Choose You Own Adventure

Was anyone else addicted to these as a child? These were the books where you’d read a few pages, and then be presented with a choice…

If you want to go through the door on the left, turn to page 102.
For the door on the right, turn to page 88.

There were usually about a hundred different outcomes. Most were endings where your character died, but maybe ten combinations in each book would result in your character winning to various degrees. The upshot was that you could read the same book over and over and get new stories.

I found my first one by chance in a Lionel Playworld in North Miami. They were dirt cheap—maybe two dollars—and for one glorious summer, my allowance was enough to gorge on them. I probably bought forty or fifty of them.

Looking back I think my roots in writing fiction came from this build-a-plot period of reading. I started to get hooked on making my character make awful decisions. I would argue with myself until I could find a rationalization for them to walk through the door marked with a huge red skull and crossbones. I’d give them character flaws to drive their actions, just to see what I could come up with.

And, just like that, a love of reading because a passion for creating the story.