The power is in the logic

I made Inklewriter story one for my Pobre Ana: Story 2 structures and I feel like I finally figured out how to best use it for my needs!

While Inklewriter is brilliantly simple to use, figuring out how to use it to its full potential is quite the learning curve.  I guess this wouldn't be such an issue for most people who are actually writing stories that branch off different directions, but mine frequently give the reader small options that are incorporated into the story, but don't change the story (like names) and it's a hassle to create two parallel stories and keep them straight.  In addition, many of my questions are comprehension questions that incorporate these details, so I have a number of tiny questions before the next part of the story is added.

However, I think I finally have the trick figured out, and the secret lies in the logic functions of Inklewriter.  By adding logic functions to the text, I only have to write one paragraph that can customize itself based on the previous choices of the reader.  In fact, I can even elect to show entire paragraphs based on what decisions have previously been made.

So then, I was having trouble with the options customizing themselves to fit the paragraphs, and having incorrect options loop back to where the correct answer was, especially since the correct answer is sometimes different depending on those decisions.  That is, until I realized I could hide/show the answers just like the paragraphs.  Thus, on one question, I have something to the tune of 12 possible answers for all the possible scenarios at that point (8 wrong, 4 correct), but only 3 will be shown to the reader based on what they've chosen so far (two wrong, one correct).  You can do this by saying to only show the option if choices "X", "Y", and "Z" were made.  There's no "or", but I don't know that you need it because you can also say to only show the option if choices "X", "Y", and "Z" were not made.  Thus, you should be able to logically get the correct options to appear.

At first, I thought this was more of a dichotomy.  For example, you could input:

• If "Choice X", then "Option X", but if not, then "Option Y")

But then, falling back on my discrete math class of which I only ever completed the first lesson, I realized I could use this dichotomy to logically pick one from any number of options.  I tested it out, and it worked!  For instance, you could input:

• If "Choice X", then "Option X", but if not, then if "Choice Y", then "Option Y", but if neither of those, then "Option Z".

Of course, if we really wanted to get complicated, then I could offer 5 choices by inputting: you could input:

• If "Choice X", then "Option X", but if not, then if "Choice Y", then "Option Y", but if none of those, then if "Choice Z", then "Option Z", but if none of those, then if "Choice N", then "Option N", but if none of those, then "Option P".

It's only logical!