Types of fiction with multiple endings

Multiple endings refer to a case in entertainment where the story could end in different ways.

Since multiple endings usually require audience participation, books are able to capture the concept better than movies or television. However, for the sake of telling a story, this device is rarely used. An example is the popular 1980s children's Choose Your Own Adventure series where the protagonist is "you", the reader, and you are given choices that lead to multiple outcomes.

The Charles Dickens 1860 novel Great Expectations underwent a change in ending just before publication. Modern editions often print both versions. (However, this situation is more akin to an alternate ending.) However, perhaps the first true multiple-ending novel was Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar in 1963.

In some comic book stories the readers are advised to make a choice, and then turn to another page, from which the story will continue. The 1983 strip Cliff Hanger was based entirely around this premise.

Goosebumps also made books with branching storylines and multiple endings in the Give Yourself Goosebumps and Give Yourself Goosebumps Special Edition series.

The novel Life of Pi offers the reader two choices as to how the protagonist's story should be interpreted.

Ayn Rand's 1934 play Night of January 16th allowed the audience to affect the ending by acting as the "Jury" and voting the defendant "innocent" or "guilty".

The 1985 musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood, based on the incomplete 1870 Charles Dickens novel of the same name, has many possible endings. In the middle of a musical number in the second act, one of the actors announces that it was at this point that Dickens died, leaving the mystery unfinished. The audience votes on who they believe committed the murder. Each possible choice—even those considered unlikely to have been Dickens' intended guilty party—has a song in the score that will be performed if, and only if, they have been chosen as the murderer. The audience chooses which of the characters has assumed a false identity and appeared in the second act as a disguised detective, and the chosen "Dick Datchery" performs a song. And finally, the audience votes upon which two characters they'd like to see together in the end, and these two sing a duet. However, the same number, "The Writing on the Wall", always closes the show.

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