Onward and Upward

This week's (and last week's!) vignette was a lot of fun to write. It focused on the main characters relationship with his teacher/father figure, a historian and sociologist named Karl. As I laid out last week, it was actually three distinct stories that can be played in any order, just as the entire project will be a series of vignettes that can be played in any order. I had planned to add branching options that change each story based on the decisions the reader made in the other stories, but I ran out of time. I will still put that branching in, but it will have to wait until after I've written the rest of the vignettes.

So what did I learn? Putting in conditional branching is a lot of work! I had been thinking of it as something quick to do at the end of the week, but really every branch I want to write is an additional scene, with the added complication that it has to fit in with what I've already written but in a way such that the story still makes sense to people who choose a different branch and don't see that content. I plan to add these sorts of branches (for example, making an additional choice available that leads to a different scene if some previous conditions have been met) to every vignette, with branches that vary based on choices made in other vignettes and choices made within the one vignette.

I really enjoyed writing this one. It let me explore some more academic ideas directly, using the old scholar as a sort of mouthpiece. I feel like I discovered quite a bit more about the city of Adriata as well, which can only help in writing the rest of the story.

Here's an excerpt:

I hope you are enjoying the story so far! As ever, you can reach me with questions or feedback in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook.