Genre of the week: Choose your own adventure

These books entertained me so much as a kid. I remember completely memorizing every option of a couple of them so I could see where my friends would end up during long bus rides. I'm not sure why I was so absorbed into them. Well, probably because you actually decided how the story continued, so you felt like you were really there. It's a type of story I've considered writing in before, and almost did, but more exciting ideas popped into my mind before I started.

What about you guys?

I haven't read a book like this, I've actually only seen it in fiction areas on forums. I absolutely loved Cutlerine's creation here and would love to do a CYOA fic of my own too.

It's sort of like roleplaying, only you don't get to decide for yourself what you character does. Instead everyone else decides and your role is to do the best from their commands :)

I too haven't really read any published CYOA, but I read a couple ones from Cutlerine's and they're pretty cool. I have considered trying that out, but probably under a program like Twine as I don't think I'll write fast enough if I were to do it on the fly like Cutlerine did.

If visual novels can count as a choose your own adventure, then those I tried and like them. I mentioned my thoughts on them in the visual novel thread.

The CYOA books that I read were all Nintendo books, based on Mario and the Legend of Zelda. There would be times when I wouldn't even pick choices at the end of the chapters. I'd just read through the book cover-to-cover because I've already picked every option.

I read quite a lot of the originals and the Goosebumps ones

But I'm curious as to how one would pull it off on a forum

The only "choose your own adventure" novels I read as a kid were the Animorphs ones (called the Alternamorphs books). I liked the idea of being an Animorph, but the books themselves didn't really do much for me. Also, my choice resulting in being stuck in a fly morph and left to die kinda pissed me off.

It would be interesting to write one - I played around with Twine a bit, and there's a lot to keep track of and consider. Definitely a challenge.

~Psychic

They were always fun to look through if I happened to find them in a classroom.

I actually did own two such books when I was younger, though! One of them was some Nintendo adventure book, and I don't remember the plot at all (a google search tells me the title though, Koopa Capers), but I do remember loving reading that book way back when, to the point of trying to sneak in some reading at school. The other was some book about dragons. Planet of the Dragons. I don't even know if I finished that one, I mostly picked it up when I was still at the height of my "must only get books with dragons in them" phase.

I feel like I also might have just abandoned the "adventure" part of the books at times and just read them like normal, haha. Maybe not cover to cover, but I was definitely interested in seeing what other choices were actually available. Especially after hitting a "whoops game over" page. ;P It's like "-flip page- man, this page is so much more interesting."

I don't think I've ever considered writing my own before, though. Huh.

I loved this books. They're definitely what has thrown me into everything that has "Role Playing" in it. Be they video games or pen and paper. =)
I remember going to both the school's and the town's libraries only to borrow the whole lot of them and read them all night long. My mother would be very angry because I didn't have a flashlight so I used the digital clock stuck onto the page and scrolled down....

Now I am nearsighted ! =D

I remember reading Superbike when I was younger. If I recall correctly I found it quite entertaining. It's got a dash of science fiction in it and dude, it's a flying bike.