WikiStory/Series 4

Parallel universes

 * Third of the WikiStory:Styles

This style is a bit more tricky, but provides a really cool experience for the reader.

Basically, you take a storyline --- let's say, of a college kid going to the grocery store to pick up his weekly ration of food. As the story progresses, at various points in the narrative, other stories are linked to, and once read, when the reader comes back to the main narrative, 'it has changed'.

For example, while going to the store, college kid Ryan saw an old lady on the other side of the street. If the reader chooses to read the story about the old lady, when they finish (at the end of the old lady story is a link back to Ryan's story) his story will be enhanced by that knowledge, and will have been changed.

The trick to this is to have Ryan's story covered before going off into any of the other stories. So, Ryan's original story is that he leaves his dorm, gets on his bike, rides past a school, and sees a bunch of stuff, but not being interested in any of them, he goes to the store and gets his food.

The cool thing about this style is that if he does get interested in any of the stuff he sees on the way to the store, his story changes. So if the reader goes into the story of the old woman, then when we go back to Ryan's story, then perhaps he meets the old lady in the store and says something to her.

It can get pretty complicated, so I drew out a simple map if my explanation wasn't forthcoming enough.

G – ABDG /               D – ABD /      \                /         \   ABDH /          \ /       B – AB             H       /     \           / \ /      \         /   ABEH /        \       /     /           \     ABE /            \   /    \   ABEI /              \ /      \ /  A                 E        I   \               / \      / \ \            /   \    /  ACEI \          /     \  /      \         /       \/      \       /       ACE \    /          \        C – AC           \   ACEJ \          \ /               \           J                \         / \ \      /   ACFJ \    /                   F – ACF \                          K – ACFK

So, the original storyline is 'A'. From A, during that segment of the story, Ryan sees an old lady on the road, who represents 'B'. If he chooses to look at her (and the reader reads the story of the old lady), then Ryan's story becomes 'AB'. If however, Ryan doesn't look at the old lady, but instead reminsces about his ex-girlfriend, which represents 'C', then Ryan's story becomes 'AC', after the story of his girlfriend is finished. And so on.

Have fun with this. That's all it's meant to be.