Yeah, I think of a story exactly like that – a finite‑state machine in practice. I start by sketching the big picture as a graph: each scene is a node, each decision point is a branch. Characters become subroutines that hold their own local state and invariants, like a function that always keeps track of what they’ve learned. I write the skeleton in a lightweight DSL, then feed it through a little engine that picks which path to follow based on variables like tone, stakes, or what the audience has already seen. I add assertions to make sure a character’s behavior never contradicts what they’ve already said, and I run unit tests on the plot so the climax always resolves the core conflict. Once the code is happy, I serialize it into a linear script, like a log you can replay and debug. That’s how my brain turns narrative into clean, testable code.

Yeah, I usually toss in a few intentional bugs—little exceptions that pop up at the right moments to keep the plot from feeling too polished. It’s like adding a bit of latency to a perfect algorithm; the story starts to breathe.