Buy chance, I found myself reading Top Tip the other day. It was horrendous, like, really, really bad.
There were spelling mistakes absolutely everywhere. Many sentences, and even names, didn't start with a capital letter, and parts of it didn't even make logical sense. It was, quite simply, atrocious. In fact, I'm rather surprised it scored as well as it did.
So I re-wrote it, double checked it and checked it again. And then I reposted it. I had a quick scan of the live version to check everything was tickety-boo and found a heap more errors. I corrected them, and reposted. Once the revised version was live, I checked to make sure the corrections hadn't broken anything else and found some more errors. I corrected them and reposted yet again.
So if you find any errors, don't tell me about them, as I shall cry.
The process did instil in me a desire to add a bit more to it, so a 'chapter two' will be following shortly. Possibly within a day or two of this blog being posted.
There is a lot that can go wrong with part two, so it could be a bit of a proverbial car crash... 🙈
Yes, It's been a while....
When I write a story, I often come to parts where I'm torn as to what direction I want to take the story. Sometimes the direction is obvious and I carry on. Sometimes, it's not and the story stalls until I can resolve the dilemma within me. Sometimes I really wish that I had the time to explore all the other possible directions the story could progress in.
As much as I would like to do that, it's just not practical.
But still...
One situation where this dilemma rears its head, is in the fictional situation where a boy finds himself - for whatever reason- in the bedroom of a girl (or woman). This especially true if the boy is a cross dresser or similar.
There are so many possibilities where you could take the story. You could write short stories on all the possibilities you care to write about, but that could possibly lead to lots of similar stories that would quickly grow old and stale.
So I've left it, but then one day, I got thinking "what if.."
I still remember the 'choose your own adventure' books of my childhood. It was possible then because you could skip straight to specific pages related to the choices you had made. They were pretty gimmicky in those days, but the illusion of choice was, alluring.
With the advent of computers and e-books lacking separate 'pages', this has made the functionality less appealing. There are a few stories on this site using the 'Choose your own adventure' format that require you to run up and down the page looking for specific numbers relating to the choice you have made. I found more than a few issues with this. The biggest one being that the story behind the choices themselves were only a few lines long. Then there was the chore of scrolling up and down looking for a specific number, which was.... distracting.... to say the least.
There is, apparently, another way. I don't know how it works, or even how to do it. Wisdom has it that the best way on how to learn to do something is to actually do it (or at least, try to do it!). Easier said than done. With that in mind, for better or worse, I'm going to give it a go.
I have an idea (uh-oh) but I need to see how theory meets reality. This is going to be a weird one to say the least. It's experimental and it's not going to be long (I don't actually know how the 'choice' functionality works). I'm not going to code it either because, well, the codes you experience depend on your choices. If you don't wish to read a specific code, then don't pick that choice. (That's the theory anyway!).
Due to the very nature of the beast, the 'story' at the moment is ridiculously short, verging on 'call this a story territory'. Many of the choices at the start have yet to be written and depending on how much of an arse I make of the initial submission, it could be deleted rapidly quickly, pending further work. Chapters are going to be changed, no doubt often, to facilitate progress.
Once I work out how the system works, things should become easier and less 'messier'. The next elephant in the room is that with multiple story lines, the story is going to progress but not necessarily in the stream you, the reader are following. I also need to learn how to close off branches, or guide offshoots back to the main trunk. No idea how to do that at the moment.
As it stands, there is little in the way of choice at the moment. You have two choices to make at the start, one leads to no-where at the moment (it’s still being written), the other choice leads to a further five choices which again, lead no-where (Though the further choices are there, just not the content, yet).
The plan is to make each ‘choice’ different, I am trying to avoid ‘copy and pasting’ content between the different story arcs.
I also have the feeling that I am setting myself up for a massive fail/fall and the landing is going to be brutal…
Comments, observations, suggestions will be great-fully accepted. Even possible story lines. These can be sent either via the site's PM system or as comments on the story itself.
Posting will be attempted tomorrow, if I can get the second of the first two choices written tonight.
Right then, let's do this thing... Or, as they say in certain circles, “Hold my beer, I’ve got this…”