Love-Love 4/5

[Moonlit Naiad]

--> http://www.midnightaurora.com/mbs/ll45.html <--

This was written for the story contest whose deadline is coming up in a few hours. Nikkou said it was alright to share ahead of time, so here it is.

Though I bend all sorts of rules, I'm rather proud of the result and I don't think anything quite like it has been submitted here before.

Enjoy!

edit: And now that that's done, maybe I can get some work done on my other projects o.o...

[Chibi MitchellTF]

Aw, dangit. I'm not the only entry!

[Anamnesis]

Ooh. Nice. Mitchell? I entered, too. However..I don't know if mine is 5000 words...I suggest we lower the word amount XD;

[Chibi MitchellTF]

I just turned mine in...I hope Nikkou is generous with being slightly late. It's within Time Zone differences, and 5,190 words...

[muffinstud]

*insert evil laugh here* I submitted my story days ago! And now I only have a lot. of. people. submitting. stories. OH POOP! How did you people know competition was my one true weakness! Wargh!

By the way, I like the story. It reminds me of the crappy "choose your own adventure" books, only instead of crappy it was good.

[Funny Hat + Funny Accent]

*insert evil laugh here* I submitted my story days ago! And now I only have a lot. of. people. submitting. stories. OH POOP! How did you people know competition was my one true weakness! Wargh!

By the way, I like the story. It reminds me of the crappy "choose your own adventure" books, only instead of crappy it was good.

I agree with MS.

[Sophia Anieri]

Off-topic a bit, but how can you call those books bad? They were kids' books, to be sure, but they were some of the most entertaining reading I ever had as a kid.

Back on topic, the story was amazing. I would have liked more endings where the protagonist is transformed, but as is it's still very nice. I'm glad someone thought to write a story in this medium.

[UDDCommander]

Really good story. I agree that I think there needed to be more endings or branches, but it's good.

On a slightly off topic note good luck to all who entered.

[Moonlit Naiad]

Thanks for the comments.

*nods* More endings and branches would've been nice, but I started on this late (more than half way into the month), and had some things come up, so there was less time to work on it than I would've liked... But that's deadlines for you.

Plotted out on paper, there were two main branches - the left (don't follow the girls) and the right (follow the girls), with the right side leading back into the left at one episode.

For the longest time while I was working on it, most of the right side wasn't plotted past the three search options. Meanwhile, I continued to add on to the side that I was working on. I finally finished everything on the left side on the evening of the 30th, giving me only one day left to to finish writing the right side, troubleshoot/debug, spellcheck, and send it in.

Thus, unfortunately, the side that I had planned to be less developed weighs in with the longest arcs at 11 episodes and the side I had planned to do more with gets only 7 episodes in their longest arcs. Part of that, though, is on the left side there are several places where there's only one choice, effectively splitting one episode into two. But, I accomplished pretty much everything I wanted to do plotwise with minimal difficulties.

Writing in second person was definitely a challenge, especially since it makes difficult or eliminates the bulk of dialouge options - and it's no easy feat to write a story without dialogue (did end up with one line of it, though, and I forgot to change it out).

--

As for the CYOA that most of us read when we were younger, that's kind of where I took the idea from (well, that and the addventures and addventure-type stories out and about), and while those may not exactly be high literature, they aren't bad for their target age group. I don't remember a lot of them so much anymore (been a long while for me), the one that sticks out in my mind the most was the one where you were force-reincarnated into a bunch of different animals due to offending an out-of-the-way temple...

[Garath the Shadowshifter]

Well, after reading and trying all the different paths, I have to say that I wish you had much more then a month to work on this.

It's been a while since I've read a good CYOA story, and this one had some potensial to be sure.

Gah, it just... It just needs to be longer!

...and have cheesecake.

>_>
<_<

[Beyond]

Interesting story.

I had fun.

[Sophia Anieri]

Encore!

[Moonlit Naiad]

Encore!

While there are definite plans to continue the story from the "What's My Age Again?" ending, I'm not 100% convinced that a CYOA version will work well for it. I'll have to think some on how to diverge the planned story for it into multiple arcs and endings.

That being said, an "encore" with a different world-setting / story / character mix is in the works. ^.^

[Funny Hat + Funny Accent]

Yay!

[Queen Octavia]

*Goes through story again to see which one said ending was.*

Ok, good, that was my the favorite one. Just had to make sure you weren't planning on writing a sequel to one of the ones where the main character just lives an ordinary life .

I kind of mutilate the CYOA format though, opening both branches in new windows, reading them both, opening their branches in new windows, reading all those...

But that's my own silly fault