I’ve been thinking a lot about branching narratives lately as I finish up my proof of concept series pilot My (Blank) Dating Life and re-introduce the technique to my sci-fi ROOT.

In the traditional Branching Narrative, think Bandersnatch or the Choose Your Own Adventure book series, you make this or that decision with wildly different outcomes. These stories take on a Butterfly Effect where small causes have large effects. A similar philosophy is shown in the movie Run Lola Run where if you take a slightly different path, like if you fall while running down the stairs you don’t get hit by a car, something like that.

I don’t actually believe that it makes any difference in the grand scheme of things if I eat Cheerios or Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast, so why would I write a story where if you eat Cheerios, you live and Frosted Mini Wheats, you die? 

I tried to think about one decision that I could have made in my day that would have dramatically changed the outcome of my life. I had borrowed a car from my sister while in Seattle and if I decided to take that car and drive to Canada and never return it to her, that would seriously change our lives. I did have the freedom to do that, but that decision is not within my nature, so the likelihood that I would make that decision to not return her car to her is zero.

Other decisions I could have made that would change my day would have been accidents. Like, I would never decide to turn left into oncoming traffic and get hit by the car, but I could accidentally make a bad driving decision and would get in an accident (it’s happened before unfortunately). In those cases, I made a bad decision that led to an accident but I did not really have control over that because it was an unintended outcome.

In general, the butterfly effect of branching decisions where small decisions change the course of our lives in dramatic ways does not reflect my experience of the world. Each day, I keep track of my life, my opportunities, my decisions and actions, and I do not think that if one day I miss my newsletter (like last week) that my entire future changes. That’s not realistic.

I do, however, think that we influence people. We have a sphere of influence. What we say to a person can change their mood. I could tell my husband I love him (and I do tell him that) and that can make him happy. I have the freedom to tell him that I hate him, but the probability of me saying that unprovoked without years of a destroyed relationship is slim to none. But I could say I love him or not say I love him, and those little things can build or slowly harm our relationship.

So, I’ve decided that with my branching narrative stories moving forward, I am going to have the choices you make in the story affect your relationship with other people to either build or erode the relationship. As a player in the narrative game, you will get to offer up information to the other characters such as what path you think they should take, but they will decide what path they do take. You do not make decisions for other people in life, but you do have control over your over decisions, and in ROOT, the decision will affect your relationships, not the plot.

The mechanics will be similar to the branching narratives that effect the plot. However, instead of deciding what other people do, you can decide how you react and how you build your relationship with these people. This better reflects my reality and makes me happier moving forward with a branching narrative structure.