One story - three endings.

I have spent my time this holiday crafting the final lines to a story (unpublished) with a killer ending, however during writing, I kept being pulled off track thinking this could work better as a great ending. Hence now I have the same story, but three possible endings. How should this be treated for you, the reader.

I've had a couple of stories like that, and I never came up with an answer. One I thought of is to publish them in one series with an explanation in the author's notes. I'm still working on the second version. I've never been satisfied; I'm on my fourth or fifth version. Good luck.

The idea I'm working on is using the many-worlds quantum theory. Every human decision creates a new universe.

Interesting - I wish you the best of luck with that idea.

We used to have a multi-ending feature, but it was so under-utilised that it got dropped when the site was redesigned. No idea what happened to the few stories that did use it.

Depending how long the story is, you could maybe split it at the branch point. And at the cliffhanger ending of the main part, offer a "choose your own adventure" style option:

If you think Peter should jump into the ravine, read "My Killer Story - Alternate Ending 1"

If you think Peter should run back to the main road, read "My Killer Story - Alternate Ending 2"

...

Then, submit each ending in quick succession and link them as a series so they're collected together and clearly signposted in the title that they're alternate endings. Or seek a willing mod who will allow you to submit all the parts at once so they can all be locked and approved in one sitting.

In the Author Note of each ending, clarify this further by informing people that it's a continuation of the main part and they should read that first, just in case someone lands on the ending directly from a search engine.

The difficulty here would be that the individual endings are all "chapter 2" of the same story and must therefore abide by the rules of being a decent enough length (ideally 1k+ words) on their own merit. If your endings are all really short, that wouldn't work.

Thanks, Ill follow that advice, Ill go and hunt down your bookshelf

Quote by WannabeWordsmith
We used to have a multi-ending feature, but it was so under-utilised that it got dropped when the site was redesigned.

I had good intentions about trying that out but never got to it before the redesign. Just couldn't come up with a story that would work well.

Yeah, the method you describe seems workable but probably more trouble than its worth.

I note that Netflix is removing it's films that allowed viewer-selected endings so maybe its not popular enough to bother anyhow.

Dunno about y'all but I used to cheat in those Choose Your Own Adventure books that you used to get by sending off tokens from the back of Weetabix boxes.

I'd read up to a choice and stick my finger on the page as a bookmark, then skip ahead to each option and read. If it resulted in the character coming to a grisly demise, I'd jump back to the branch point and try a different path.

More efficient than starting again from scratch!

I'd a whole multi-chapter story almost finished when the site was redesigned. I ended up turning a few bits into stand alone stories.. i like the gameplay aspect of it.. mine was a bit dark in places.. he gets the girl if you make the right choices but wrong ones included being punched, stabbed, caught by a jealous bf and going home alone.

I tend to write multiple versions of my stories. I then choose the best version that lines up with the draft of the next story in the series.

I remember using multiple bookmarks when reading those choose-your-own-adventure books, just in case I don't like where the story is going...

Watch the clue movie.