3. Choose your
own adventure

One of the things I really like about the early stages of writing a story is wondering about all the possible things that could happen. But one of the things I really don’t like about writing is having to make a decision about which one of those things to choose. That’s why I love writing in the ‘Choose your own adventure’ format—because you can dream up lots of possibilities and have fun exploring them all.

‘Cake of Doom’ in Just Disgusting! was the first choose-your-own story I wrote. The challenge is you have to bake a cake for your mother without getting killed in one of 11 (admittedly highly unlikely) cake-baking accidents.

Writing this story as a ‘Choose your own adventure’ allowed me to explore the many possible (as well as highly improbable) accidents you could have while trying to bake a cake.

See if you can match the cause of each of the following cake-baking accidents with the fatal results on page 32.

Answers: 1B, 2F, 3D, 4A, 5E, 6C

TRY THIS

What happens next?

Choose one of the following scenarios (or invent one of your own) and come up with six different possibilities for what might happen next—the more entertaining and outlandish the better.

1. You’re cooking pancakes. You flip one and it flies out of the window … (Where does the pancake go? What trouble might it cause?)

2. You’re out riding your bike. You hit a banana skin and skid out of control …

3. You are babysitting your very naughty five-year-old cousin. It’s going pretty well until you turn around and see …

4. You’re just going to sleep and you notice a spider walking across the ceiling towards you …

Note: The main point of the exercise is to practise generating lots of options for your stories. But if you’re really inspired, why not use your favourite scenario—and imagined possibilities—as the starting point for a longer story (either choose-your-own style or traditional).

… OR THIS

Twelve doors

Imagine that you are standing in front of twelve doors. Behind one there is a fabulous treasure. Behind the others are eleven of the most dangerous things in the world. Draw or describe what lies behind each one.