Thank you for heading to the official Creative Corner home of discussion about
The Murdered Official. I do hope you enjoyed the story. It does have quite a few paths, so hopefully you read it more than once. If you received an ending that said, “So, I guess that’s it. You solved the case.” Well, you reached an ending, but there might have been more to the story. Finding clues is what determines the final ending options. And no, there’s no indication you’ve found a clue, you’ll just have to figure that part out, sorry.
The entire story is a branch and bottleneck, which you might discover if you read it more than once. Each branching area does have a couple dead-ends and endings that you might discover. And you can obtain different information depending on which branching paths you take. It’s not very hard to discover one of the final endings, you just have to end up finding enough clues through the paths. If you don’t have enough, the final ending ends up hidden from you. I think there ended up to be a total of seven dead-ends and four final endings (which appear depending on how many clues you’ve found).
This story was written for a contest. I do that not to try and win the contest, but because the deadlines help me write. As you read this, no matter what year it is, it is highly likely that have at least 5 stories, probably closer to 15, “in progress” in my head. Parts of them might be written down. Some stories might have huge character dumps and world-building – none of which you can read because I haven’t finished yet. With a contest, I am forced to finish. Of course, as the deadline approaches, time seems to speed up, so I apologize for any sections that look rushed or incomplete. I also don’t proofread much, so feel free to point out errors here and I’ll get to them eventually.
I also, as usual, wrote this in a very strange fashion. Instead of planning the story out, I actually mapped out all the branch and bottleneck parts, then went back and filled in the pages. It did make for strange writing, so I hope it all ties together, but there might be a little, uh, “padding” in a few places to make the story continue to match the outline. I think it works to allow the reader to have some options and not force you down one pathway, but still make the final solution not too hard to find. Actually, I think it’s harder to NOT end up with the final ending, but hey, you read how you want to read, that’s why it’s called “Choose Your Story.”
Also, I had some fun mixing up the setting in this one. Yes, it is set in a classic medieval town and countryside. But I wanted to use some items, devices, and words from a modern setting (
Orphaned Etymology). So, I did. Sorry if some of the wording is jarring when you read it, but I hope it is not. It is really pretty light-hearted, or at least that’s what I was going for.
So, feel free to discuss anything here about the story, the writing, the pathways, characters, etc.!
