It is important to distinguish side roads from other common notions of variation. A side road is a variant traversal through a shared graph: it temporarily diverges from a main walk and may later rejoin it, without introducing new content or duplicating existing nodes. By contrast, a variant typically denotes an alternative version of content, where structure or nodes themselves differ, often leading to parallel maintenance. A fork goes further still: it creates a separate graph with its own evolution, abandoning structural sharing altogether. Side roads deliberately avoid both variants and forks by preserving a single shared graph while allowing experiential divergence through different walks.
See also Narrative Walk
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Common misinterpretations of side roads
Side roads are often mistaken for appendices, optional sections, or enrichment material that can be skipped without structural consequence. This is a category error: appendices and optional sections are content containers added outside the main structure, whereas side roads are alternative traversals within the same graph. Side roads are also frequently conflated with publication formats (for example, “extra PDF material” or “HTML-only content”), which again misplaces the distinction. Publication formats concern representation and delivery, while side roads concern the organization of experience over shared structure. Treating side roads as appendices, options, or formats collapses traversal into packaging and destroys the very structure sharing they are meant to preserve.