Choose Your Own Adventure Projects

Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children’s “game books” where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions and the plot’s outcome. The series was based on a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel’s and R.A. Montgomery’s Vermont Crossroads Press as the “Adventures of You” series, starting with Packard’s Sugarcane Island in 1976. Choose Your Own Adventure was one of the most popular children’s series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling over 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998. (information via Wikipedia.com)

This assignment, which I first attempted in the summer of 2011, required students to develop their own narrative structure, which could either be original or based on an existing story, such as a fairy tale, but each narrative required student utilization of their own unique writing voices. Students outlined their stories, then they were directed to align this narrative structure in an online, interactive fiction work utilizing simple hypertext links. For full directions regarding this assignment, click here. Student response to this project was largely positive, so may use the assignment again. Feel free to browse some student examples (linked with student permission) from my ENG 102 summer courses below!

Summer 2013

“The Road to Stardom: What a Life”
“A Good Kid M.A.A.D. City”
“Decisions”
“The Rose & The Busch”
“Run Away”
“You’ve Been Joked”

Fall 2012

“Event Horizon”
“The Story of the Rocker Siddhartha”
“The Devil’s Attic”
“The Apocalypse: A Tragic Tale of Love”
“Princess Sarah’s Adventure”
“Little Lonely Elijah”
“Adventures of Pooh”
“Romeo & Juliet of Modern Time”
“The Missing Cinderella”
“Carl’s Alien Encounter”
“Masquerade Ball”
“The Little Mermaid”