How to Organize and Write a CYOA Story

Normally, when reading books, you read about a protagonist and their adventures, but there are a few books that put you, the reader, and your decisions in the plot making the story completely interactive with the audience.  Are you interested in learning more about these interactive stories? 

If you are, please continue reading. 

If not, push the back button and look for something else.

These interactive books are more often called Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA), but the alternative title is called Pick Your Own Path (PYOP), not to be confused with BYOB (Bring Your Own Beer).  In these stories there is a main plot, but the reader is allowed to choose which direction the story goes within a certain set of choices—if something is more important than the other, or if they want to run away, or if their curiosity wills them into an obviously dangerous path—which splits the story in several directions.  If you drew the plot path on a poster, you can imagine it resembling a tree or a complex web of some sort, and therein lays the difficulty of these stories: the planning, the details, the transition, and the execution.  All of these factors can prove difficult when writing your interactive story.

Let’s start with something easy, something you’re already familiar with, which is the writing itself.  With normal stories, they are usually written in past or present tense using first or third person.  Technically, you could also do this with interactive stories—write about a fully fleshed character and have the audience play god and dictate the character’s path, but it’s not the usual way of writing them.  CYOA is usually written in second person, which is highly unusual in fictional stories, especially long stories; however second person can be used effectively in short fiction, but it’s mostly used in non-fiction articles, essays or tutorials, like what you‘re reading right now.

You could also write the story in present or past tense; however using present tense is usually more effective for creating that urgency when choosing choices, especially if the choices are interrupting a fast-paced scene.  There are varying options you could do, but I would stick to the entire CYOA in second person present tense.  That may be just me, though, so if something else works for you, that’s great. 

I could talk more about second person and present and past tense, but I’ve already gotten into so much detail about it in another one of my guides (“You POVs” in The Mary-Sue Complaints Checklist), but I’ll just summarize the main point I would like to add.  In second person stories, ideally you wouldn’t have names, blanks, or parenthesis at all.  That means no “___,” “——,” “[Name],” “(Name),” “(ec, hc, hl)” or anything else that has to do with names or physical description.  You could get away with using a last name, or a nickname that has a story behind it and that doesn’t contain an obvious shortening of a longer name (Mike for Michael), but that’s it.  On the internet, however, and especially if you’re just starting out writing second person stories, using blanks and parenthesis is usually accepted by the audience because they do know that it‘s a hard style to write in (and let‘s face it, you‘re not getting paid to publish your stories on the internet).  Naming the reader is rare, and hardly accepted by most, but you are allowed to do so, just give a brief warning in an author note or something and make sure to choose a common and neutral name.  Choosing an exotic name not only places too much of an identity on the role, but it also tends to push the readers away.  An exception to the “exotic” name is if the setting is in a completely different universe in which every single name is made up, and in which you also made up your readers’ role’s name.  In either case, if you have to revert to names, parenthesis or blanks, try your best to keep it at a minimum.  It’s hard to avoid it if you are introducing yourself or if you’re being introduced, but the rest of the time, the name, blank and parenthesis situation can be avoided, or skirted around.