# Is it any good? (Link is NSFW)



## Authourity (Oct 23, 2008)

Recently while surfing the interweb I came across a choose your own adventure site where you can write your own, and in my perverted-ness I came across this, http://editthis.info/choose_your_own_adventure/Furry_World

Furry World is a story started by someone else that I've chosen to add to, as to practice my writing skills. Simply, if anyone is interested could they click the link and make themselves a Fox and female, most things after that were written by me, it is NSFW type stuff but I'd really appreciate the feed back. 
I've never written anything like this before, but do enjoy writing in general.
Thank You.


----------



## Authourity (Oct 26, 2008)

Dude! :cry:
Come on please. Some feedback.


----------



## M. LeRenard (Oct 26, 2008)

I have no idea what to look for in this kind of piece, sorry.  Seems to read just fine from the little I perused, but you know... it's a different kind of fiction with its own rules that I'm not familiar with.
Can't really help you all that much.


----------



## TShaw (Oct 26, 2008)

Well if youâ€™re looking for critique on your writing thatâ€™s not the best place to get it. Might I suggest joining the Thursday prompt, its run by our own Poetigress.


----------



## yoka_neko (Oct 26, 2008)

nsfw?

im guessing not safe for women? haha i feel daft im probably wrong


----------



## Poetigress (Oct 26, 2008)

*chuckle*  That's "not safe for work," as in, you don't want to be caught looking at it if your boss happens by your computer space.  Although I find that a good deal of what's NSFW in the fandom might qualify as Not Suitable for Women.  >^_^< 

Anyway, to the original poster, if you want to practice your writing skills and get crits, I'd suggest writing your own regular stories instead of the choose-your-own-adventure type.  That'd be good practice if you want to write that sort of material, but if you're looking to write fiction with a standard beginning, middle, and end, you're better off to create your own stuff from scratch.  

TShaw suggested the prompts -- any kind of exercise like that can be good if you don't know where to start.  There's a link to the Thursday Prompt FAQ in my profile at the link below, if you want to know more about that.

If you really want crits on the stuff you wrote for the other site, you might have better luck getting them if you just post the material to FA, and then there's a Critique Thread in this forum for giving the links to stuff you want critiqued.  Keep in mind, also, that the best way to receive crits is to give them -- it's a two-way street.


----------



## Kender3421 (Oct 27, 2008)

I wrote some of the stuff for the feline female...like almost all of it and also for the fox male. Reminds me that I should write some more for it.


----------



## Authourity (Oct 27, 2008)

Thanks for the feedback and advice.

The NSFW thing i cudnt kare less about as long as u get the msg savvy?


----------



## ScottyDM (Nov 1, 2008)

Hmmm, I wonder how long that website will survive? "Choose your own adventure" is a federally registered trademark of ChooseCo LLC LTD of Charlotte Vermont. They have several trademark registrations but their earliest _still in force_ is registration number 2807473. I don't think you'll personally get in any trouble if you avoid using the phrase "choose your own adventure", but make backups of all your files. That subsection of the website may vanish without warning.


*Down to Business*

A branching user-directed story is a radically different animal than a prose story, so you cannot judge it by the same criteria. The main reason readers read prose stories is for the emotional experience. I suspect the main reason people read branching user-directed stories is to discover all the twists and the many things that can happen to their character. I don't think those who read them, read them only once, but go through again and again to attempt to discover all the odd little endings.

In my opinion the most important thing, the point-of-focus, for a branching user-directed story is the *structure*. Structure is what holds all those little story pages together. *Concentrate on your structure.*

Characterization is far less important, and you shouldn't do any for your main character (the reader). How much you do for secondary characters depends on how important they are in the story, but for the typical branching user-directed story most secondary characters only appear on a few pages, and there are a wide variety of such characters.

As far as writing goes: get the spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, and paragraph construction down pat and you can't really go wrong. Your small-scale writing skills seem mostly adequate for the task, but I did notice a couple of typos and there are a few pages you might want to edit for clarity. You've made the right choice with telling the story in second-person present-tense. These techniques can be disaster in the typical prose story, but then this isn't prose. 

I object to your the wording of first round choices--there's nothing ordinary or everyday about humanoid animals. It might be interesting to provide story branches for both anthro-somethings and natural-somethings, but you'd need to be careful with the wording of the first page if you do. Also, be a little more specific than "feline" and "equine".

Your first two choices branches the story into eight possibilities: M/F human, M/F fox, M/F feline, and M/F equine. I'm pleased you didn't wimp out and give us two stories with only a few descriptive differences.


*Suggestions for Your Structure*

Those books hide the structure of the story and so does that website, which is what you want for a reader experience. However, for the planning and creation of your story _you_ need to see the structure. You could write page text, or at least page titles, on 3x5 cards and spread them out on your living room floor, then maybe stretch strings from card to card to show the connections (and tape or staple the strings to the cards). You'd need some way to show the direction of story flow too (arrowheads). And if you need to pick the whole thing up and try to make sense of it later you could end up with a real mess.

Another possibility is to use a mind mapper tool such as Cmap, but there are many other mind mappers. I have and use FreeMind, listed first on that Wiki article, but I don't recommend it for this application as it only depicts strict hierarchies. I find it amusing that another tool I have, and one that could work very well for you, isn't mentioned on that Wiki page.

Cmap was created by a group of Florida universities and it is free to use for noncommercial purposes. If you look at the mind map on their home page you see a sort of top-down flow, but it doesn't need to be that way. Personally, I'd start in the middle with a "Start here" page then branch out in all directions. Every place you have two or more arrows coming _from_ a page that represents a choice, and when you have two or more arrows coming _into_ a page that represents a converging storyline. You probably don't want too many converging storylines, but a few is cool.

A few things you might want to consider for your structure: 1) You have eight characters, which gives you the opportunity to let them interact with each other. Structurally the pages would need to be separate because of differing points-of-view and different choices. 2) Consider a story with a loop, a bit like the movie _Groundhog Day_. The character would keep getting thrown back to the beginning of the loop if the reader chooses a failed path. You'd probably want a fairly long loop, say at least a half-dozen pages. 3) The ultimate in converging storylines is to transmogrify one character into another--tossing the reader into the middle of a wholly unrelated storyline. Use this last device sparingly.

I think that once you can see your whole structure at a glance you'll be able to dream up some wickedly convoluted and delightful story paths.


*Other Suggestions*

Pictures! Because this style of "storytelling" is light on words, a few illustrations could really jazz it up. Who said picture books are only for kids?


Good luck with your project!

Scotty


----------

