Choose Your Own Adventure Books for Adults

When my kids were young, they loved the Choose Your Own Adventure Books series. At the end of each chapter, the boys were faced with a decision, usually surrounding the main character. If you think the character should do this, go to page 56. If you think the character should do that, go to page 23. The book could be read over and over, taking different paths each time. Sometimes the ending would be the same, no matter what path the character took, and sometimes the endings would be different.

I've always thought that this would be a great concept for a series of adult books. After all, aren’t we constantly faced with choices? Do you sometimes wonder, what would have happened if I had gone to a different school? If I had inherited a lot of money? If I had shown the good sense to say no to that person? If I had driven down a different street? Rather than providing choices to these questions at the end of each chapter of an adult choose your own adventure, I propose providing choices at the end of each book. Imagine that a single book starts with a student graduating from high school. At the end of the book, that person might be faced with the following choices. Should I

• go to college?
• get married?
• go into the military?
• travel the world?

The reader would then have a choice of four books to read as a sequel. While the first book was written by Author One, the second book might be written by Author Two. The reader could choose to follow a single author through a whole string of books or the reader might choose to go back and read the path taken when a different choice was made.

This could get very complicated (and interesting) if plotted out ahead of time. Choosing several different paths may ultimately bring the main character to the same scenario later in his life or each path might come to a completely different conclusion.

Just think of all the choices we make in our lives as adults about

• education
• relationships
• children
• career paths
• travel
• other interests

The possibilities could go on and on.

I envision this as a well planned series, taken on by a publisher willing to find and coordinate the writers.

With the development of Internet technology, I could also see this as a more haphazard wiki-type of series. One person would write the first piece and pose the choices faced by the main character at the end. Next, writers in cyberspace could pick up on one of the choices provided and write a sequel, again providing a series of choices at the end of that segment. To add extra interest, a cyberspace writer would also have the option of suggesting and writing about a different choice than was suggested by the original author.