Young Writers Society

After getting back into the Goosebumps series (by R.L. Stein, my FAVORITE writer in fifth grade), I had the crazy idea to write a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

I know it's a lofty venture, and it's going to take a lot of planning with the different actions that the reader gets to take and the consequences that they bring. However, I've never been a "planner": the most I've ever planned was NaNoWriMo 2007, and even then, it was just writing down weird things in my dreams so I would remember them and possibly use them later.

If anyone has any planning tips for me, that'd be great. I'm hoping to write this thing for NaNoWriMo 2008 (because honestly, has anyone ever heard of a Choose-Your-Own-NaNo?)

kf

You're right, this is a very lofty venture. But where's the fun if it wasn't? Ironically enough, though, I did a similar thing last year in my school's brand new Algebra 2 textbook. You know how sometimes you open a textbook and it says turn to page so and so, then you turn and it's alsmot always a crude drawing of a penis? Well, that gave me an idea of doing the same thing, without the picture. Well anyways, in the course of a year that textbook was a choose-your-own-adventure, erm, thingie hopefully there to entertain years and years of bored writers in Algebra class. However, I forget why I was telling you this... it had a purpose. Oh well...

My tip is this. Or, in actuality, my two tips are these:

1. Do one story timeline at a time, unless necessary. As in, follow one complete path/course before starting another. This helps in not getting confused.

2. Do the ending first. Do the ending, maybe a levels before the ending and THEN start from the beginning. That helps in keeping your goals in mind.

Hope I helped.

No planning tips, because I suck at that as well, BUT --

Good sir, I have the perfect tool for you: Game Book Player. It has a bunch of features for role-playing type books, too (Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf), but you can just bypass that stuff.

Great minds think alike, I guess: I loved Goosebumps too, and a couple months ago I was working on a CYOA story -- progress has stopped for the time being, but it's an interesting endeavor. I'd recommend you go to the library and check out a bunch of the old Choose Your Own Adventure books and the Give Yourself Goosebumps variant (though I'm assuming the latter are what prompted this?). It's a good way to sync yourself into second-person narration (at least, I'm assuming you're using second-person), and you can see what works and what doesn't.

Good luck!

Pork