When I was a kid there was the Scholastic Book Fair that came to my school’s library once each school year. For me it was once of my happiest childhood memories. It also happened to be where per chance I discovered my first Choose Your Own Adventure book. I was amazed the first time I read one, as it felt like I was playing a computer game in my mind. There was a narrative, but I got to make choices that decided the outcome of that narrative. I finished the book, re-read it a few time for different outcomes and couldn’t wait to find my next CYOA book. Eventually, I came across the “Wizard, Warrior, & You” series and being a huge fan of fantasy, I took to the series like a fish to water. These books were a bit more evolved into what are called gamebooks, but the center concept of CYOA was still there.
Recently, with the publishing of my first fantasy novel “Gorp: Goblin Janitor” the writing bug bit me again. Harking back to my days of youth, the urge to create my own CYOA series is just too great and I feel now is the time to embark on this endeavor. As of this week I have started work on the series which I have titled, “Agrobathe Adventures”. Agrobathe is a fantasy world I created years ago and spent some great length in developing. Unfortunately, after a few server and hosting moves, I lost all of the personal Wiki data I used to create and flesh out the world. I do however still have all the maps and a few drawings of the creatures of the world. I also have some of the remnants within my head and like the phoenix, am rebuilding the world of Agrobathe from memory to set as a rich backdrop to my CYOA books.
The first thing I’ve done is research everything I can get my hands on for writing and designing a CYOA adventure books, surprisingly this is still a somewhat popular genre, but not too many good resource our at there to guide you. Most are geared towards computer game programming or selling a finished product already on the market. However, I did happen to come across a fellow GoodReads author who had some of the best information on writing your own CYOA I’ve found yet. If you’re like me and this is something you’d like to do as well, I highly recommend Karen Woodward‘s How To Write A Create Your Own Adventure Story. In the coming days, I’ll be blogging more about my process in how I came to create this wonder knows as the Choose Your Own Adventure book.
