Question: Pointless Choices?

Is there a such thing as pointless choices in a story?
I’m currently working on a story, Whenever I preview my story one of the very first choices in the story seems pointless but it’s not, how could I make the choice seem not pointless.

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Yes, I’d say there is. A choice the author clearly wrote in for the sake of appearing to have choices (IE: What should I have for breakfast? Eggs, Waffles, or Pancakes? cue scene of generic eating animation) is a pointless choice.

To make something NOT pointless, I’d say you can expand on your choices slightly, create gains with them and then bring up that gain later on. Bringing up the breakfast example, a very commonly used one, the way I would change it to make it not pointless is rewrite the choice to be something like “What should I eat for breakfast? Waffles, Orange Juice, or Skip Breakfast?” then have either an eating, drinking, or running out animation, and have someone like a friend ask the character “What did you have for breakfast?” and set up a little four or five line dialogue for each choice. Yes, it is a fair amount more work, but it shows you’ve put effort into this and makes the reader feel like you’ve really thought this through and are making their choices count at least a little imo.

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The thing is, I didn’t write it for just the sake of having choices it’s a big thing for the story. It affects the whole outcome. My problem is that the choice looks pointless when you first read it.

Ohhh okay- I misunderstood your question. What you can probably do is either write an author’s note or reader’s message right before the choice informing the reader that the choice is important and will affect the rest of the story, or possibly add an “Are you sure? This choice will have a large impact on your story.” right after they make the choice with an option to go back and remake it.

I have a choice like that in my story.
There wasn’t any special warning “This is important!!!”, but I felt that I had made it clear in the story description that choices mattered.

Honestly, I kind of like to make the choices not seem important, because then it kinda kicks the reader’s butt in the end and keeps 'em hooked. You could leave a reader message, and you could also highlight the choice in gold [BEST INDICATOR], but other than that, if you already told them in the beginning, I say let them suffer the consequences. MUAHAHAHAHHAHA.

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You could make the bubbles gold. That usually makes the options look important

Yeah!

Closing due to one month of inactivity :slight_smile: