Choose Your Own Adventure: How to create your own interactive story
Choose-your-own-adventure books have fascinated generations of readers by turning paper and ink into an interactive experience.
Today, this format continues to thrive alongside board games and role-playing games. The best part? Writing your own adventure story has never been more accessible—especially with the right tools.
With Tome, our storytelling software, you can easily structure your narrative. Ready to create your own adventure? Let’s dive in.
What is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Book?
A choose-your-own-adventure book is a story divided into numbered paragraphs. At the end of each section, the reader must make a choice. For example:
- “If you enter the cave, turn to page 56.”
- “If you choose to avoid the cave, turn to page 87.”
Each choice determines the direction—and sometimes the ending—of the story. Multiple readers can go through the same book but end up on completely different paths.
Some adventure books incorporate mechanics inspired by tabletop RPGs, such as dice rolls, hit points, or items found along the way. These elements bring the experience closer to RPG-style interactive fiction.
3 essentials for building a great adventure
To write a compelling choose-your-own-adventure story, there are three key elements you’ll need to master:
Build a strong universe
Just like in traditional novels or tabletop RPGs, you’ll need to start by building a consistent, believable world—your lore. This will serve as the foundation for the story’s branching paths and help maintain internal consistency.
Include key elements like social rules, main locations, major characters, and the other details that will bring your world to life. Building out your lore also helps avoid writer’s block—if you get stuck, you can always refer to your worldbuilding for inspiration.
We recommend using Lore, our worldbuilding software, to keep everything organized. It helps you manage locations, characters, factions, and even maps to chart the hero’s journey.
Create meaningful choices
Your reader needs to face important decisions that influence both the story and the hero’s progression. Not every choice has to be life-or-death—but each one should shape the character’s journey in some way.
Don’t hesitate to include frustrating or dead-end paths. These force the reader to backtrack, reinforcing the idea that every choice matters and drawing them deeper into the world.
Write an immersive narrative
To help the reader feel like the true hero of the story, your writing needs to immerse them in the action. A strong opening scene is essential.
Set the tone right away with a mystery or clear goal—this becomes the main quest that drives the adventure. Vary the characters the hero encounters, shift the atmosphere of different scenes, and introduce dilemmas that test the reader’s judgment.
How to write your own adventure book?
To begin writing your interactive story, follow this 3-step process. Of course, writing is rarely linear—you’ll revisit and revise many parts as your narrative evolves.
Define the main plot
Start with a solid core storyline that will serve as your narrative anchor. Even if there are many ways to reach the ending or endings, your readers should all follow a common thread throughout the story.
It’s perfectly fine to offer multiple endings and sinuous paths—but they should all relate to the same overarching quest.
And if you come up with too many ideas? Save a few for your next book!
Develop arcs, chapters, and scenes
A clear structure from the start makes it easier to connect the dots later—especially in a choose-your-own-adventure book, where planning ahead is essential.
Use Tome, our writing tool, to map out your story. Thanks to our tagging system, you can easily link scenes, paragraphs, and plot branches.
Once your structure is in place, you can start writing. With Tome, you can keep everything organized and quickly return to any section to make edits along the way.
Test your story
Now comes the fun part: testing your story. Try different paths and ensure each branch works logically and leads where it’s supposed to.
Ask friends or beta readers to test it as well—they’ll often spot small issues you might have missed and give you helpful feedback with a fresh perspective.
To make your writing process easier, we recommend using the Amsel Suite, which includes both Tome and Lore. These tools let you build your world and story with clarity—and come back anytime to update or improve your content.
Whether you’re just starting out or polishing your final draft, Amsel Suite helps turn your vision into a complete and interactive experience.
Writing a choose-your-own-adventure book means telling a story with a game-like twist. It’s about building a world that responds to readers’ choices—and letting them become heroes in their own right.
