Digital novel offers 11 possible endings

A new digital novel will offer 11 possible endings, from a ‘happily ever after’ one to a grisly Tarantino-style outcome, determined by the reader’s tastes and mood.

Author, Caroline Smailes has come up with a new digital novel that will overturn centuries of literary tradition by allowing readers to choose how they would like a story to end.

The book 99 Reasons Why, a 99-chapter family drama about obsession, offers a choice of 11 possible endings. The conclusion depends on the reader’s tastes and mood and on their answers to multiple-choice questions on colours, numbers and objects.

The idea came to its Newcastle-born author, Smailes, on hearing that some readers wished the dark stories in her two earlier books had less gloomy denouements.

For her latest work she decided to make every reader go away contented, with endings ranging from a “happily ever after” to a grisly Quentin Tarantino outcome. Star Wars and Brief Encounters versions are among others.

“Different readers will have different reactions, interpretations and feelings about the story, depending on which ending they choose. This is the reader taking responsibility for the ending,” she was quoted by the Independent as saying.

Her publisher, Scott Pack, said recent advances in ebook software had made such interaction possible. “I’m not aware of anyone having done this digitally yet,” he said, adding that “There is more [technological] freedom now. So we wanted to exploit that.”
The book tells the story of a housebound woman who spies through her bedroom window on the world outside while her family pursues lives of crime.

“The book was never intended to be in a print version, which is an unusual signing and which altered how I approached writing it,” Smailes said. Readers with a Kindle or other device answer simple questions according to their interpretations of the characters. The combination of answers determines the ending.

Readers can reread it for a different ending or even read all the endings by answering questions differently.

The only snag is for people who like to read the ending of a novel first.