PROJECT · 2022–24
Interactive Story — Branching Narrative
Python · Conditional logic · Narrative design
The work
During my MA I wrote an interactive story in Python. A short fiction where the reader’s choices at key moments changed what happened next. I wanted to know what it felt like to design narrative as a system — where every branch had to feel earned, every choice had to feel consequential, and the writing couldn’t rely on linearity to carry the reader through.
Why this mattered
This project is the earliest version of the bridge I now work on every day: editorial judgment plus conditional logic. A branching narrative is a little software system whose correctness is whether the reader feels the ending was inevitable, no matter which path they took. That’s not so different from designing any other system that adapts to its inputs.
Try it
A small version of the structure runs on this page — not the original story, but the same idea, recast as a set of instructions for winding a clock. Read through. Make the one real decision the instructions ask you to make. Whichever ending you reach was written for you in advance.
[ TRY IT ] — branching narrative demo