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Author Topic: Sandstone Tenants
iffy
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This is a choose-your-own adventure story I've been working on off and on for a while. Would you want to read more? Other thoughts appreciated.

Finally, it's 5 o'clock. Time to go.
You start cleaning up the loose papers on your desk and are about to stand up when you hear someone clear their throat behind you.
Oh man. Not now. Not again.
You swing around in your chair to see your boss, Tara Cromfield, standing in your cubicle's opening, smiling with her hands crossed behind her. Ugh, that smile. What is it about her smile that makes you feel so queasy? There's something so... unnatural about it.
"Hi," you say, forcing the sides of your mouth up. You wonder if she feels the same way about your smile. It definitely feels unatural to make it in her presence.
This job is pretty good. It pays well and most of your coworkers

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Denevius
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Well, to answer your question first, I probably wouldn't want to read more, but it has nothing to do with the writing. I didn't even know that there was still a market for choose-your-own adventure stories. Like, I remember those from when I was a kid, but with what how far computer games have come, and how complicated their story lines are allowing the player to choose from a wide variety of scenarios, I wonder who would want to buy the type of product you're selling.

Other than that, this opening reads fine to me. Your character has a motivation, to leave work. Why isn't written yet, but I don't think that's needed yet. Who doesn't want to leave work as soon as the whistle blows.

You've got an antagonist in Tara Cromfield. Even the 2nd person narrative sounds mostly natural. You don't read those too often in fiction, and they can sound quite contrived.

So yeah, the writing seems to be working, but the genre is a bit dated. However, I should point out that someone from my MFA program five years ago was writing a choose-your-own adventure. I asked, and I guess I'll ask you. Do you read these types of books, or know anyone who does? Particularly an adult, as your story sounds like it's not written with kids in mind.

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extrinsic
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Choose-your-own adventure narratives in their heyday didn't work for me because their linearity and either/or fallacies limited their potentials.

Digital publishing technology today frees up the linearity and either/or fallacy shortfalls.

For example, any character can now be placed in contention, sidebars can detail individual event, setting, and character backstory simultaneously linearly and nonlinearly, any event can have a favorable and unfavorable outcome, settings, events, characters' attitudes can be simulataneously approving and disapproving.

Any linear neccessity need no longer be limited to an either/or pathway. Linearity becomes unstuck altogether, in other words.

For illustration: say the focal viewpoint agonist of this scene is the protagonist. One requirement then is the protagonist suffer the greatest complication and be most transformed by efforts to satisfy the complication. The complication is, say, want and problem of, what? The fragment doesn't cue one up, so I'll blue sky one. Want for personal companionship. That's the best I can do from Tara Cromfield is an incompanionable sort.

Is the want a vice of lust? Then the virtue opposite is chastity. Problems that oppose lust satisfaction are manifold, choose a few that escalate. Sexual tension is a driving force for lust. The principle of give an agonist a want and throw the cosmos into the mix as opposition that prevents easy satisfaction drives sexual tension. Romance's main dramatic question wanting satisfaction is will they or won't they.

After an opening scene establishes such a complication, readers would have a choice of they do, they don't, not yet, or much later after much struggle. A "they do" choice could lead to an easy though unsatisfying satisfaction, still postpone full satisfaction until much later. Each choice best practice would follow that formula anyway. Where a narrative fully satisfies is from its expression of a frustrating moral crisis struggle and a personal growth outcome. A message and moral, for example, of noble rewards come to those who make mistakes and try, try again until they reach a full understanding of their wants and problems and appreciate the consequences of the satisfactions.

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iffy
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I'm not sure there is a market for choose-your-own adventure stories, Denevius, especially for adults. I don't read them now and know of no one who does [Smile]

I intend to publish this as a mobile app, and to take advantage of what computers can do that paper books can't.

Thank you for the feedback and ideas, extrinsic. If anyone wants to read more, I can provide a link.

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TaleSpinner
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Hi iffy, welcome to Hatrack.

I imagine that "Choose your own adventure" means a story that gives the reader options like "if you think Amy should fight, go to page 42, if she should flee then, dear reader, please flee to page 67." except in the e-book or app age with hyperlinks instead of page refs.

I thought of doing such myself once, until I realised that if there were just four such binary decisions, I had to write something like 2x2x2x2 = 16 decent stories or fragments thereof that would hook together in 16 different ways depending upon reader choices at which point my head exploded with the maths of it which no doubt I had gotten wrong, so I gave up and spent the next three years trying to learn how to write just one story, with a beginning and a middle and an end - and I'm still trying.

With regard to the opening, I'm not sold since I find willing suspension of disbelief impossible when I'm told what I'm thinking because it's invariably wrong, e.g. I guess the italics tell me I'm thinking "Oh man. Not now. Not again." - well, no, I'm not thinking as instructed. As a somewhat literal-minded reader I'm thinking "I wonder why I'm clearing up loose papers: I never do that: my desk is a mess, and who is that clearing their throat? and will this choose-you-own-adventure story, unlike all the others I've tried, let me choose what I actually want, which is usually none-of-the-above-but-something-the-bad-guy-will-never-guess."

Perhaps more to your question, it seems to be setting up a story of office conflict. Having lived with such for way too many years, and regarding reading fiction as a form of escapism, it's the last thing I want to read about unless Tara is an enchanting alien, planning to cast me under a hedonistic spell in her UFO...

I would suggest a hook that's more than everyday office conflict.

Hope this helps,
Pat

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iffy
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TaleSpinner, I've done the math too, and I keep thinking: "it's like I have to write 1000 stories, and I'm not even good at writing one!" It's like a hydra, I finish one storyline and three more need to be finished. On the other hand, I don't have to decide for sure how a story goes -- I get to explore all the possibilities.

I'll ponder on the hook and whether I could make something less mundane.

Thanks for the feedback.

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