t seem like he would necessarily need any scripting for this. If he includes 5 different choices, he would only need to manually write 3,125 one-paragraph stories, which seems entirely doable.