Co-Writing a Branching Story: How to Create a Permissions Table for “Who Can Edit Which Section”

First, draw three clear lines: writing a section, revising a section, and finalizing a section

In multi-person collaboration, every step should use only the permissions that are justified for that step. Draft ownership, cross-person revision, and final locking are three separate actions. Writing well does not mean you may overwrite someone else’s paragraph, and even fixing a typo can change a character’s personality.

This article uses the fictional teaching case River Lantern Festival to demonstrate the method. The characters, chapters, and follow-up events are constructed by the author; they are not a real workflow, tested results, or features of any collaboration tool. The permission rules serve only story design and are not real-world copyright or credit rules.

Four writers, A Du, A Zhan, A Yu, and A Ting, agree to co-write an interactive story called River Lantern Festival: a young boy releases lanterns during the river lantern festival, and each choice leads to a different ending. A Du writes the main storyline, A Zhan writes the supporting character of the old lantern maker, A Yu writes the traveler from across the river, and A Ting writes the endings. A Cen coordinates the process; she does not manage the story, only the workflow.

In the first week, everyone submitted a first draft. The problems appeared in the second week. A Yu read the boy written by A Du and felt he was “too gloomy,” so he directly changed three sections of the boy’s inner monologue in the document into two sections of dialogue. A Zhan saw that A Yu had written the old lantern maker in a transition passage as “coughing and waving his hand,” which conflicted with her setting that he “never coughs.” She wanted to change it back, but was not sure who that passage belonged to. While merging the endings, A Ting felt that one of A Du’s setups had not paid off, so she casually added a line of dialogue for the boy. Only after adding it did she remember that the line involved A Zhan’s character. A Cen opened the document and found that the changes had left no trace, and no one could clearly say who had written which sentence.

The hard part is not who writes better. It is this: under whose name does a passage sit, how far may others touch it, and after it has been changed, who has the right to say, “Change it back”?

Use a paragraph permissions table to break collaboration into checkable actions

“Locked” does not mean no one can touch it after it is written; it means others cannot touch it on your behalf. The line “I won’t wait anymore,” spoken by A Du’s boy at the ferry, is a key line locked by A Du. If A Yu feels it is not strong enough, he cannot directly change it to “I’m leaving.” He can leave a comment beside it: “Could this line be shorter?” A Du then decides for himself whether to change it.

Try filling in this case: “A Ting feels the boy is too lucky in the ending, so she directly changes the last paragraph so the boy never gets to meet the person he is waiting for.” This is a plot change across character relationships. A Ting is not the owner of the boy’s main storyline and has no basis to place it into the main text. It should be moved to the draft area and wait for joint confirmation from A Du and A Zhan. It cannot remain in the main text just because “the revised version is more heartbreaking.”

A Yu says, “I’m doing this for the good of the story.” A Cen replies, “What we have completed is a suggestion, not writing for him.” The conflict comes from permissions; no extra polite wording is needed.

Revisions must leave a trace; suggestions cannot be treated as main text first

A Zhan notices that the old lantern maker has been written as coughing and waving his hand. She does not directly change it back. Instead, she writes in a comment: “I set this character, the old lantern maker, as someone who repaired lanterns when he was young. His lungs are fine, and he never coughs. Could this detail be changed to ‘waved his hand’?” She then sends the passage to A Yu for confirmation.

A Yu sees the comment and agrees to change it back. But he asks one more question: “Then what state should he be in when he waves his hand?” A Zhan says, “His hand is very steady, because he has tied lantern cords all his life.” The two of them add this sentence to the transition passage. This step is valid because A Zhan first pointed out the conflict, A Yu agreed to the direction of the change, and the new description was also confirmed by A Zhan. It is not A Zhan taking the passage back by herself.

These steps only support the statement “this passage has restored the original setting.” They do not support “from now on, A Zhan can freely edit anything A Yu writes.” A Yu also adds a new restriction: “In the future, ask me first about physical details involving the old lantern maker.” He did not have that permission before. The understanding reached through this collaboration cannot be described as a rule that existed from the beginning.

Both sides also record the scope of revision: A Zhan may point out setting conflicts in any passage involving the old lantern maker, but she may only write comments and may not directly edit the main text. When A Yu writes transition passages, he may revise the environment, pacing, and descriptions of the lanterns, but he may not change the old lantern maker’s habits of movement. If A Zhan directly edits A Yu’s sentence next time, A Cen will roll that change back.

If A Zhan sees the conflict and directly deletes “coughing,” changing it to “steadily,” without leaving a comment or notifying A Yu, then when A Yu opens the document he will find that the sentence has changed. Even if the change is correct, the collaboration record has broken. If both of them decide that “the story reads more smoothly this way” and directly edit each other’s work, three weeks later no one will be able to say clearly whose line that dialogue was. What needs to be checked is the ownership of the change, not which version is better.

Locked, negotiable, and pending confirmation must all leave the next scene behind

A collaboration process ends with each person retaining their right to speak; it does not end with “a final draft has been merged.”

Locked branches are used for key settings. After A Du’s line for the boy, “I won’t wait anymore,” is locked, anyone who feels it is unsuitable can only leave a comment. A Du may change it himself, or he may not reply. Not replying does not mean default agreement; the line is still his. The next scene could be A Du changing it himself on the night before the deadline to “I’ll wait a little longer,” or it could remain unchanged until the end.

Negotiable branches are used for transition passages. A Yu revises the riverside fog written by A Du and leaves a comment: “If the fog is too thick, it will block the lanterns. Changed to light mist.” After A Du sees it, he can accept it or roll it back. The next scene could be A Du accepting it and the two of them adjusting half a page of lantern description together, or A Du rolling it back while A Yu keeps his original fog.

Pending-confirmation branches are used for cross-character plot points. A Ting wants to add a line in which the boy says to the old lantern maker, “I’ll release the last lantern for you.” This line involves both A Du’s boy and A Zhan’s old lantern maker. A Ting writes it in the draft area and @mentions both of them. Three days later, A Du agrees, while A Zhan says, “The old lantern maker would not let the boy release it for him.” The change is discarded, but the discussion record remains in the draft. The next scene develops from “the line both people did not agree to was deleted,” not from “A Ting added it without authorization.”

Locking protects one person’s voice, negotiation smooths out passages, and pending confirmation keeps disputes on the table. There is no need to write any one route as the most efficient answer. The shared boundary is this: do not write “I think this is better” as if it were permission already obtained.

Use failed counterexamples to check whether collaboration can still stop

Reversible collaboration does not mean “after merging, we can still change it.” Drafts that have not entered the main text can be discarded, but a version that has already been merged and published cannot recall the character readers have already encountered. At every node, ask: if the owner now says, “I did not write this sentence,” can we show them how it came about? Even if A Du simply did not reply to a comment, he has still seen someone suggest changing his line; that interruption should be recorded in the permissions table.

Now break the case once: A Yu gets tired of slow merging and, late at night, directly changes all three sections of the boy’s inner monologue into dialogue without leaving a comment. The next day, A Du opens the document and can no longer recognize his own character. Even if the change truly makes the pacing faster, he cannot demand a rollback because the version history contains no record of his agreement. Or A Cen, feeling that everyone has argued for too long, makes the final call: “Use A Yu’s version for this line,” deciding on behalf of the two people involved. Or, after the final draft is published, A Zhan finally discovers that the detail about the old lantern maker coughing is still there and has already been read by hundreds of readers.

Before submission, place “the owner refuses the revision” and “the owner has not replied for three days” into their corresponding nodes and check whether the follow-up changes. If someone refuses and the main text is still quietly changed, or if no reply for three days is treated as automatic approval, then no ownership has been preserved, no matter how good the revision looks. Then place “a punctuation mark was changed, but the character’s tone changed” into a negotiation node and confirm that even small edits must leave a trace. Changing “I’m not going” to “I’m not going?” is already a different decision.

Finally, check the six fields line by line. It is acceptable for a passage to remain in the draft area forever. What this case needs to complete is collaboration with ownership. Writing a suggestion, revising a transition passage, and finalizing a key sentence are three different decisions. The fact that the story becomes better does not itself constitute permission to write on someone else’s behalf.