An Amazing Book Concept
A choose your own adventure style of horror fiction novel which sets you as its protagonist, making for an amazing book concept.
While going through my dad’s book stash, I happened to find a shiny purple covered one called ‘Night In Werewolf Woods’ by R.L. Stine, which happens to be the fifth iteration from the very famous Goosebumps' 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series. You might fail to notice that title the first time you take a look at the book because the pictures of wolfs and bold captions like ‘Choose From Over 20 Different Scary Endings’ and ‘Reader Beware…You Choose The Scare!’ on the shining purple cover are sure to attract all your attention.
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| 'Nights In Werewolf Woods'. The Book Itself. |
Most of you must have read, seen or at least heard about the ‘Goosebumps’ books. They are horror fiction stories written for young kids. The writing style is basically aimed for kids between the age range of 5-10. But despite knowing that, I decided to read this book anyways because I wasn't preoccupied with any other reading material at that moment.
Two Amazing Book Concepts
Right from page number one, each page contained a footer specifying what page to turn to next and a few pages later, I even had a choice where I choose what the protagonist decides to do next and according to the choice I make, the footer directs me to the next page to be read. I was mind-blown at that very instant by this amazing book concept because I had never seen such a concept ever in which multiple stories are present in the same novel in such a way that I choose the next twist in the story, the protagonist’s next choice and the next page to read.
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| Notice the Footer section giving two choices to the reader on how he wants to continue the plot. |
I was so amazed by the concept that I had failed to pay attention to the plot in the first few pages and understand the characters. So although I was done reading four pages, I decided to start afresh from page one again. And I noticed something unusual again. The book was written in such a way that the reader, that is me, became the protagonist. I don’t know whether it is called the first person perspective or second person perspective but what I mean to say is that I became the central character in the book and everything in the story started revolving around me. Now, combine the two and what an amazing book concept is that!
The Disappointment
Being excited, I started reading the book at that moment itself and not having a pencil with me to keep track of the page number/plot twist choices; I decided to pick the first choice on every page. The first disappointing fact was that, despite of the amazing concept of the book, the writing style bored me already. It was suitable for a five year old kid that it was designed for but pretty boring for an adult. Secondly, my choices finally led me to a page in which, the protagonist chooses to go to a dark valley and he gets lost or dies or something similar, I can’t recollect exactly which one, but that choice of storyline, ends my story there itself with a bold ‘The End’ below the text. Now why this disappointed me is because it meant that, most of the ‘wrong’ storyline choices would not have a climatic ending. I assumed that all the twenty stories would have a different, suspenseful and climatic ending, but seems like that wasn’t the case.
P.S. For Budding Writers
After my first ‘wrong’ choice of storyline ended with a not-so-good end to that storyline, I didn’t read the book anymore and it has been lying untouched since months now and I guess that’s primarily because the writing style is way too simple to hold my attention or to make me want to pickup the book again. But that still doesn’t change what an amazing book concept it was. Although what I am going to suggest is highly difficult and almost bordering impossible, I have some food for thought for the aspiring writers. So writers, can you put multiple plots or endings in a single story in such a way that just by changing the order of few chapters or few sets of pages of the original story, the reader can experience multiple climatic endings for the same original story?