Against the wall: Against the wall 1

Suppose you were to follow this unfortunate person in his prison. Somehow he managed to open the door to his cell and he is standing outside now. And you were to decide if he would take a right turn or a left turn. And after you have decided he would take a left turn, the next decision would be whether or not he would talk to the strange man lying on his belly wearing an Armani suit trying to catch cockroaches. Suppose you did, what would you say to him? Another decision to be made.

And as the dialog unfolds you have to make, lets say, another 8 decisions before you decide to move on. Which means the writer has to account for 1023 possible (with every possible decision written to its conclusion). The next step would take you to 2047. One step further it is 4095. And so on. Which is an impossible task.

But that's the reality of the garden of forking paths. And the story hasn't even started yet. Which makes it impossible to be a creative writer trying to achieve a dramatic effect on his audience and at the same time cope with the reality of the garden of forking paths. It's like playing chess blindfolded and with every move you make the game is split in two. And you have to play them all. And win of course.

The possible interactive script I describe above, is only one approach to it. That work is action centric, which makes it a lot like a written dungeon and dragons game (well dungeons anyway, since we are in prison, don't know about that dragon, but one of the forks in the story may lead to one: the writer has to come up with something).

There are other works of interactive fiction - lets cal them the Eastgate kind (http://www.eastgate.com/) - that are not so much action centered as they are thought centered. Going through a interactive story like that is like going through the inside of someone's brains. Which is a good thing, but difficult to understand. One could compare it to reading a cross referenced encyclopedia without lemma's. It is a lot like poetry. And it is not the thing I want to realize. If were to write this kind of story about the man in prison it would be based on situation number 34: 'Remorse'.