Author: dbadmin210129

I did a quick flow chart using creately.com to see how this might work. So this takes the ideas in the prior blog and maps out how a few choices could lead to different storylines. So here I have four different scenes of the story and how they each have their own choices which also impact the potential scenarios.

My objective of giving the reader consequential choices is to shape the story.  The success of the (individualized) story itself will be if, reading it from start to finish, the flow is strong, impactful, and interesting.  Can each path lead to a story that is built in a way that the story stands alone and is entertaining and “realistic?” Taking my last blog of very rough choices for early Vanishi background, what would be some possible paths and consequences of the choices?

Now, time to explore the character progression model for Boneeaters.  I’m going to start with the idea of using OCEAN as I had blogged about before and also if the reader had selected Vanishi.  So, let’s create a rough and dirty (start to a) plotline for the Vanishi backstory.  This would be one of several chapters to take her from childhood to the landing in Chapter 1.  The idea would be to do this for all 4 possible protagonists and have the reader assist in creating their profile.

Sometimes pure fun takes over, since I had this in my head, felt it was worth just belting it out and then getting back to the story construction.  Here is my concept for the very first introduction sequence on the Boneeaters website – an animated comic to introduce people to the story and their first choice.  This would also serve as the home page of the site, why not just hit it with everything we got, no preamble?

Now is the time to turn my attention back to Boneeaters. I started this project as a fun exercise to explore how to write good stories. And, no sooner than I wrote up some stuff for Boneeaters, it (not me, the damn story itself) broke every rule I thought I knew and showed me that what I learned so far is perhaps not as much as I thought. The work I did so far on Boneeaters has led me to another life-long goal project I’ve wanted to do: build an interactive web-based video adventure game. Inspired heavily by games such as Jade Empire and Mass Effect, I really like the concept of revealing a story at the reader’s direction and with choices that change the story itself.