Hyperfiction: The New Choose Your Own Adventure

When I was a kid, some of my favorite books were from the Goosebumps series. Tales including ghouls and goblins, witches and monsters, and just generally creepy stuff that would leave my ten year old mind sleepless and in fear. But the best part of the Goosebumps series was the choose your own adventure. You know, flip to page 89 if you climb into your grandmother's attic OR flip to page 67 if you decide to go to the kitchen and eat a sandwich. The book could end in 15 minutes or two hours, depending on your choice. As a kid, where my biggest decision was how to spend recess, these books were a big deal, because I got a choice.

As I began the hyperfiction assignment, I became aware of a similar feeling I got when I read the choose your own adventure stories of my childhood. Yes, there is less guidance and more PG-13 action going on in the hyperfiction, but I was overwhelmed with a sense that I got to choose how the story happened, my random clicking of the text controlled how the story was told, and most importantly, I got to choose. In Charmin' Cleary, I found myself rushing through the reading just to get to the part where I got to choose where to click. And after each click, I often spent minutes trying to figure out why that section of texts was linked to the next, before I began speed reading through it to make my next choice.

Our love of choice, and clicking the mouse, has permeated the boundaries of our stories, our reading assignments, our web browing. Because having the choice of turning to the next page, or clicking the next link wasn't enough, we must choose from page 14 or page 144, or in Charmin' Cleary we must choose from the linked text in paragraph one or paragraph four. It as if our minds are saying, 'Ha! I might have to read what you wrote, but I am going to choose how I read it!'

How has this affected our generation? Will we one day take "choose your own adventure" to a real life level? Will R.L. Stine send me a text saying, reply with 9 to stay in college OR reply with 13 to buy a minivan and drive to Montana? The choice is ours.

Mentioning this assignment and post to my roommate, she went to her room and returned with this above book, Pretty Little Mistakes. A less spooky but more adult take on choose your own adventure, an hour later I have experienced three different endings and am currently choosing between going to page 462 and opening a hummingbird sanctuary OR going to page 459 and opening an orchid farm. My roommate is voting for the hummingbirds but I have always been a fan of orchids.