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I feel the same as you. I originally searched up this site for the purpose of reading CYOAs, not writing them, and I never thought I would. However, I was forced to join a contest against my free will, and it was actually sort of fun. Now I do write a few CYOAs from time to time aside from normal stories, but I haven't posted them here.

Speaking of, Abge and I recently unpublished Graveyard of Empires to fix all the grammar errors while I was on a road trip with her and her dad, but after about three hours we stopped and never came back to it. I should probably get back to doing that. 

I'm the co-author, but it also could have just been Abge unpublishing it before she realized that you could edit it already. She hasn't been on the site forums in a while, so she wouldn't have known anyway. 

Off the top of my head...

Mizal might have stayed over on the Interfic forums and talked there more until the CoG take over of the place, then she might have just hung out on Adrift more I suppose. She probably would have still bumped into Nightwatch since I think she knew him from yet another IF forum.

Bill, Ogre, and Will were writing independently of IF stuff. So while that would have been the case, dunno if they would have taken as much of an extended interest in IF.

Gower would have just been at CoG still.

Kiel would have just groomed kids on CoG where such degeneracy flourishes.

Seth would have fit in at CoG even better. Beg for money via Patreon for his "surgery" and never actually finish the game he claimed he was working on. Might have some competition when Meltdown starts begging for her laptop money though.

I know he isn't as well known (Though he's been a little more visible lately) but urnam0 is actually one of the few IS people that wandered over here. His Warlord story was written over there first, so he'd probably at least write that and then maybe just lurk there from time to time.

Cat2002116 is another OG ISer (Who's even less visible) that would have still wrote stuff there (She's never really gotten around to writing anything here though)

It's entirely possible that some of the people here might have still found their way to Infinite Story. PerforatedPenguin for example actually found IS before CYS. (He apparently tried to PM me there until he saw in my profife location I linked to this place.)

As for me, I probably would be insane enough to still post stories on IS. I might have probably just lurked around other writing forums, maybe even posting sometimes. I assume that Thara might have still PMed me eventually since she was on IS quietly reading my stories for years. (Some bonds are never broken)

Probably not, I would have written a web novel/web comic for fun instead. I actually discovered digital interactive fiction through Hosted Games (COG). At the time they were still publishing very small charming stories such as Burnt and "who killed me last night", but I lost interest after reading a couple of bland ones and one very very bad one. (Something something evil boarding school)

Then ehh, chooseyourstory was found while I was typing in "choose your own adventure game something something" on Google. I played pretty much the entire top 10 stories (distinctly remembered the innkeeper, the gladiator one, deadman walking, my vacation and mommy can I go out and kill tonight) and then I read three hundred thousand tears, somehow hated that story so much that I didn't bother to read anything at all for at least several years.

I'll finish up the projects I planned to do and figure out how to use another type of script. If I don't find it too cumbersome, I continue. Otherwise, I'll switch to something else.

The main thing that was holding me back is that I couldn't code and learning it seemed too daunting.

I like both.

I was writing interactive fiction before I knew there were ANY online communities surrounding it, so probably yes. But definitely a lot less. The stories I published on this site definitely wouldn't have happened without this community.

Probably not.  I had a particular story idea that I thought well suited to CYOA, so I went looking for a site that would facilitate that so I didn't have to code up my own.  If I hadn't found this one, I would have found one of the others but the the community there would not have held my interest long enough to finish the original idea.  The community here is what encouraged me to go with a simpler story for my first one, and now I am in the cycle of avoiding SHAME in writing contests.

I think I would still write, just not interactive fiction. While I adore the genre, If I were to make something related to writing outside of an IF website I would want more pictures in it. So I would probably be making something like a visual novel. Writing is fun, but I've always been more into art. 

I would have written linear fiction if it wasn't for CYS. Most of the writing techniques I learnt were from reading novels (hence the overly long stories haha), so I might have written for one of those cringe websites for teen writers when I was younger and maybe joined a writing community there if I found a suitable one. 

Looking back, I'm super glad I found CYS when I did. That was the first time I wanted to publish my writing for an audience and doing this at the wrong place could have gone badly in so many ways.

In mystery detective novels, I like the long discussion ramble the detective does with the Watson near the end of the story. The anticipation always gets to me, how all puzzle pieces go together and then bam; the reveal of the murderer. It's even more fun when you are about 95 percent sure it was the man in the garden, but are still a bit iffy about that creepy little girl who showed us a secret passageway.

Having more info as the reader than the characters in the story is also lots of fun.

(A little aside, in horror movies, sound cues. The croaks in the Grudge still creep me out.)

Unresolved conflict.

Foreshadowing

Fighting between individuals. Especially when there are more pressing matters at hand.

I love using dramatic irony as a writer, but I hate it as a reader. One tactic I like to use is where you directly tell or show the reader what's going to happen, but they know nothing about how or why.

Adding time pressures, raising the stakes, forcing the protagonist to face their greatest fear (usually at the climax), and having another character whose goals directly opposes the protagonist.

When I don't know what to do, I just kill someone. Or threaten to kill them, that works too.

It's kinda bad that I don't remember any of the opening scenes of what I've written except the most recent one. It depends on the story you want to tell, but it's nice to give the readers a hook, something that piques their interest, could be anything. Something something, give them a taste for what's to come and the overall vibe bla bla.

All this Dostoevsky better not be influencing you, Petros!

I tend to start with a simple sentence that piques the reader's interest. Especially in my most recent stories, it would demonstrate the protagonist's inner conflict and foreshadow the overall theme.

Something I've recently noticed is that the second/ third line of my stories would be rather descriptive, to contrast the first.

Case study because I'm procrastinating curious:
 

• Dreamtruder: "Sleep. It pulled me in like a current, enticing me with comfort and relaxation."
• Breaker: "The day's strange events had left me confused. Just seconds ago, I was in the arms of my parents. A group of well-dressed women and men were gathered around me, giggling at every word I said - or at least, tried to say."
• Fall to Hopelessness: "The hardest thing to do those days was to explain how I lost Rosa. I didn’t lose her in the typical sense, like how Death’s cold hands wrapped around those he claimed for his kingdom."
• A Hunted and Haunted Halloween: "Who knew dying would hurt so badly? As his breaths became unsteady and his blood soaked into his royal attire, the king did not say those carefully crafted last words he had his poet write for him."
• In Moonlit Waters: "Sleep shunned you that night. Slits of moonlight trickled in the half opened shutters, as you rose from your silken sheets, covered in cold sweat, feet colliding with the floor."
• Spell of Slumber: "I can't do this. Mother's cold, emotionless eyes scrutinize me from the portrait on the wall."

Seems like I've been following some sort of pattern without realizing it all this while lol.

Slowly, painfully, and with reluctance.

Edit? What and ruin the purity?

For my actual stories (works less well with interactive stories) I typically outline the whole plot, then edit in details, then add more details, then connect everything, then smooth it all out more. Then, I force my friends to read it and tell me how to edit further

For stories on this site, I'm lucky if I just get them done. Editing is a nonentity

For my stories on this site, I wrote the first draft first, then went back and checked for spelling, grammar, and scripting errors. I didn't have the time or motivation to do thorough structural revisions.

Otherwise, I usually edit as part of my writing process. I use a lot of [brackets to block out phrasings I'm unsure about] and make in-text notes to myself on my rough drafts (like this).
...
I use dotted lines to skip ahead when I don't want to write something, and then come back and fill it in later.

It takes me several full revisions before I get a story in a format anyone else could read, but by the time I do, it's usually much more advanced than a typical rough draft, and the structure has also already gone through significant revisions. After that, I still need to do regular editing for typos and structural problems, but it's less intensive than it would be otherwise.

Sounds like my process is probably similar to what fresh does.

Similar, yeah. However, your summary sounded much more professional and cohesive than mine lol

By clicking the edit button on the top right of my posts.

Edit: See this, Peng? It wasn't here earlier.

Now you can't edit your post either!

Oh, I'm surprised I've just noticed that button. I'll save this useful information which I totally will not use the next time I join a contest and can't finish my storygame. 

We've been given too much power.

Fuck. Here I was thinking it was site-wide

There have been a couple other small changes since I was last really on so I wasn't surprised

Surprised it doesn't drop some kind of "edited on" flag on the post.

I mean, I would be, if that was still a doable thing, which it no longer appears to be.

It depends on how unique your characters are. If ever single one is a bland cardboard cutout, then the max I'll remember is two- and those only if they're opposite genders! However, if they all have a very unique personality, style of talking, or anything that makes them stand out, the author can get away with a lot more. That being said, I try to stick with around five main characters, max. Less is usually more- less characters allows for more developed characters in my opinion.

An addendum to all that:
Sometimes more characters are necessary to make a story flow well or make any kind of sense. If you're in a full-manned vessel in outer space, your crew most likely consisted of more than two people, so more characters are needed. Now, how often these characters pop up and actually influence the story is still a matter of personal choice.

I did some research and according this website here, there are three crucial, necessary characters for every story: a protagonist, an antagonist, and at least one side character who has any kind of relationship with the protagonist to advance the plot and help establish the theme. In fact, every character is one of these things- but how many of each you have is totally up to you.

As a reader, I don't mind a big cast of characters. I read lots of web serials and most of them have very bloated casts. One thing I really dislike though is when lots of characters are introduced at once. (Blablabla of house blablabla, blabla of house blabla and whole rundown of even more names with little to distinguish them). I've seen GRR Martin do this and most of the time I gloss over these passages.

I don't like to write big casts that much. The maximum number so far is about 15 different characters. The reason why I'm not that fond of it is that I don't like to write group scenes where more than three people talk at once. I still struggle a little with it. One trick I did was to just keep all these 15 characters apart and tied to a location. Of course it's handy to give them unique personalities, motivations and appearances to distinguish them even more. 

Another trick to increase the amount of characters while keeping things readable for your readers is to set these characters into separate groups or storylines. I often see this in web serials, but also in epic fantasy and big scifi series.

The Wandering Inn (longest written work of fiction in English) does this by having one unique storyline (later more) play out in each of the five distinct continents. Within one storyline you also have the cast split in different groups that have their own character arcs. For example:

In volume 4 you have within the main continent five groups; the people working in the inn, adventurer group number one; Horns of Hammerad , adventurer group number two; the halfseekers , adventurer group number three the Silver Swords, and adventurer group four; griffon hunt. It's about 25 people. It would be a huge task to remember all 25 names, but it's a lot easier for the brain if you can stick a label (and you only have to remember five of them) onto each of them. (Kinda like people do in daily life. Mike from work, family, Peter from the soccer team.)

Also make sure to give characters distinct roles. That also helps if you don't have a story with multiple POVs. What are they to the main character? Are they the antagonists, their friends, their colleagues, their family etc. (Another tip: you don't have to give every character a name. I once read a book series that often does this thing that the author often isn't bothered to give side characters names. These characters are just named by their title; Archduke of Klassenberg or the mother of blablabla. Somehow it makes the job of remembering these characters a lot easier, since their purpose and relation to the main character is spelled out all the time.)

Do not be afraid to make use of common character archetypes. (The snooty elf, the old mage, the annoying little sister etc.) They are there for a reason and can be used as an easy narrative shorthand. You can always flesh some characters out later in the story. The most important thing is that they leave some kind of first impression on the reader.

How I would tackle the fully manned vessel of Fresh. Have the crew in core teams with unique character dynamics and archetypes. (This is thought of on a whim). About 22.

(3) The captain and his team: 

• Captain: figurehead; carefree, always seeks for new ideas and new experiences. Typical protagonist.
• Vice captain: Right hand man of the captain: a lot stricter and less jolly but firmly loyal to the captain, often is the one who modifies the captain's ideas to make them achievable.
• The navigator: much older and often butts heads with the two, especially the captain. Has an explosive temper, but only one who can veto the captain's ideas.

(3) migrant workers: also the scapegoats when the secret suitcase of the diplomat family gets stolen in the shop. They try to prove their innocence

• The leader: big broody grumbly guy, very big and tall
• His friend: effeminate thin willowy, big crier and complainer
• The stranger: the normal guy of the bunch. Really is done with the whole shit in the ship, but gets pulled into it again and again. Only went with the two because they promised a high salary. Depressed and suicidal for the entire trip.

(4) support crew: /actually spies from another country to spy on the diplomat family

• The cook: outgoing and generally pleasant guy, very much a people's person, the clever schemer
• Housekeeper three: loses attention quite often, very enthusiastic about everything, but a giant airhead.
• The housekeeper: wife of the cook, anxious and very jittery, thinks of everything that can go wrong
• Housekeeper two: calm and very much donning a poker face the entire time.

(5) the mechanics

• Leader: very experienced, capable leader, questions the competency of the captain, is very firm about keeping with traditions.
• Hauler: dumb as bricks, but very strong, doesn't think much, 
• Specialist: sister of the hauler. Does the tinkering, nerds out over gadgets.
• Team player: main peacekeeper of the group, most emotional intelligence, is the one who smooths out any rows.
• Leader's apprentice: young inexperienced, very timid, but wants to follow the philosophy of the captain instead of the leader of the mechanics

Family of diplomats that have to be escorted. (7)

• Father: support behind the scenes; thinks that someone is spying on them and wants to steal the secret suitcase, but doesn't know who.
• Mother: friend of the captain, main figurehead and spokes person. Travels with the vessel to continue negotiations with the other country.
• Elderly grandmother who suffers from lapses of forgetfulness
• Very annoying rebelling little brother
• Know-it-alll sister who is a big parent pleaser
• Toddler
• Family dog

Elections and campaigning. It's more common in sci-fi and, modern settings, not as much in fantasy. I always love this trope when I see it in fantasy stories.

Modern Olympic sports but with fantasy races and magic. I want to see goblins play baseball or have wizards do some ice magic to make the ice more slippery with curling. 

A whole city built of the bones of its dead inhabitants. The whole area (which is a desert) is otherwise unliveable and unfertile without necromancy. To live there and be a citizen one must agree to donate their body to the city after they die. 

Edit: Blablabla

Didn't you see? He's doing that TOMORROW ^_^

I might have mentioned it before, but I once planned for a 200k+ CYS-inspired story. I gave up halfway and never finished because my plans were spiraling out of control, too many new changes were happening on CYS all at once, and I was worried about people being offended by their portrayal.

It’s a cave-of-time space fantasy, which includes:

• The wannabe edgelord ‘noob’ protagonist who sets out on a fruitless quest to kill a Celestial being (it was loosely inspired by banned members who wanted to ‘ban’ or ‘report’ mods)
• Celestial beings as the embodiment of concepts like Time, Death, Insanity, etc (representing the mods) and each had their own powerful Artifacts, along with planets you could visit even if you’d most likely die
• The N.O.O.B realm (filled with dangerous planets, because the most random choices lead to death)
• Cylestiacademy (learn dark magic, portal studies, and combat skills; also, you can watch writing duels and bet on the outcome)
• Four factions of Artifact Hunters (pretty sure most people know what this represents)
• Many events such as the ascensions of new mods, appreciation days, contests, etc
• Interplanetary heists, mass murder of lesser subhuman species, either getting tricked by or tricking the exiled ‘celestials’, purging an entire spaceship due to their awful feline contagion, visiting the grimdark graveyards of Death… the list goes on

More overambitious plans:

• Each Cylestial would have their own branch and epilogue (probably the main reason I quit)
• Every somewhat active member would have their own scene, and some more prominent ones would feature in longer paths (but my list is somewhat outdated since this was early - mid 2022)
• Other unimportant people may be mentioned in a one-liner so everyone would read my story
• The first real choice would split into 3 main paths (you can’t write a CYS-inspired story without an allusion to its top ranked storygame, Eternal)

I managed to put around 60k words into writing so it isn’t exactly unwritten, but I’ve been placing this project on hold indefinitely. Might as well put this idea here for your entertainment haha. 

This would actually be so cool

Glad you think so haha. I was planning for it to be my magnum opus on the site, until I realized it wasn't feasible. 

Might as well answer this one.

One thing in particular I have always had an idea for but just never implemented in several stories is the idea of an ongoing rival. Basically a character that keeps popping up throughout until towards the end where it gets settled once and for all. (Or sooner depending on a branch)

Now in a few stories you might see some bits of where this was sort of planned, but for whatever reason I just never really continued with it consistently.

I think arguably the only one where it semi-happens is in Necromancer with Trelik who you are told is pretty jealous of your abilities, but other than the snide comments in the beginning with the Dark Order description and towards the end of the main path where he fucks around with time magic, he doesn't play much of a "rival" role.

Eternal was supposed to have at least one branch where you massacre some kid's family and he comes back as an adult like a bad ass to completely wreck your shit. It just never happened though. I had the beginnings of this set up a couple times in the story, but like I said, I never really followed up on it.

Again, I sort implemented it with Zana who was the last of the Felkan royal family that Klemto raises. Though again this wasn't really a rival so much as it was an "unknown antagonist". Even then it was twisted a bit since Zana didn't even experience the "life" that Francis had "taken away" from her. So she just made up her own mind that the life she never had would have been better than the life she had now.

Finally Rogues was definitely one where I really planned to have an ongoing rival, and that particular rival was going to be Klint from the beginning of the story. The idea was you'd keep bumping into him and his dislike of you was based on kicking his ass in the beginning.

However, that never happened and you murk Klint pretty much as your first choice in the story. Lol. From there, there's a few rivals you deal with based on various branches, but never that one that follows you from the beginning.

Funny enough, the original basis of Rogues which was the old Legend game also had this plan for Klint in that one to become your rival. Never happened in that one either. Klint was just doomed to be a very minor character to be dealt with at the start of the story it seems.

I plan the structure around the same time as the story. They kinda work in tandem. Most meaningful choices in a page are preplanned too and already in the main outline along with the endings. I do improvise with the flavor text and the less plotty parts like characterization or world building.

As for preventing the infinite sprawl; outline, outline, outline. If I'm really pressed for time and need to be strict what is included and what not, I'll highlight the main events and other things that NEED to happen for the story to make sense like some kind of to-do-list. Then just go write them one by one with no extra flourishes.

Nowadays I'm also mentally prepared that each story I write will probably be twice as big than originally planned. I'm therefore a little hesitant to jump into a big saga for this reason. 

Edit: blablabla

I do a very full and organized outline, with placeholder text, for the important choices, including all of the variables that are going to change based on the choices, and the various minor branches that stem off of those major choices.

Then I sit down to write and I almost immediately find myself ignoring the outline because I came up with something funnier, and then the whole thing ends up ten times longer than I originally thought.

It's not a very efficient system, but it works for me.

Outline of most of the main paths usually comes first then I usually just write a main path from beginning to end and backtrack to add the branching choices after that’s finished, usually working on the longer ones from beginning to end first.

As far as focusing stuff, it depends on the story’s situation.

Now of course a choice that ends up killing you resolves itself. However, sometimes it would be a little silly to kill you off ALL the time based on a particular choice (Or similar bad end like being trapped or something), 

So in those cases I take the story itself into consideration and that particular main branch.

Probably one of the example based on a branch and one I actually used to get asked about a lot was Ground Zero, since there were more than a few endings where you just wander off into the wasteland to an unknown fate.

The focus here was based on the four main branches. So if you picked one of the shelter paths, the focus would be what you did in there. The story would effectively end prematurely if you ever left it for whatever reason. Did you live? Did you die? Well that’s up to your imagination because you left the boundaries of what that particular branch was focusing on.

Sometimes you might get a “mini-epilogue” saying what happened to you, but that was still it for the story itself.

Eternal took more of a general focus of the literal word. Eternal, immortality, establishing some sort of legacy to be remembered. All 13 epilogues are based on that, though only one actually leads to “immortality.” In the few cases where you don’t actually die, (Like wandering off into the desert with Brenda) you’ve effectively still “given up” so the focus ends along with the story.

Innkeeper and Rogues were the same way. As soon as you weren’t running the inn anymore, the focus of the story and the story itself were effectively over. You get one last bit with Eliza at best.

With Rogues, as soon as you weren’t really being a “rogue” anymore in the current time period, (Like settling down, being enslaved, going back in time, etc) the focus of the story was gone and it ended. Now Rogues does slightly waver a bit with the path where you become a vampire, but even then I bring it back to engaging in roguelike behavior one last time before wrapping up the path.

Nothing’s perfect and sometimes an interesting branch just has to be explored a bit more even if the focus gets away from the original purpose.

Similar to the other responses, I plan most of the important choices and branches before writing. Sometimes during the writing process, I’ll have an idea for a mini-path or new choice, and it’ll be added spontaneously. This is how the choice to leave the castle in Spell of Slumber became its own small branch.

As for writing, I tend to go chronologically since my stories are somewhat of a gauntlet style. When the branches split, I get the shorter ones out of the way first, so I can spend more time on the longer ones. This isn’t always the best tbh. It means falling behind on my schedule (and neglecting the main story) if I spend too long on side-branches. Working up to the choice usually happens naturally, although when I have too many one link pages, I add information links, seemingly meaningless choices with delayed consequences, or just flavor text. 

My stories always sprawl out of focus. Everytime. Since my storygames are written for contests, I often sacrifice entire branches or subplots to meet the deadline. This is the reason behind the rushed last few chapters of Breaker, the one-page chapters at the end of In Moonlit Waters, and the kingdoms you can’t visit in Spell of Slumber. 

But there are times when the opposite happens—I finish the main storyline earlier than expected, and because I want to make the most of my time, I add in new challenges/ subplots/ extra obstacles at the end. This is why there was suddenly a lot more branching at the end of Fall to Hopelessness, the random subplot at the end of Dreamtruder, and the frustrating time-based puzzle at the end of the Halloween game. 

Honestly, anything cleverly worded, or even showing a little bit of effort. My standards are low

Just about anything, not that picky once I start. I often read the entire summary and several reviews before I delve into a new story. As for the stories on the site, I'll trudge through any schlock though they can make themselves more enticing just by writing a good synopsis.

The stereotypical advice I've always seen is to add internal conflict. But imo, anything that piques my curiosity and/or is well-written would be good enough for me.

Personally I believe the first line isn't as important as the first scene. The main mistakes that bore me are:

1. Nothing happens (e.g. 'boring' scenes like waking up, too much description which doesn't move the story forward, or solely an infodump/ worlbuilding explanation I was given no reason to care about)

2. It is confusing (e.g. too many story-specific terms that can't be easily contextually inferred, lots and lots of names being thrown around, technical terms that makes it seem like less of a story and more of an academic article)

3. There’s no suspension of disbelief (e.g. everyone acts illogically and out of character, the story doesn't follow its own rules, finding a new plothole in every paragraph)

I believe the best plot hooks immerse you in the story's setting and allows you to connect to the protagonist's goals and struggles.

How did this one get completely missed?

Anyway the only pacing I sort of take into account is infodumping.

A long time ago when I was writing Paradise Violated and going into more of the background lore I started to realize that it was taking up a significant part of the story and not actually related to the action/events that were currently going on.

So to solve that problem I started doing the "history/lore" links and put them as a closed loop "choice" that you could click on if you really wanted to read lore.

Also did this for things I wanted to add in a story, but the events weren't significant enough to warrant writing an entire passage with choices for them.

That's probably the main thing I take into consideration as far as pacing goes though. Just keeping the main story focused on the protagonist's actions/reactions and not getting side tracked with extra stuff that doesn't quite directly impact the story.

I do most of the pacing work while plotting out stories before I start serious drafting. While drafting, I'm typically trying to tell the story in as few words and scenes as possible, so I hear my stories tend to be pretty fast-paced. I can be kind of verbose, though, so when editing I often focus on tightening up my sentence structure.

Pacing is probably better the earlier you start thinking about it, because if you don't start until editing you're going to have to rework major parts of your story. If you've got a decent grip on it from the planning stages, you save yourself a lot of work later on.

This is in line with the advice Mizal mentioned, which I agree is some of the best writing advice I've ever heard: if you're bored, your reader is bored. I feel like that's the key to most pacing decisions: Make the each scene as interesting to you as possible, cut it if you can't, and the story will flow together without seeming to drag out.

Gay and DepressedER!!! is probably the most fun I've ever had with writing.

No, I don't think I can tell most of the time. Sometimes it's obvious at the end of stories that were made for contests around here...

I know this question is old, but I'm answering because:
1. These questions are fun, and I don't want them to go unanswered for two weeks in a row.
2. I love seeing my username in bolded letters :) (even if the whole username doesn't fit and all I see is "fresh_out_t...")

I think in amateur/unedited writing you can usually tell when the author was having a good time because those sections of the story are just better. They'll spend time making sure it's good, and the scene is more clear in their head. You can tell the author cared less about a scene if the spelling and sentence structure gets sloppy.

In professional writing you can only sometimes tell, since the whole book is usually edited pretty well. But I think there's usually a pretty high correlation with how much an author enjoys a scene and how much their readers enjoy it.

I've been having a blast with my current project of about a year. I decided at the beginning that I wouldn't write any scenes or plotlines I didn't really want to, and it's been a huge help in keeping my focus on the project. I've also enjoyed writing a screenplay, since it cuts out a lot of the writing mechanics that interest me less and gets straight to the plot.

What's the logline of your screenplay?

An airship pilot, an inventor, and a history professor must stop an evil corporation from seizing control of some newly uncovered powerful ancient technology.

Cool. Sounds like an Indiana Jones movie.

I feel like basic, ordinary places are underused in specifically the horror genre. For me, something terrifying happening in a place I go to every other week (like Walmart) will stick with me for much longer than the basic "man this house is creepy" type of setting

It is better

The Dutch countryside and the Afsluitdijk. I've only seen it a few times in movies and never that beautifully shot even though the sunsets there are very nice.

I also like scenes that take place in train stations. They are pretty versatile, great for horror movies, but also romcoms or as a way to depict the afterlife. I also like the design of many of the older ones.

I've been into spaceships and space stations lately. And archipegalos. Archipegalos have such great narrative potential to them (particularly in interactive open-world formats) and I almost never see them.

I'm also fond of ancient ruins. There's always lots of potential for storytelling there. More recent kinds of urban decay are great too--such as overgrown barns and sheds, or ivy breaking apart a concrete building, or a rusted tractor found deep in the woods. This specifically I feel has a lot of potential and is really underused. Futuristic ruins are also cool.

I'm fine with whatever as long as the writing's good. It's always a small surprise when somebody uses something other than second person. I was never really fully shocked by the way somebody wrote a story though because I had read both third and first-person IFs before I started to actively seek out CYOA stories. Only after I had become more experienced with IF did I realize that those two choices were deviating from normalcy. I was always taught in school that I would never read or write in second person, so I remember being shocked when I first saw it being used. It had been drilled into my head that second person meant boring "How-to" manuals and instruction pamphlets that come with things like furniture. 

I prefer second person as a reader and writer in CYOAs. That said, I do think first and third have their place, particularly when the narrator character is particularly distinct and thus, might need to be differentiated from the reader more directly. Some people react badly to 'you' characters who have strong personalities, but are okay with it when it's a different character.

I'd actually like to see more non-interactive second person stories. I think it's an underutilized mechanism.

There are also some stories that deviate from the norm for a reason. For instance, the story "A graveyard smash" is told in first person, but the player is a separate entity who is referred to with 'you' and second person pronouns.

As a reader, I hate when there are too many people in one conversation. I don't mind three or four people in a conversation, but once you get to around five people it starts stretching it for me. This isn't for everything. If the writing is good, they make it clear who's speaking, and everyone has a purpose in the dialogue then that's better. I just feel like a lot of times, especially in books where there's a large cast of characters, they can have dialogues with six people where three are basically saying the same thing and are indistinguishable in the conversation, two are just kinda adding in side comments that break the flow of dialogue, and then maybe one person actually has a point in the conversation. I'm tired of reading things where they put characters into dialogue that don't need to be there and add nothing to it. It makes it harder to keep track of and adds unnecessary length. 

Actually talking to people helps with writing dialogue, or so I've heard

That can't be right.

You just need better people.

Thanks, Ford, for commending random shit I post and getting me into the top 20 most commended Wardens

The standards for marauders are so low. The highest earners are a non-randstad dutchman and a redneck who pretends to be from the hood.

The Marauder in 20th place has 136 comms. I have 32.

Fuck I meant wardens. Yeah, I wanted to say that Sherb might be the exception, but I just realized that he was never a warden

I was about to say- the highest ranked Marauder is End. 

Beat by a Warden AND a girl- take the L

What exactly did you beat him in? He has 87 commendations and is in 15th overall for Sages. 

Thunderdome

A chance to destroy you again? I'll add you to the list :p

And I need an actual setting

And action

And... a story

How did I win?

Oh, I'm an idiot. Thanks! :)

Commendations used to be a grind when they first added the groups

I do like that you both aren't even offended by the first part of the insult unless you both consider it to be a compliment

Petros does feed into the stereotype I have of Him. Look, if he were to ever write a victorian period piece then I would withdraw this statement, but that would be as unlikely as me writing about a succubus.

I do now wonder whether Endmaster fits more into the failed Dutchman or redneck category.

1 for 3 in the future buddy @petros

The part where I finish the story- endings are not my specialty

I used to be awful at endings, and am now marginally better, so here's what I've learned about writing them:

• Don't be afraid to end on a dark or tragic note. Don't do it just for its own sake, but if that's what the story calls for, you gain nothing by trying to water it down.
• Don't be afraid to end on a lighter note. If you write a dark story but find unexpected hope at the end, you're not harming your plot by letting it flourish.
• Ask yourself what your central character(s) have emotionally committed themselves to through their actions. If your protagonist has spent the whole story trying to find a life of adventure, the audience will be disappointed if they settle down to a life of farming at the end. This technique can be especially useful in CYOAs, since if you let the player commit themselves to one thing or another through their chocies, you can have this affect their ending.
• Return to the beginning. Stories are cyclical, so see if you can revisit the beginning in some way from a new perspective. Often authors do this by starting and ending in the same location, or with a similar scenario--but having the protagonists deal with it differently due to the experiences they've had during the story.
• Implications for the future. The final scene should summarize how the protagonist's life has changed, and give a rough idea of what they intend to do going forward. Or if it's a tragedy and they've totally lost their way, it should focus on that.

This advice is mostly focused on actual ending scenes. If it's climaxes you struggle with rather than resolutions, my advice would be different.

Thank you! Much appreciated :P

I feel that my prose isn't as evocative as I would like. It's almost as if I have two modes: pondering for hours on end over one sentence or just write plainly without putting in a lot of thought.

Tldr: how to write very pretty descriptions like you without losing my mind over it.

This is genuinely good advice, if I could commend you for it, I would have done so already. Non-Randstad folk do seem to have their way with words.

This is a bit of a cop out, but time. Right now I actually do have the motivation to write, projects I'm interested in, and clear ideas on where to take them, but I'm swamped with schoolwork and have almost no time to touch my work.

In terms of writing stuff, my self-assessment is always off. I can never tell in advance what stories are in good shape, which jokes will land, and what twists are genuinely surprising. Often I find that something I've been worrying about isn't a problem at all, and something that never even occured to me is the real issue. Being able to accurately judge my own work while I'm writing it would be a huge help, but alas, I suspect this is one of those problems you can't really solve.

I'm also usually much wordier than I need to be, and have to edit out words after I write. It'd be nice to be more concise on the first pass.

I'm usually much sparser and vaguer on character development than I think I'm being. I'm working on being less subtle with my story arcs.

I struggle a lot on description. I always end up using the same words, or I just don't know English. What can I do to make it more pleasing for the reader? How can I grab their attention? 

As someone who hates both writing and reading description, you have options here. My way of dealing with this is just to choose narrative styles that don't require heavy description writing. There are two that come to mind:

1. Deep first person. This can work well with frames like epistolary writing, but you can also just go for it in any story. I often choose narrators who are as uninterested by their surroundings as I am, and just give barebones summaries before moving on to the action. This rarely works in third person, but is much easier to pull off with a distinct narrator.

2. Screenwriting. Nobody is interested in engaging description here, they want writing that is functional and clear. It lets you move right on to the action and dialogue.

If you do like description and want to write it well, my best advice is to read a lot of stories that have the kind of description you want to emulate. There's a knack for sentence structure that you can pick up through experience. Also, try writing some description, then posting it on the forums for others to dissect.

But bear in mind: There's a lot of disagreement about there about what is good description and what isn't. Ultimately, you have to pick a style you like, and accept that it won't be for everyone. No style is.

As someone who has lost three times in a row, my advice will probably be very laughable, but here you go. I'll go through every short story I've written and mainly what I learnt from it.

story 1 - the chosen hero aka I lost to a teenage boy

It was my first story in years and you obviously can tell. I made the scope of my story way too big and as a result my descriptions became very sparse and very much very bland. Too much happens with too little feels. 

From story 1 onwards I really learnt how to keep my short stories very small and concise. With 2000 words you can only show one big idea, event or theme. (You can do more and break this rule, but I think that only very experienced short story writers are able to pull this off)

story 2 the werewolf fuckery aka my fight with enter pretending to be a teenage girl aka enter in drag

people liked the story a lot more than the first one, but I fumbled really hard on the ending. It's generally a good idea to make the ending as clear and concise as possible. Don't be like me. Pacing was kinda the deciding factor on both stories; it's good to set up the story, but make sure to have at least 1/4 of the story reserved to wrap it all up in a neat bow.

This was also the first story where I used Grammarly and as you can see, the spelling and grammar fumbles really decreased as a result. 

story 3, the story where I lost to someone who has lost to a teenage girl twice.

I honestly don't know. I was told that my characters were flat and I pondered very long on how to improve upon that. Still, I was pretty certain that at least the main character was someone readers would be able to understand haha. (She was still written as someone very unlikeable and very selfish). I guess you have to ask the people that reviewed that story about this part. 

The other part that is so much more important to short stories than long stories is prose; in big long novels I would generally forgive spelling errors, a few mistakes or bland prose, but since a short story has only this much time to prove to the reader that it's good, you really have to make sure your writing is EVOCATIVE. Make sure to have the reader immerse themselves into the setting and the characters. If something reads very awkwardly if you say it out loud, then CHANGE IT.

For a better explanation or instructions, please refer to Enter's previous post in the monday questionaire 

Eeeyyy, this week's will be the week where I'll lose to a teenage girl. I still hope that each subsequent story I write that they'll become better in quality

Already resigned to your fate? Or did you just not write anything

I didn't :)

The main thing I vote based on is clarity. Was this story's language easy to understand, or did it make me work to read it? If both stories pass that bar, I move on to more a nuanced assessment, but if one falls short, my vote is pretty much decided right there.

Note that I don't mean 'hurr durr I hate thinking'. Thought provoking or complicated stories are fine, but you still need to meet a bare minimum of clarity in your sentence structure. I should be able to tell who is speaking, and I should be able to read your sentences in order without having to double back and make sure I understood them correctly.

After that, I look at stuff like pacing, how entertaining the story is, and whether the ending is fits the premise. The story shouldn't waste time on irrelevant or boring thoughts and details, and the actions and events should be evenly spaced. The ending shouldn't come out of left field, but should be dramatically satisfying and foreshadowed. The story's writing should genuinely interest me and keep me reading.

If both stories meet the criteria there, I start to look at higher level stuff like how dramatically satisfying the story is foreshadowing, characterization, and originality. I don't have any hard criteria.

A good thunderdome-esque short story concept should ideally be a single scene requiring no or very little backstory to understand. It's probably best to start with an ending in mind, and then build the story around that, rather than come up with an interesting premise and struggle to deliver on it.

Short stories are more difficult to write. Just kidding, sort of.

With short stories, the scope has to be much smaller without foregoing all the important elements like character, plot, pacing, setting, style, etc. I'll write a short list of the main mistakes I've seen people make when judging Thunderdome entries.

1. Proofreading.
This is straightforward so I won't have to elaborate, but when there's less to judge a story on (and the writers have less to edit), I tend to be a bit more picky with this than normal stories. The first impression bias is also true. 

2. Having too large of a scope.
I still struggle with this, being honest. Sometimes it's clear that someone envisions a larger story, but ended up having to cut down a number of plot points. This usually results in a number of problems - infodumps, gaps in continuity, or worst of all, a story which doesn't seem to go anywhere. I'll tackle this in the next few points.

3. Infodumps.
While I'm aware it takes less words to show something than to tell, I've seen a few entries with too much infodumping. This occurs when the writer has to give readers all the important exposition before getting to the good part of the story. As a remedy for this, my advice is to 1) reduce the scope of the story, 2) only tell readers what they need to know when they have to know it (prevent giving all the exposition at once), and 3) leave some things vague/ open to interpretation. Also, it's important to ground readers in your story before jumping straight to the autistic details about random worldbuilding lore. 

4. Gaps in continuity.
Character A has a knife. They move to kill Character B. But suddenly, in the next sentence, B has the knife and A leaps out of the window. All this time, they were supposed to be in a desert. This happens more often with either abstract plots (where concepts are more exploratory and aren't grounded in a real-world-like setting) or scenes where a lot is happening all at once. It could also occur if a writer omits paragraphs/ sentences to cut down words and end up leaving the readers confused. I've been guilty of this before. The best remedy is to give yourself some distance from your writing before proofreading, so you'll be able to catch these gaps more efficiently.

5. Story doesn't go anywhere.
There's a difference between this and cliffhanger endings. While cliffhangers can be properly foreshadowed and still form a cohesive story, here, I'm talking about stories where the character arc develops but nothing happens in the end, the main conflict doesn't have much of a reason for anything, or lots of things happen but the plot events feel more random than connected. Maybe it's easier to see the opposite, a well thought out story, than the absence of it. But my favorite thing to see in short stories are callbacks to earlier points, where it's clear the writer intended the plot to progress a certain way rather than just pasting on a random ending. It could be demonstrated by a recurring motif, a character arc the evolves throughout the story influenced by events, or a parallel to the start which brings the story full circle.

6. Wasted words.
I've once read advice that says: every sentence must develop character or further the plot. It's even more fitting for short stories. Pick a focused theme, write about it, and minimise tangents. It isn't important for readers to know about a character's quirky habit if it doesn't have a role in the plot. However, focus on their beliefs and skills that drive the plot forward. This brings me to the next and final piece of advice.

7. Pacing.
Once you know what to focus on, pace everything accordingly. Speed through the unncessary scenes (though try to avoid info-dumps where possible). Use your words on those pivotal moments---the central conflict between two lifelong enemies; the loss of a character's best friend, the impossible choice between two equally-tempting options---but choose those moments sparingly. 

And yes, I know I followed none of these rules here (I didn't proofread, this whole thing is one long infodump, the scope is too large so I only covered each point briefly, there are probably gaps in continuity when my advice doesn't flow, it doesn't seem to go anywhere, and I've wasted many words. Pacing isn't good either. But hey, this isn't a short story or Thunderdome entry, so I'll gladly excuse myself :)

Yah I would still write interactive stories. I write on an Ai site and come up with lots of lore so its more specific for people chatting and role-playing with the bots. But if I had neither then I would have moved to wattpad like my friend, probably not to write however, I like having more control over different outcomes and linear stories either half the people love or hate it. With interactive more seem to like it since you can work towards an ending you love and enjoy...or finally be able to punch that one character you hate.

None of my stories on this site have had strong main characters- this is a sad statement and I've only recently realized it. I think it's harder for a character to have a distinct personality when the reader is the one making the decisions.

However, in my typical recreational writing (which is much, much better in my personal opinion) I spend a lot of time making characters. I used to feel like they had to be oh-so-relatable and ended up making them boring and plain- but as most of you know, that's actually counterproductive.

Characters need quirks. A weird, niche topic they know everything about (like Pokémon or the history of mariachi bands), an unusual hobby (the slightly overused fascination with photographing dead things or learning magic card tricks), funky skills, etc. etc. The more unique the character, the more relatable and likeable they seem... to an extent. Avoiding Mary Sue's and just stupidly quirky characters is still recommended.

Also, especially in stories with young-ish audiences, funny = likable. Whether it's dry humor, scathing sarcasm, or outright a comical view on life in general, narrators or supporting characters who provide comedic relief are typically looked upon with favor.

I do base characters somewhat on real-life people, but exaggerate their unique characteristics, like a literary caricature. I had a friend who was obsessed with eating the most disgusting food combinations, just completely broke his taste buds. You bet I used that in a character. I also steal the way real people look to make characters, because otherwise I tend to make everyone blond and athletically fit. It's weird problem to have, considering I am neither of those things and never have tried to be.

Also, make sure the character doesn't have only flaws or only strengths, and that those things don't contradict each other. Someone can't be both loyal and abandon their friends at the first sign of trouble- unless they've always considered themselves to be loyal but haven't had to test that out until the story takes place.

Sometimes a trait can be both a strength and weakness- stubborn characters have a backbone but also are stuck in their ways and refuse to change.

For main characters I usually give them at least one character trait I myself have. It's to have a better reference point and to make it easier to get into the mindspace of this character. (It becomes glaringly obvious that most of my main characters are not that physically strong haha). I think this makes them feel more real and less dull. However, lots of their insecurities and fears are surprisingly things that I read about and thought it would be interesting to include. 

(In the Duke of Winslow, I did quite a bit of research which kind of phobias are most typical for the specific demographic Noel belongs to. Lots of googling led me to the fear of giving birth. Hence the inclusion of so much birth imagery.)

For side characters I usually think more of their role in the story, then a bit of their backstory, overall world building, relation to the mc, and extract from these clues a personality. Quirks and mannerisms always come last. I don't really base any of them off of real people, rather characters of other stuff I've read. 

writing characters without strong personalities

Mcs with the least strongest personality must have been either Lise from Little mage's potion shop or the mc in One Story Please. Both were kind of writing fumbles tbh. Nowadays I would approach this differently. I would probably make this "not having a strong personality" the main insecurity/something to overcome/flaw that hides a way deeper flaw kind of stuff. One can make a pretty fascinating character with listlessness, indecisiveness and wishy washiness as their main traits. Everyone, even irl, is pretty interesting. The ones that don't seem like it are either hiding the fun parts of themselves or deal with other issues (that are in turn very interesting!). I think that Through Time handles this kind of character rather competently.

OR

I would write a story where the plot and fun adventures and puzzles matter more than an interesting character arc.

Weirdly, I think the main character with the strongest personality I've published on CYS is the narrator of the capture the flag game. Other than that, I've made an effort to make my narrators neutral and unimposing, to let the reader have the widest range of freedom in their choices. CYStians, I think, perfer distinct narrators even in interactive fiction, but there are lots of people who do perfer blander narrators for this kind of game.

When I'm writing non-interactive fiction, I usually write in deep first person, so I just make an effort to give the character a unique way of looking at the world. Have them notice things and make comments that most people wouldn't make. Give them a unique sentence structure and speech style. Then you never really have to describe them because the reader just gets it. You can do a similar thing for side characters, though that's tougher since the readers are only exposed to them through dialogue.

I never base characters off real people, since that's A) rude, and B) A great way to come up with flat uninteresting characters. You pretty much never know what's actually going on inside another person's head, and by associating a character with a real person it becomes really limiting in what you can do with them. I think making composites and stealing individual traits is fine though--just don't copy a person wholesale.

The best option to combine experience and 3-dimensionality is to pick a personality trait that you have in some way, and then make that the central defining feature of the character. This is especially true for villains. Ask yourself what unique perspective you bring to the table as a writer, and then give each of your characters a slice of that.

You don't have to have character development to have a good story. I often think of classic detective stories such as Poirot. Most of them focus on the mystery to keep people engaged. Action/adventure stuff also generally doesn't focus a lot on character development.

However, some good stories are good because they showcase brilliant character development. So it depends what you want to do.

For me, character development only makes me care more about the character, not the overall story. I think there were stories where I really like the characters but the story was such a clusterfuck that I zoned out when the plot was kicking in.

Tips of incorporating character development:

-have it coincide with the most plot important scenes

-make it a very gradual thing. (Excluding trauma, life changing events and brain injuries) Normal people generally don't change in one fingersnap, especially when overcoming their fears or personality flaws. 

I often think of smokers in this context. Most of them try several times to quit, some of them quit only to start smoking again.There are bad days and good days. If they do manage to, it will still be a struggle to stay that way for quite some time. 

-almost forgot; make your character struggle, make them almost give in/give in/be tempted, make them regress and such. 

-have it complement with the overall theme/message of the story. (If the story's about conquering death, have the main character's fear that they have to overcome be somethin related to death) 

Of course all of this isn't necessary, you can do what you want. There are always exceptions to the rule. Just have a good thinking bout it while writing stuff. 

I feel bad that there's not much response anymore even though the questions are becoming more interesting.

Well, as for the question, I thonk that the setting should serve the plot and its themes. Most people are not Tolkien and crafting super in dept worlds and languages and laguage histories. Life is too short for that stuff except if it's your hobby.

My favorite settings always involve very great integration of small scale worldbuilding into the story. It's where you exactly know what people do in their daily life depending on their occupation and status. What do they eat, what is socially acceptable to wear, how do people marry, what is taboo, how do they maintain personal hygiene? It,'s always such a bliss to read about these very small things instead of long windy explanation of some big war that happened 100 years ago. These are also the settings where it really feels lived in haha.

Where to find the balance? I think that you shouldn't leave things in if they dont serve the plot, the themes or the characters. However, it researching and thinking about your setting a little will certainly reward you in the long run! For a very in dept worldbuilding it is inevitable that you know more things about the world than your reader will ever come to find out by reading your story.

(For example; in a very big action set piece you will probably never really stop to explain the strict class hierarchy and segregation of your society. BUT For the undercover mission it will perhaps be a plot moment that your thieving main character will get discovered by his slight accent that is distinctive of his lower class origin. If sugar is a new trade product, then it is very likely that the current society doesn't have a lot of recipes and that it is reserved for rich people. In this kind of setting it would make a lot of sense if someone introduces and invents new recipes based on sugar that will wow people. If sugar was more estavlished, coming up with new innovative recipes will be a lot rarer.)

I used to be one of those setting-first people who would create maps and histories before I bothered to figure out the plot or decide on who the main character was. I eventually realized this was damaging my ability to adapt the setting to the needs of the story as it developed. Now I usually take a story-first perspective, where setting details will emerge based on what the characters need. Weirdly, I've found this creates much richer settings, since it forces all the setting elements to be much more cohesive, and it lets you ensure that you get to show off everything you create.

When I think of rich settings as a reader, Sanderson's worldbuilding first comes to mind. He has incredibly complex worlds and backstory, but his plots are such that all the interesting setting details become relevant to the story. You can have the best setting in the world, but if the plot just happens in it, it will mean nothing. The best settings are the ones that are the only place in which their story could be told.

I don't know if I have a balance between plot and worldbuilding that is fashionable to modern writing- In fact, I know I don't, because I keep making all this world but with few plots to hang off of it. But I think relevance isn't always my priority. Most often I try to write like a renaissance or romance painting- Following a specific theme and narrative but with a wealth of related details so that you can notice different things each time you look at it. Sometimes I do cut things out, other times not. I think  I've never been good at story formulas, and so I think the comparison to painting rings true there as well. I rarely ever go into something with a theme in mind or a sequence of arcs envisioned. I just sort of discover the story as you would discover a historical event, and so my goal is to depict what I'm seeing in as fully comprehensive and interconnected of a way as possible.

The most effective settings to me usually achieve one of the following: influence mood or tone, develop characters, or furthers the plot. Either that, or they're described so vividly with so much attention to detail that I can't help thinking about it for days. But even so, it's mostly likely tied to one of the aforementioned elements.

It probably goes without saying, but setting plays a large role on the story's tone. Horror stories describe eerie, often dark places; children stories feature bright, colorful locations with well-known archetypes, fantasy and sci-fi settings are vastly unlike the ordinary world, which creates a sense of wonder and mystery. It's not that writers won't occasionally mix things up to keep things refreshing. But generally, an effective setting creates a strong sense of mood, tone and atmosphere.

The most common example of settings conveying character is how a person's room says a lot about them. But it can be used more widely too: when a character visits a place they've never been, the location tells them a lot about the type of citizens that live there or the kind of character they're about to meet. E.g. suspicious figures lurking in a dark alleyway, people rushing about in a fast-paced city, lots of romantic couples in a heart-shaped island named Romantica.

But the best stories? They tie character development and plot development to the setting. I love it when there is a meaningful interaction with the setting that without it, the story wouldn't fundamentally be the same. For instance: you could write about a scenic waterfall with droplets floating in slow-motion, glints of light causing them to sparkle in shades of incandescent blue and yellow, cascading into a pool resembling melted sunlight, but it wouldn't carry as much weight if characters merely stop there for a minute before leaving and continuing the plot. In fact, I'd even say it might seem irrelevant to the reader. That's where pretty descriptions cross into purple prose for me. But if that's where the main character reunites with a long lost family member, there is so much more weight attached to that setting.

The inverse is true, too. The Hunger Games uses a simple forest setting, albeit with a few dystopian twists, but the location comes alive as it presents a lot of challenges the characters face. The plot is dependent on the protagonist's interactions with the setting. That's why when I walked in foresty areas after I read it, my mind wandered and I imagined enemies hiding behind the bushes or arrows flying from the tall trees. It kinda inspired me to write IMW too.

Just a quick note on concrete vs abstract settings - both can be done well, especially depending on the type of story and the effect the writer wishes to evoke, but the one thing which keeps an abstract setting from veering into confusion is to relate it to everyday concepts. Just a quick line mentioning what it feels like to be there with a comparison familiar to readers would help create a bit more relatability. But this wouldn't apply if you want to go for a more disorienting/ alienating effect.

Rick Riordan, Ally Condie, and Suzanne Collins. They introduced me to the world of reading.

Ally Condie wrote the first book I ever bought myself (The Last Voyage of Poe Blythe), and in that I learned some of the importance of character development. My favorite character in that died mid sentence with a smile on his face, caught completely unaware. It was during your typical "bullets are flying, people are dying, but of course the main characters won't get shot" scenes and... it was fantastic. That kinda gave me a taste for writing stereotypical scenes with twists- if I finish the book I'm working on, I'll post a link on this site so y'all can see what I mean, if you want to.

Rick Riordan's Trials of Apollo taught me a little about how to balance a humorous tone and more serious things, like death, heartbreak, and betrayal.

Suzanne Collins paved the way for YA sci-fi, my favorite genre.

Also, these questions always make me think "Oh yeah, it's Monday." That exact thought, every time.

Probably Douglas Adams and Andy Weir. I write a lot of my stories in a dry first-person retelling style similar to the Martian (and his other works). Not sure if that was inspired by him or that was just why I like his books, I've been fond of that style since well before I read them. Douglas Adams taught me how to make narration engaging. Before then it was usually just a chore I slogged through to get to the dialogue.

Jerry Spinelli was one of my favorite authors when I was in elementary school, but I'm not sure how much of his style has translated into my own, as I haven't read any of his books in years.

It's a bit complicated, but I used to read lots of Dutch novels through high school. Not a lot of authors I particularly liked or remembered. And later on, I wasn't really bothered with looking up who wrote what thing heh. Most of them are anonymous anyways.

Then there was a pretty long time before I read any "book" book, so not a lot of published novels. However I did read tons of badly machine translated webnovels in novelupdates. I guess that a lot of my plot points, tropes and ideas were very much shamelessly borrowed from them, but I like to think that I do my own fun spin on them. There's tons of very niche stuff and rehashings of rehashes of ideas in there. Very pulpy too. What I learned from them is that stories don't have to be very deep or original or even have fancy pancy prose to still be enjoyable. Heck, in certain moods, I still kinda like this slob.

How I structure my stories is if I think about it more reminiscent of long running novel series instead of individual (I tend to think in arcs that are separate on their own with an overarching narrative. You still see that in some novels, but this is a lot more prominent in webnovels that are supposed to run over hundreds of chapters).

One of the stand outs was definitely Ascendance of a Bookworm. Despite its very simple prose, it laid out a very intricate fantasy world and had some great foreshadowing too. Perhaps due to this series or beating my head when trying it puzzle a story with Google Translate, I kinda realized that I don't care much about prose as a reader, as long as it is clear and readable.

Also borrowed a few themes and stuff from horror visual novels, stand-outs are sweet pool and Song of Saya. From these visual novels, I did some digging and got into the works of Lovecraft and his other writing buddies. 

I've also read a sizeable amount of fanfiction and discovered more weird tropes and stuff. Plus it made me get into detective novels. That mostly meant the classics like Poirot or Holmes.

So in short, low brow pulpy stuff made me like reading books again (that are in their time considered to also be very low brow lol). Well, and I probably will pull inspiration from both.

You know me too well

Is there any specific angle to choice based story structure that particularly interests or appeals to you versus what you might find in regular linear fiction?

- Lots, like a lot of angles. To be honest I've never written long form linear work now that I think about it. Most of my projects are choice based, when I get a new idea I would in my head piece together whether it will work in the interactive medium. Well, the reason for this is probably because of the site and this community. I'm very reluctant to show my writing irl to people, so this is a way to still have my stuff up somewhere.

I found that I'm able to keep my motivation up for much longer than in a linear one. Years ago I did try writing a novel, but got really stuck in one page particular page and didn't know how to move forward. This isn't really a problem I have in interactive fiction for some reason. My head reassures me while writing a passage I wasn't comfortable with: "well if it turns out to be that bad then I will just delete this part/branch" or "How may readers will come this far to read this certain passage anyways?" 

Plus I like being able to show multiple endings. While I have in my head that one "golden" ending, I do like crafting other ones and restructuring stories to fit them.

This is mainly the case with those map based story games: I'm able to write lots of short stories en different things and there is always the freedom to just drop a few locations if I don't feel like writing them. This would be a lot harder to do in a linear story where you also have to think of ways to link these events together haha, while a interactive story game already achieves this feeling of passage of time just by clicking and walking around.

There's just a lot to like haha.

- The thing that most annoys me is probably the technical side of things; copy pasting text and linking them together. Some stories get blown out of proportion in regards to size and complexity, so puzzling out variables becomes even more cumbersome. Mann, I have respect for people like Mizal, Berka and mystic who make scriptng stuff like minigames look like playdo.

- I have to pen down a time line and a fact check in Cave of Time stories to have things make sense. It was such a pain to keep track of the time to determine whether some old guy was still alive or already dead in one story game.

I hope that this satisfies your question and wow, by penning this all down it made me realize how fun thi medium is hehehe.

I loved writing Planetshakers. I really need to finish it, because it was so much fun just to worldbuild, and if I make some revisions I'm bound to have a decent story. The reason why this story was awesome was because of choices; they created multiple unique avenues that will give the fervent reader a wholesale look into the characters and world. Someone who only reads one of the paths can still get some value out of it, but anyone who looks further is further rewarded. At least in my mind, lol

The annoyance, however, comes with stories like God-Clock, which turned out to be an overambitious mess. I had thought of so much behind the scenes, but the execution ended up way too challenging. If I truly wrote out the story, it would probably end up being 150k words. It's still the longest piece I've written on this site, so I would love to finish it, but college is a never-ending wheel of suffering right now. That cool story gets to collect dust for the foreseeable future, yay!

I've been avoiding this question for days because I think it's a really interesting one and wanted to give it due consideration.

Eternal is the example I usually point to for a story taking full advantage of the branching format. A single branch of Eternal, while good, wouldn't have the same impact as the full set, which allows the player to explore different setting elements, different possible fates for various important characters, and going off the story's theme, different forms of immortality.

So stepping back, what is it about Eternal's structure that makes it so good as a branching story?

• A single unified theme, tone, and world.
• Multiple perspectives on that theme that a linear work would have trouble replicating.
• Characters and settings that recur across branches, but appear each time in a different context and from a different angle.

So the advantage branching works seem to give is an increased ability for an author to show multiple valid interpretations of a story. There's an increased capacity for nuance and layers when there is no one way that the story must end.

One other advantage is increased reader immersion. Controlling the narrator's actions gives the player a sense of agency and responsibility. It invests them in the storyline more than they might be otherwise. This also comes with risks: Create a narrator who is too different from what your audience enjoys, and you risk alienating them.

Another advantage of the branching format is showing the power of individual choice. This requires some work by the author, because they'll need to make sure everything is consistent across branches so that things only drastically change due to the player's actions. But the benefits are great: Players can see how their choices impact the world, and see what the consequences of alternate choices would be. It allows for much more nuanced storytelling about the concept of agency and power. Obviously linear stories can't do this.

The multitude of endings also provides the player with opportunities for self expression, and authors can use that to give them feedback on that self expression. In the dungeon crawl I made, the strategies the player uses to overcome obstacles were tracked in order to determine what endings were open to them. For instance, if you always used magic to solve your problems, you would unlock the mage ending. This allows the author to give commentary on what a person's choices say about them and what impact they will have. In linear stories, this always comes off as either contrived, or distanced from the reader, because the reader knows they don't actually have any impact on how the story ends. It can come off as contrived in branching fiction too, if the player feels they didn't really have control, or weren't properly informed what their choices meant.

Choice based stories also give the opportunity to provide a commentary on the lack of agency. No one expects to control the outcome of a linear story, so it's no surprise when they don't. But a clever author can pull this off in a branching story. In some stories on this site, notably Ninja's, the player is presented with two identical links to the same page, or one 'dead' link and one functioning link. This can serve to emphasize the narrator's lack of agency, or the consequences of choices they have already made, particularly in cases where the dead link might be active in other paths.

In fairness, branching also has some weaknesses compared to linear stories. While it can be done, as works like Eternal show, it is much harder to put deep character arcs into a branching work. For one thing, each of your arcs must work, so there's a lot of pressure on your early scenes to work plausibly with all the endings you have planned. For another, character arcs are a structured business, and crafting a truly resonant character arc comes at the cost of player agency. (Eternal does this--in order to pull off its 13 complimentary arcs, there are only about eight important choices in the entire game. The rest are just save-or-die puzzles.)

Another weakness is that, frankly, your audience is pickier. Other CYOA authors will usually be sympathetic and reasonable, but people who've read CYOAs and never tried to write one often feel entitled to complete autonomy over everything that happens in the story. I've heard stories get complaints for things like not having the same hair color as a reader, not having a romance option of a specific demographic, or not having a whole other 50k word plotline based on a choice an audience member thought they should be able to make. That just isn't possible outside of a dnd game. The CYOA format allows for limited choice and narrative exploration, but not complete freedom. If your audience comes in expecting that, or worse if your story markets itself as providing that, the audience will inevitably be disappointed.

The one thing that really annoys me in interactive fiction is when the author really wanted to write a linear story and just slapped some meaningless choices on it to make it seem interactive. This is different from stories allowing for narrator customization--I know that some people actually do like this sort of thing, even if I don't. What I'm talking about is stories that have one single linear plotline, with dialogue choices interspersed about who to talk to and what side of the path to walk on. Come on. If you want to tell a linear story just tell a linear story. Or if you're trying to make a puzzle game with a narrative, fine, but you should cop to it and call it what it is.

I like writing, reading and watching horror and very much someone who isn't that squicked out by gore. With horror the prerequisite is that the monster or the creepy element has to be something that I myself am pretty scared of or something that I'm able to easily understand why it is terrifying. (Fear of the cold by jacob geller is such an amazing video essay which made me understand frigophobia lol) I sometimes get weird but terrifying dreams but they are certainly helpful with coming up with ideas. Most of the times it's something disease related like me waking up with impetigo or it's related with social shame or both. So.... body horror was always something I found pretty interesting. (The fly from Cronenberg comes to mind).

With stories written for children, I fumbled quite a lot and still am trying to find a good balance. When planning stories I always make them a tad darker than I would like, but with children gore and overexcessive violence is probably not condoned haha.

In a lot of children stories it is written from the pov of a child, so I tried to do that too. It was quite a struggle at first to make the kid not too annoying and stupid but still incredibly immature. I don't often write female character povs, so writing about a little girl added another challenge.

I read so many reddit posts and dived back into my notes to see how children think and behave and of course dig through my memories back when my cousins were little potatoes. (It is surprising how violent and nasty kids can be to their peers. But when I thought about my time in elementary school, yeah lots of kids were very nasty.)

Fantasy: I tend to write and read a lot of it, so that's probably the genre I'm most comfortable with. Both high fantasy and low fantasy are great, I used to write about the former but have recently developed more of an interest for the latter. The great thing about it is that I can come up with any strange worldbuilding idea, and as long as it remains consistent, it's within the realm of 'suspension of disbelief'. The trick is to compare these things to concepts in the modern world (e.g. the Spellscriber Academy in SoS might revolve around a magic but it's competitive environment and difficult tests resemble normal universities; in IMW, the animosity between the rulers and citizens isn't entirely foreign either, as it reflects the 'eat the rich' culture in the current world). My writing style tends to be based on what I believe the protagonist's voice is, although I sometimes get carried away when describing the cool and unique features of my world/ magic system/ some other fantasy-related detail. It's fun to sometimes describe normal objects in a unique way given a character's limited knowledge about it (e.g. Aubrynne calling the cacti 'spiky plants' in SoS). 

Mystery: This one was more difficult. Spoilers for AHAHH below. I had to plan everything out in advance and ended up with several different textwalls of information - the suspect list (with a brief note on who they are, what their potential motive and secrets are, and their alliances/ enemies), the timeline (what each character and the victim was doing during the day of the crime), the map of locations (to cross-check for feasibility with timeframe), how the crime occurred (weapon, location, etc), and a final plan about when I'll reveal each piece of information to the reader. I made it much more complicated for myself by wanting each suspect to have their own secret, along with how much information I'll reveal at each stage. For this, I tried not to ramble on too much about irrelevant details (unlike this post), and instead allow the readers to focus on describing the clues/ red herrings. My protagonist had to be more logical here too. 

Children stories: I find it a bit easier writing from the perspective of a child for this genre, as I can get away with simplifying concepts and steering away from things children wouldn't ordinary think or worry about. Maybe it's just a result of growing up reading fairytales, but for these stories, I'll use a clear good vs bad dichotomy, moral choices leading to better consequences, etc. The overall theme would be something simpler and more on-the-nose too, although I'll try to weave in a few more complex themes where possible. 

Sci-fi: I haven't had much experience with this, but it tends to be fantasy except with scientific sounding words. It makes me conduct too much research on technology too. "

Romance: This one was not easy to write about. In fact, I'm surprised people liked it so much in SoS since I have never really experienced 'romance' so everything I know about it is from novels/ movies lol. I attended an online webinar which helped me a lot and the key takeaway is this: focus on balanced dynamics, compatibility and intimacy. First, you have to make sure your characters are balanced. One of the most common reasons people aren't invested in a romantic relationship is because they don't like one of the characters/ find that one character doesn't deserve the other. Therefore, make them equal - if your protagonist is a very likable and relatable character, the love interest must be somewhat likable and relatable in their own way too. Even if this isn't the case at the start, as the story develops, the reader must find them 'good enough' for the protagonist to remain emotionally invested. One easy way is to make them both equally desired/ talked positively about by other characters. Another is to ensure they do an equal number of good or bad things to/ for each other - in SoS, I literally did rewrites because one character was acting too hostile while the other became too accomodating instead. It's all about give and take. But this doesn't mean the main couple has to be likable. In a certain book which I can't mention due to spoilers, both protagonists are equally bad people so when they end up together again, the reader is satisfied with this ending. Next, compatibility. Show why these characters are meant for each other. Do this consistently, whether through moments where they challenge one another to grow, help each other correct their misbeliefs, or understand one another like no other side-character can, and if you temporarily put your main couple with a different person, use the opposite to juxtapose the 'perfect pair' and show the shortcomings of that pairing. Lastly, intimacy. Let your characters share secrets. When they first meet, you may start with an awkward meet-cute or a moment where they hate each other, but as the story goes on, let them reveal things to each other. My favorite scenes are: deep conversations (potentially with arguments to show a clash of beliefs), us-vs-the-world mentality, saving one another from danger (physically, emotionally, etc), being forced to rely on one another, trusting the other person (if yoiu use this, this trust might be misplaced at first but a parallel scene later could show the trust being reciprocated), and finally, challenging the other person's misbelief. It also helps to give both characters a goal that isn't falling in love - this them better developed characters and bonus points if they end up choosing their love interest over their goal. 

There are more genres I could write about, but that's probably enough for now. Also, sorry if this isn't proofread well - I'm writing this on a train and the inconsistent sunlight flashing from the windows isn't making this too easy.

Chad current me? This wasn't meant for me lol...

Anyway, I'd say that the most important thing is just actually writing, and not to get too overwhelmed with all the other stuff right off of the bat. Sure "show and not tell" is a useful skill, but you know what's more useful? Actually writing. Likewise, complicated characters are great, but... again, writing is better. Writing is always better.

1) Start small. This site actually gave me the piece of writing advice that's probably helped me the most. It was in one of the articles, and said for your first game, don't write about the life of a superhero, write about one day as a superhero. Once I got past epic-scale ideas, I was able to actually create something smaller that had value.

2) Plot your stories. I was a die-hard pantser for years. Then I tried some very limited plotting a few times and I realized how much smoother my plots became, how much easier it was to motivate myself to write, and how much more fun I was having. Now I plot aggressively. I don't even write my stories in order.

3) Characters are the most important part of the story. I was big on worldbuilding and plot elements. Characters I cared about a lot less, I just slapped a personality on them to fit the situation. I even got involved in those stories where you crowdsource characters from your friends to get them invested as an audience. I realized through this, though, that I didn't care at all about the characters, and I wasn't invested in telling a story about them. After that I moved back to writing my own characters, and started paying a lot more attention to their arcs and voice. My storytelling got a lot better, and more importantly, I found myself able to focus on a single story easily. Before that, I was always bouncing from one to the other any time i got a cool new worldbuilding idea.

This is true both as a writer and a reader. Most (though not all) writers get attached to their characters more strongly than their world or plot. And most readers (though again, not all) get more attached to characters and the emotional journeys they go through.

4) You have to care. Similar to the above point. This is tough for children, because you don't really know what you care about. I would keep getting interested in vague surface details that didn't matter, and then abandon them once I got bored. In order to stay with a single story, I had to learn to build it around issues and questions I actually cared about. Stories don't need to tackle serious topics, but as a writer, it's a lot easier to keep caring about a story that do. By serious I don't mean political or controversial: it can be, but you'll get just as much out of relatively simpler things like death & grief, growing up, understanding others, etc. Whatever floats your boat.

The two above points can be consolidated somewhat: If you can't focus on a single story for long enough to finish it, there's nothing wrong with you, but there probably IS something wrong with the story you've chosen. Pick one that you care about more.

5) Have a writing schedule. My current one is a minimum of 100 words a day (though I had to go off it during finals). That's not a lot, but usually it's just the initial hurdle you need to get over before you can get more involved. I now average about 700 words a day, though to be fair, I'm also counting brainstorming words, since I'm still in the structuring stage.

Probably just to keep writing and I promise I'll get there someday.

Knowing my tendency to become preoccupied with irrelevant details, I wouldn't want to change much about the development of my writing journey. Some things which helped me improve were: character-driven stories, pacing, story structure, and having drafting, rewriting and proofreading sessions. But I won't overwhelm past me with all that information. If, for instance, I became too focused on the pacing before I learnt how to create engaging plots, I'd have fallen into the trap of my stories being too formulaic/ following the 'rules' instead of writing what I wanted to. That's how I ruined several hobbies for myself lol.

Aside from that, I'll probably tell her to join CYS. Oh, and check the tab titled 'forums' instead of spending the first year or so thinking the storygames were the only part of the site.

Future me would have told past me not to walk 4.5 miles or 7.1 km on 2 A.M. in the morning while drunk and sleep deprived while wearing a flimsy jacket with the temp outside around 32 fahrenheit or 0 celcius. 

The next day I was struck with a fever so bad that I had to stay in bed for 2 days. Had a bad cough for a week. I should've done an overnight stay at a train station.

I don't think I can answer this, since even when I try to figure out what's wrong with my writing, I'm always wildly wrong. I never actually know until later.

But to take a wild stab: Probably I'd need help toning down my ideas to be more practical. I've fallen back into the epic sci fi trilogy pit trap. I'm still working on shorter side projects, but I'd be producing a lot more if I was only working on those side projects.

Despite believing that you couldn't answer the question, you're about the only one who actually did answer the question.

I had a similar book about back pain, but someone broke the spine. 

As for the question, Future Me would tell Present Me to write more often, since I cannot improve my writing skills without the actual 'writing' part. I know it sometimes seems like I'm one of the 'productive' members, but in reality I've only written a single storygame this year. And last year too, apparently.

In fact, Past Me planned to release 3 storygames with ratings above 7 (the overachiever). She's probably disappointed with Present Me. Therefore, I plan to publish 5 storygames next year! Just kidding...maybe. It seems Past Me's regret will cause Present Me to make things more difficult for Future Me, so Future Me would tell Present Me not to listen to Past Me, and Past Me would---were she in the present with Present Me---hate Future Me for it. After all, Past Me just wants Future Me to reap the rewards sown by Past Me and Present Me. So, I guess I'll have to wait for Future Future Me's advice to resolve this. 

There are a lot of questions, it's hard to pick my favorite. Mostly I liked those that made me reflect a lot on my writing process and spurred some great advice. For the second question, well, you'll see which unanswered questions I would still like to answer in a few moments when I post them.

As for helpful answers, I know I'll be applying a lot of the techniques mentioned to build tension in my next story, the worldbuilding question gives me lots of inspiration for future stories, and the advice about branching stories vs linear one is really helpful since I tend to write storygames like novels with added pages. Your analysis on the question about style was pretty good too. Slightly unrelated but I like how the question about dialogue resulted in a conversation rife with comedy and confusion.

I found the pun about Type-O blood funny because I expected the usual 'B positive' joke I keep seeing everywhere, so that one was refreshing.

Random pun I came up with: Why don't fraudulent doctors like X-rays? Because they see right through you.