Choose your own adventure

I've never really gotten in to them, but I've always loved the idea of choose your own adventure books. The concept of a book with a chance at victory or failure is fascinating. That's usually something that you can only get from video games, and we all know how much I love video games. A book that you can retry, and get different results from, and learn as you go, until you finally reach the desired ending - or, for some people, you see all of the endings. That's just such a cool idea.

I don't know if it's something that I would every really write, however. For one, I think that has a very unique style of creativity behind it, and I'm not sure that that is my kind of creativity. To create multiple pathways through a story, splitting the options and creating full stories based off of those choices that continuously split, again and again, changing the story with each choice. Creating a dozen different realities not just for a character, but for you, the reader. Choose your own adventure novels are the only way - at least that I know of - to write a book in the second person. That's a question that people always ask. Why can't you write in the second person? You're always taught to write in either the first or third. But here is your answer.

They're incredibly unique ways of writing, and full of potential, but you don't see them used very often. I suppose because most of the people with that kind of creativity are more inclined to go into story writing for video games, where they're more likely to get an audience, and have more potential use out of their writing. And yet there are so few games that handle choice well. At least from what I've seen. Choice is all too frequently used as a right or wrong option, and with right or wrong endings, and most of the time in games, you already know as soon as they come up which is which. There's no moral ambiguity. The choice isn't about seeing what happens - it's about deciding what happens.

And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But in choose your own books, most of the time you never quite know what to expect. You have to make your choices based off a gut instinct, and it will ultimately lead to your downfall or success, sure, but you don't know how. And there's almost never just the two endings. There are endings with mystery, endings with answers, endings that don't even feel like they quite fit the events. Endings where it's clear whether you succeeded or failed, and endings where you're not sure where you landed on the spectrum.

Of course, a lot of that is based on how well the book is written, but that's true with any story of any kind. But there's no point in talking about anything generally if you assume that it's written badly.

I hope some day that these become more prevalent. That some author out there finds a way to really explore and exemplify them. I can guarantee it won't be me, but I will love whoever manages to pull it off. It's just too cool of an idea to pass up.