Tag Archives: choose your own adventure

May 14, 2015 · 9:17 am

How to Edit Your “Choose Your Own Adventure”-Style Book

Now that you’ve written your totally awesome gamebook, you’ve got to edit it! Unfortunately, because you’ve got all these disconnected storylines running all over the place, that’s a bit more of an organizational feat than normal editing. So what should you do? Here’s my advice after working on my adult zombie gamebook, Undead Rising: Decide Your Destiny.

Take a Deep Breath
And just try to be patient. It’s pretty complicated, and even after taking more than 6 passes through it (both me and with other editors) I still found mistakes in the final form. Which is frustrating.
Make a Checklist
Since you made that awesome list when you wrote it, you can now turn that list into a checklist. You’ll want to mark off each section you’ve read/reviewed as you go. YES, you will most likely loop through the same sections repeatedly. You have to check the direction with every one, even if you just glance to make sure the transitions make sense.
Use the “Find” Feature
Late in the game I decided to change the names of a few characters. There was no way in Hades I was ever going to find all the incidences of those names, but the find tool made it easy to find and replace them in one quick pass. The same thing holds true with other story details (if you’ve decided, as I did, to keep some things constant across storylines). Because you’ve got a nonlinear story, you’ll need some clever tricks to track everything down.
Rewrite and Modify
After I showed a draft copy to my brother, I had to add in a few more scenes. (He felt like he died too often, poor baby). Because I’d written the book in Scrivner, this wasn’t that hard, but it did mean changing the choices to lead to that section, and inserting new pages. If I had been going by page number at this point–instead of the simpler numbering system–I’d have been in big trouble.
Layout the Pages
When you are completely confident that the story works, doesn’t have errors, and is generally in good shape, lay out the pages. It is a BIG headache if you have to go back and change these later (odds are good that you’ll have to go back and change them later…) but that’s why you’ve got your checklist as a backup.
You may want to do a rough layout, and then save two versions, if you’re doing ebook and print. They are similar in manuscript format but are about to change dramatically.
Add Page Numbers
I worked from the beginning and moved through my numbered list in order. That meant, in some cases, I added page numbers to some choices and left others with the placeholder number until I reached that point in the number system. In those cases, I just used the “find” tool to find my placeholder once I knew for certain what page it would be on. I also wrote the page number next to the original number in my list.
Use a pencil. I had to erase and scratch out at least a few times, particularly in the final pages.
Add Links
Because I wanted an ebook option as well as a printed option, I had to add links for ereaders. But the number system I used also made this pretty easy! I added the links in my document in Word (after exporting the manuscript from Scrivner). Word has a great “bookmark” tool that allows you to create in-document links. In Microsoft for Mac, this is located under Insert>Bookmark. You’ll add the bookmark itself to the section you want to send readers to, and add a hyperlink to that bookmark to each choice. (So: choices become links; bookmarks are at the beginning of the new section). You can also nickname your bookmarks with a few words–or even your number system. That chart you made really comes in handy!
Google “add bookmarks in Word” if you need step-by-step directions. A word of warning: if you have a full novel like Undead Rising with a lot of links, your document is going to get pretty big and the bookmarks may get challenging. That’s another reason I find the number system so useful.
Add Formatting For eBook and Print Versions
This was really time-consuming and you may want to hire a designer for this part. Print and ebooks naturally have some strong differences in layout and needs of the reader, and you’ll have to design carefully to accommodate that. For print, I wanted clear bullets to indicate each new choice. For the ebook, the choices were already obvious because they are underlined links. I also added dropcaps to signal new sections for the print book; that wouldn’t be necessary in an ebook, because the link will “warp” the reader directly to the new section.
Whatever formatting you decide on, be extremely careful that you don’t mess up your page numbers (in print) and that you are consistent throughout.
Check It Again
After you think everything is perfect, you’re going to need to check it..again. And probably again after that. The first pass should look for spelling and grammatical issues (I read the book backwards to help look for those); the second pass should check every link and every page direction. It’s tedious but very important that it be perfect!
After this, you should have a gorgeous ebook and/or print gamebook ready to publish!
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Undead Rising coverIf that sounds like a ridiculous amount of work, maybe you should just enjoy a good gamebook instead. How about Undead Rising: Decide Your Destiny, now available in print and for Kindle?

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May 12, 2015 · 9:14 am

How to Write a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-Style Book

In the ’70s and ’80s, a new genre in teen literature was born: the gamebook. The books, under the umbrella title of “Choose Your Own Adventure,” were the brainchild of a man named R.A. Montgomery. The interesting twist in these books was that the story was not singular: the reader would have a choice at the end of each section, with each choice directing to a new page number.

Montgomery either wrote or facilitated the production of every one of the books in the series, which is impressive, but has also meant there hasn’t been a lot of innovation in the genre. But it’s a lot of fun! So, if you want to try to write a gamebook, here are my suggestions:
Decide What Will Effect Everything
I’m a bit of a seat-of-the-pants writer, and that worked pretty well with Undead Rising, but I had to make decisions along the way. There were certain things I knew I wanted from the beginning:
  • not deciding too much about the reader (the protagonist)
  • a completely gender-neutral protagonist (which is tough! Be really careful with those pronouns!)
  • a office environment and a home environment
  • set in New York
  • it will be hard to survive
But I had to make other decisions as I went. I decided that if something existed in one storyline, it had to exist for every storyline, even if the character never encountered it. Because much of the action takes place in an office building, this mostly meant that if there is an ad agency on the top floor in some scenarios, there will always be an ad agency on the top floor. This may be something you choose to do differently! But I found it helpful to have some kind of internal consistency, both for my sake and as a hint for the reader, who may encounter something story-related in one scene that will help them in another scene.
Number Your Outcomes
Though you’ll eventually have to go back and put page numbers or links in, that’s unmanageable when you start writing. I found it was much simpler to just number each choice as I went along. With every possible solution, I put a number in front of the option (ex. #1 Go to Lunch) and then put that number also in front of the first part of that section (or in the title in Scrivner; see below). This way I could search for #1 and quickly find both the launch point and the ultimate solution.
This was also helpful when I came back later to add new outcomes. My numbering might look like: #1, #2, #15. And that is perfectly fine! The numbers are for me, not for the reader.
Write The Choices Before the Scenes
As I wrote, I would complete a scene, and then immediately write down all the options that were possible from that scene. For example, you have an option to choose a medicine when you think you’re getting sick. As soon as I wrote the scene where you are picking the medicines, I decided what I wanted all the options to be and just wrote them in. Then I immediately went and created new sections (carefully numbered) based on those choices. I didn’t necessarily fill them in right away, but I needed to a) remember that I’d created that option and b) guarantee that every option actually went somewhere. There can be no dead ends except those you intend to be stopping points! By writing the choices as soon as I finished the scenes, I made sure every option was accounted for up front.
 
Get Out Paper and Pen
I originally tried to keep track of each reader “path” with a digital flowchart. That was a great idea…until I quickly found out that there was just too much going on. (I broke the Google Flowchart I was using. 😦 ) It was a lot easier for me to just write it out in paper and pencil. I made notes of what each section was (using the numbers, above), a little bit about it and anything that made it particularly important, and whether it was an outcome. I also listed the choices that came out of each scenario. My notes might look something like this:
#1- Stay in or go out for lunch from office? #2 #18 #34
#2- Go out for Thai food. #14 #16 #45
 
Use the Right Tools
I wrote Undead Rising with Scrivner, a writing tool specifically for authors, and it was a lifesaver. Unlike Microsoft Word, Scrivner lets you create a new section for every piece of the story. This might matter a bit to typical authors, but it is critical for gamebook authors. I was able to title each section with a few words of description, so I could tell what each was at a glance. I also could easily add or rearrange sections with the simple drag-and-drop interface. So much better than having to endlessly scroll in a single document!
Scrivner’s tools also let me label sections, so I could keep track of what was blank, what needed a second pass, and what was perfect.
With these steps–and a good amount of patience–you’ll quickly have a gamebook of your very own! And then…you’ve just got to edit it…. *dun dun dun!*
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Undead Rising coverWant to stick to reading gamebooks? Pick up a copy of my book, Undead Rising: Decide Your Destiny, a zombie adventure for adults!

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December 2, 2014 · 9:09 am

A Choose Your Own Obituary

A man whom I’ve never met but to whom I owe a debt has passed away: R.A. Montgomery, pioneer of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” kid’s book series that is at least partially to blame for my own adult zombie choose-your-own-adventure-style book, Undead Rising. Like just about every other kid who has run across them, I loved those books, and his career–and the way he was heavily involved in his work, even having a stake in all of the 230 books published in the line.

While I and a great many other child readers were sad to hear of Mr. Montgomery’s passing, we were also a little disappointed in his official obituary, because it isn’t in the iconic format he pioneered. Seeing as I have experience both in writing obituaries (which are, by the way, strangely pleasant to write: it’s all the best parts of a person’s life) and in writing gamebooks, I thought I’d give it a shot in revising it.

With complete respect and gratitude for this innovator, I present a revised Choose Your Own Obituary.

Raymond Almiran Montgomery, original publisher and author of the incredibly popular Choose Your Own Adventure book series for children, died in his home in Warren, Vermont, on Sunday, November 9. He was 78 years old. But Mr. Montgomery had a life full of adventures, including:

an illustrious educational career
solving challenging puzzles
world travels
Jump ahead to the parts about CYOA, because you don’t like reading much about obituaries, even Choose-Your-Own-Adventure ones.

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