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theonenamejeff
Dec '22

I had this idea for a story where at the end of each chapter, you make a choice about the main character so that the story would branch out into different routes. This isn't going to be one of those stories where different choices lead to death and you have to go back or anything like that, I don't want there to be any dead ends and a "true route" since that's just not fun.
Now, there's a problem with this. Assuming the average book as 17 chapters, after 17 'stages' of each chapter doubling there would be 131,075 total chapters and assuming each chapter has an average of 2,500 words there would be 327, 687, 500. The average novel has 300 words on a page which makes 1,092,292 pages which printed as a book would be approximately 64 metres thick, here is a photo of a 64 metre tall building for scale. I type at 60 WPM so it would take me 10 years and 4 months of non-stop writing to get this complete, as passionate as I am about writing, I don't have that time nor the brainpower.
So that's why I'm asking for help, I need as many people as possible to get this story complete, as of now, I've completed 3 stages (9 chapters) so there groundwork for the story is already there. I would have liked to have written a bit more before making this post but I haven't had any ideas in about two months so here we are. English Wikipedia has around 4.2 Billion words meaning it would be almost 13 times bigger than this project, if that was done over the span of 20 years, I think this might just be possible.
For those of you who are interested, here is the plot (you probably won't be interested after I explain it): After his girlfriend is mysteriously murdered, our main character suddenly finds these weird beings appearing called 'Angels". Each angel represents some sort of emotional concept and their motives and personality is driven by said concept. There's a war between these angels divided into two different factions, both of them wanting the MC on their side. (Basically what ever the first choice the reader makes will decided what side of the war the MC will end out on).
We'll be using Discord as our primary means of communication as it's the easiest way to organise a large group of people and it's also the only social media I use so if you're interested in joining, shoot me a DM. I would preferably like to see something you've written beforehand so that I know you're at least somewhat competent in writing and confident in your writing (Don't be shy, you're probably a much better writer than I'll ever be, I'm really not that good). If you want the link to what I've written so far, feel free to send me a DM and I can send it to you.
I'm not the best writer and everything I write is kind of cringe but please bear with me, I'm not the worst either.
If you're somehow still interested in helping to write this, please consider joining me and thanks for reading all of this lol (=
P.S. this is a passion project

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Lensing
Dec '22

The interactive story idea in general is really good

writerlovely75
Dec '22

I am sorry, I might wrong but I really feel that though your idea seems interesting but I would say that the goal you have set is a bit too unrealistic. I mean that's really too much to ask from a stranger even without giving them anything in return. Have you first tried to commit on to something small scale?? A story of some 100 or 150 chapters, I mean. (I really don't mean to demoralise on your dreams, just my opinion)

BlairFujin
Dec '22

May I suggest you checking out some visual novels to get a better sense of a scale of what's feasible with interactive narratives?

theonenamejeff
Dec '22
writerlovely75

Thank you for opinion and if you mean writing stories I have but I've always loved games like Detroit become human so I wanted to make something like that. I'll probably decrease it by half or so just to see it one day be complete

BlairFujin
Dec '22

For generally regarded as best of genre: Steins:Gate, The House of Fata Morgana
As an example of high interactivity: Our Life: Beginnings and Always
And as a non-weeb example (it's closer to a point-ans-click adventure games or taletell stuff but is tagged as vn on steam): Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth (book adaptation - your choices don't change the main narrative but can for example influence the fate of some minor characters)

BlairFujin
Dec '22
theonenamejeff

If you want to make something like quantic dreams games, then take a better look at them - at their structure and notice that each choice doesn't take you to a unique scene but to the same base scene no matter the previous choice with some details changed depending on the choices. Then, based on the choices (it can be as simple as you get a score based on if you made "good" or "bad" choices or certain specific sequences of choices give you specific ending, usually then all the other combinations give you a generic bad end) you get ending a, b, c, etc.

The way, from what I understand, you're trying to do it - writing a unique chapter for each outcome is too much of a workload, even for big professional studios. I suggest instead of looking for a team of writers, or maybe beside it, going back to drafting stage, thinking things through and scaling the whole project down to something more manageable and not being afraid of tricks like illusion of choice (favourite tool in telltale's box)

theonenamejeff
Dec '22

I think I'll just hire some extra writers do to a water down version of this but first I'm going to do more research like you said.

Hayka
Dec '22
theonenamejeff

hmmmm....
I recently watched Gigguk's video about that 4chan he*tai game project that was done by a huge number of people as a passion project, and I found it really impressive, and not just that, I played the game for a while, and it was legit good and emotional (I haven't finished it because exams)
I recommend you check out that video and see how a huge project like that was inspired by a colored page of a manga. If you can propose your ideas in a way that sparks passion like that, you might get people to work on it. I would've helped out because USING METAPHORS FOR CHARACTER STUDY is literally my cup of tea (I'm a Monogatari fan, I like psychology, and my novel literally screams that) but I do have exams which will end in about 20 days so I might be up for it, then again, the idea and the project is too big. I'm the type who dreams big, and even for me, this sounds TOO far-fetched. You need to know that there will be times when people (even yourself) will take long breaks because it's too much work. Are you up for a decade working on this? I do have projects that I'll do for decades. My long-running fantasy series "Lawful/Lawless" will be one of those, and I haven't even published that one yet. What I'm saying is that it'll be pretty tough, and you're putting your energy into one project for years, one project that might not be as good as you want it to be. So keep that in mind if you really want to do this.
anyway, I might be in for some time when my exams are over, but you need a lot of people for this. Ask on Reddit too, maybe they'll help too. Check out my novel to see my style if you want. It's called "Show Me" and it's on Tapas. You'll find it in the popular section of mystery novels. I think 5 chaps is enough to give you an idea of how I do the writy thingy.

theonenamejeff
Dec '22

I plan to shorten things down (more than half). Like ABCD. I did get one person from reddit to help me shorten it and after looking at your story your than welcome to help if you have the time and interest.

BTW thank you for the recommendation

29 days later

closed Jan 29, '23

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