: Re: Variations of the same story? I have a story I'm writing, and since when I started, it changed many times the route and focus, and in some of those changes, I found two possible paths for

@Moriarity138

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This can, and has been done (here is an example of something similar), but it takes your book out of the realm of conventional fiction, and reclassifies it as what is called "experimental literature," which can be influential, but which typically draws only a small niche audience. It essentially becomes metafiction --work which deliberately calls attention to itself as fiction --whether or not that is your intent. This, in itself, will make it much more challenging for your reader to suspend disbelief, and to care about your characters and their actions.

This is not to say that it is not worth doing, just that doing it well would be difficult. As with any particularly difficult task, if you pull it off successfully, the acclaim will be all the much higher (some works of this type have been highly successful). But if your aims are the standard ones of a writer --to connect with an audience through a compelling story about believable characters --you're probably better off taking Mark Baker's advice, and using your multiple versions only as personal source materials for enriching your core narrative (or for future stories exploring similar themes).

If you do elect to go the experimental route, however, you might enjoy this essay on the ways of marrying experimentalism with the depth of feeling and other pleasures of classical literature.

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