Choose your own adventures (CYOA)

Readers Beware...You choose the scare! Goosebumps CYOA

Growing up, I read the Goosebumps series by R.L Stine and particularly liked the 'Give Yourself Goosebumps' version which I could read in a non-linear way and choose my own ending. Essentially, the books would have a common starting narrative but the author gave options for the reader to make decisions and choose their route or actions in different junctures by flipping to different pages. The books got me excited to read and reread especially when I got to a dead end (when my characer dies or did not escape). I was also introduced to the older 'Choose Your Own Adventure' (CYOA) series which expanded the list of books which I sought to read. That probably got me started on my fiction reading habits when I was still a kid leading me to take up Literature later on in O and A levels. I must say that these types of books or texts have the potential to really excite and engage young learners as they get to be involved in the storyline.

The classic CYOA

In this blog post, I will set out to explain how teachers can set out to create their own choose-your-own-adventures (CYOA) stories digitally.

Step 1: Storyboarding

First, we will have to begin with storyboarding which would include a draft overview of how your story would flow. You can either make a copy of the template as seen here which is accessible using Google Drawings (one of the tools under G Suite's Google Drive). Alternatively, you can follow this video and make an A7 booklet with 8 pages by folding a single piece of A4 paper.

Why is this important?
It is important to plan out your story and ensure that the plot or storyline is coherent. For a start, we will limit to an 8 pages/slides storyboard where you can sketch and include texts describing how the story would pan out. The very 1st page, page 0 will be the title screen.

How do I start?
Maybe you can start with the end in mind or maybe not. Using the design thinking framework or understanding by design idea or your own way, figure out the lessons or learning points that you hope to include in your CYOA story. Then, think about how those messages could be made obvious through your story.

On page 1, write a short introduction to your story. This is the best time to set the context, introduce the character/characters and set the general mood of the story. End that first page with a dilemma or a simple yes-no question. Basically, the reader can then head to either page 2 or page 3 based on the option they choose.

So page 2 could also end with a question or decision to be made which would lead to pages 4 or 5 and page 3 would then end with choices that bring the readers to pages 6 or 7. Thus, pages 4, 5, 6 and 7 would include the conclusions of the story based on the readers' choices.

Step 2: Gather resources
In order to make the story appealing, various media files including images, videos or audio files would need to be sourced for. Ideally, sprites (a computer graphic which may be moved on-screen and otherwise manipulated as a single entity) or characters can be designed to give the reader a sense of role-playing. It is important to look out for relatively high resolution graphics as pixelated ones tends to be a major put-off for users. Be careful and look out for files that are tagged to be reused and ensure that there are no copyright issues as far as possible. Some artists or creators offer their resources or use as long as you credit them accordingly and most allow their artwork to be used as long as it is not for commercial purposes (e.g. educational purposes). Look out for 1280x720 px images  images which fit the 16:9 ratio (width to height) as it will be useful for the CYOA screens.

Step 3: Putting together everything
The last part is the tricky part. Use Google Slides to create your digital CYOA by putting together the texts and media files with the  appropriate hyperlinks to the correct pages as planned.

Do the final checks and vetting to make sure there are no errors and then you are ready to publish it to the Web. Only then can you share the CYOA text as a Google Slides presentation.

I have published and included a CYOA called 'The Might of Measurement' I created as part of the Google For Education certification preparations. I used it for my 1NT Maths students briefly and some of them were keen to know more about the next installment.

Make a copy of the slide and change accordingly by clicking here.

Do share the link to your CYOAs in the comments section. If there is enough interest, this CYOA could be the scaffold to come up with a more sophisticated CYOA using Visual Novel Engines like Ren'Py (or TyranoBuilder too). However for those platforms, I think the best way to share would be through face-to-face meetups sometime in the future. It is not so easy to guide using screenshots and texts like this Google Slides version of CYOA.