I’ve been thinking for a bit about writing and what to do with writing. When I look for jobs that involve writing, after I’ve weeded out the technical writing, teaching English writing, writing for tests, and SEO writing, a lot of the remaining writing jobs are gaming related. (There’s nothing wrong with those jobs per se except SEO writing which I did work in and didn’t like, just not what I’m skilled in or want to do.) The thing with all the gaming jobs is that every one of them wanted you to have experience. Even the entry level jobs ask you to have had experience on gaming blogs.
Well, I don’t have experience on gaming blogs and I don’t want to; it feels too much like the SEO experience I had where the focus is grinding out information without regard to what you actually want to write. And that’s not actually writing for a game, it’s writing about one. It’s not the craft, it feels more like regurgitation. And not compensated well for that either, generally. But I wanted to see if I could or would be interesting in writing in a game. And I had a thought that, basically, a choose-your-own adventure book is similar to writing out a small game. In fact, there are a lot of interactive story apps that are popular right now. And I thought, why not try my hand at it? So the first step was tearing apart a choose your own adventure story.
First things first, yes, I could probably look up some instructions. But what’s the fun of that? So we’re making up our own rules at first. Then I’ll look up the way it should have worked and why it would’ve been easier that way. This seems logical. Second things next, no, I didn’t tear apart the library’s choose your own adventure books. That would in fact be illogical. What I did is go through and find all the endings.
After that, I followed all the possible paths in the books. Before I post that, I have a confession; I messed up by a page on one of them so it’s a little messed up.
So on the above webs and charts, the ones circled in blue are endings that are not only good (you’re not dead) but also finish a quest happily. For the Eighth Grade Witch, you defeat the witch! Or become demon hunters! For the Into the Jungle, you find the guy you’re looking for and manage to get the magic item away from the bad guys! But you’ll notice they’re few and far between. In a LOT of them… you die. There’s a whole branch in the Into the Jungle where one of your innocent guards gets sacrificed to turn you into a zombie which is unpleasant. The Eighth Grade Witch is even more gruesome (or maybe that’s partly because it’s a graphic novel). You can get turned into a ghost or a lizard or a bug, eaten by spiders, winked at by zombies… It’s not pleasant.
I also noticed the Eighth Grade Witch web is more complex. Pages and narratives can interweave. The Endless Quest book is pretty straightforward. Choices don’t branch, each choice changes the ending you’ll get. So there are only 23 paths for the 23 endings. On the other hand, the Choose Your Own Adventure 8th Grade Witch track certainly has more paths to its 28 endings. Granted, one of those is you having a dream, getting to choose one of 3 doors, and all of the choices lead back to the same “waking up” page.
Those were interesting things to discover. I did find several endings that were just… not satisfying. You didn’t discover anything. The quest didn’t go anywhere. For one thing, there’s a whole branch in Into the Jungle that ends within 3 choices of the start with you abandoning the quest to go bet on dinosaur races. On the other hand, I doubt anyone reads these books to get only one path through.
What does this mean for me writing my own? It means I get dangerous ideas, that’s what it means. Could I make this into a whole adventure on my website? Could I draw little icons that hyperlink in each post to a new page that continues the story? Well, I’d need to learn more about how to go through WordPress but that’s a thing I need to learn anyway…. Could I make it where there aren’t as many disappointing endings? There’s also the problem that sometimes you make what you think is a good choice and the book says “LOL this is a horror story. NOPE you’re dead.” So is it possible and okay to make the choices seem more indicative of what’s coming? How long can I make it? How can I interweave it?
My final analysis is yes, this would be fun. Yes, I want to do it. This is not a blog-post project. But look out for it coming up in the future.
Intellectual Property of Elizabeth Doman
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