Evaluation (6/2/2014)

I feel that through this module I have not only broadened my writing skills for a whole new area e.g. a Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) book but, I have also discovered numerous aspects within narrative and storytelling that will help me with my own writing in the future.

My understanding of characterisation and narrative structure has been greatly improved thanks to the research covered during the beginning of the academic year. This helped me to make my characters three dimensional by giving them unique personalities, opinions and ethnicities, in other words, not just making them ‘black’ or ‘white’.

For example, in my CYOA book I was able to include a hero (player), helpers (Jenkins, Daniels, old man Bean), dispatcher (Mayor Taro) and so on. I also feel that the choices I added to the book are fair, well explained and make sense in terms of what the player can do. Unlike my last CYOA book ‘Gold Lord’, which I wrote when I was in my early teens, which was full of cheap deaths and no win situations.

From choosing to do a CYOA book, instead of a text based adventure game, I was able to do exactly what I originally hoped to do. In other words, control the narrative more easily and thus provide the player with more information relevant to the story whereas a text based adventure would have been command input heavy and would contain few descriptions.  As a result of writing a CYOA I believe I was able to make the choices more impressive, impactful and descriptive.  

Another advantage to writing a CYOA, instead of a text adventure was that I didn’t have to worry about over complicated programing. Instead I just had to write and explain even more when it came to descriptions. I was more than happy to do this as I love to write and therefore being able to develop even the first act of a CYOA was a fantastic task and one I enjoyed immensely.

Using mind maps, my research on three act structures and reading other CYOA books I was able to figure out a perfect flow for the story I was writing that would make it exciting and tense, but would also slow it down when necessary. I think like other mediums getting the pace of the action right helps to prevent things from becoming stale. For example, one of my play testers loved the juxtaposition between a fast paced chase at the start of the book and the slowed down, yet engaging conversation with the woman in red.

I also heard that the game play felt exciting and fresh, therefore knowing that I was able to make a fun to play game within my CYOA using mind maps is a great feeling that I only hope I can improve on in the future.    

However, if I could do this task again then I would look into the printing procedure earlier as I wanted to make the book look professional, not just the simple (yet still effective) binder I ended up with. Therefore, despite me being happy with my overall physical accomplishment, I will try and plan my schedule better as leaving it to February (the deadline) was a mistake I should have foreseen. Saying this, I have a student budget which wouldn’t have run to an expensive print job involving more than one copy.

Another thing I would do is draw the artwork for the book alongside writing it as I did want to include large page spreads and sketches, but sadly ran out of time as I needed to get the document to the printers. Looking back, it wasn’t all that bad since I was still able to do a fantastic front cover which is meant to capture a potential reader’s interest anyway. Although, I wish I had described the eye as a different colour as I fear readers will compare it to the eye of Sauron from ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movies which was a genuine mistake. However, it is always said that writers take inspiration from other things even though they (the writers) appear unaware at the time. Perhaps, it is an inbuilt inter-textual link which isn’t always apparent until someone else points it out.  

However, I must admit that drawing (especially with upcoming deadline) isn’t my fondest activity. Therefore, I am glad I resorted to using Photoshop instead as I feel it looks better than what I had planned, due to my lack of perspective and ability to draw buildings effectively. However, I recognise the importance of imagery and therefore am glad I included a cover, even though it differs from what I originally intended.

Overall, I am incredibly pleased with my writing on ‘Home Base 2-7-1’ and my blogs and hope to transfer the skills and lessons I have learnt from this module into my future writing.

As for goals, I only hope that I am able to continue to improve my skills and maybe if I ever write another CYOA book I will try and create a game mechanic (e.g. dice) of some sort so as to push my creativity even further, even though I am still glad I didn’t for this assignment as I feel it would have slowed it down.

If I could I would have also liked to have included a page before each death since during my research stage I found that by including a page before the actual death you avoided players cheating by turning back to where they were and making another choice. However, I already forced myself to cut 2000 words from the original story and therefore, unless I could think of something interesting to happen before each death it would have only have come across as padding and left more empty pages. 

As for images that I feel are important to include for a visual reference, I would probably in future commission a friend of mine to do the task for me as I would want quality art to match the amount of hard work and energy I put into my writing. 

Finally, I am very keen to finish ‘Home Base 2-7-1’ in the near future as I spent so long working out the details and where it would go that I wished I could have written the whole thing.  

(1056 words)

Harvard Referencing (3/2/2014)

Unable to get in due to bad weather and train line collapsing, I focused on completing my Harvard referencing, making sure both my evaluation and blog were perfectly ready to hand in.

Researching the possibilites of CYOA's (28/1/2014)

In an article in Jezebel 'Why Choosing Your Own Adventure Can Really Pay Off' (2009) by Doree Shafrir, Shannon Gilligan was interviewed about choose your own adventure books. She described how children in the past had loved to play these books as they allowed them to "try on other personalities. Then try on other roles." This is interesting, as she went on to say that often these CYOA's focused on children as the protagonists who were often young people themselves. However, she raised the fact that playing as a character in a CYOA is similar to creating an 'avatar' online, a different persona as it were that allows online users to take on new personalities.
She continued to say in her view that there is no definite way for writing a CYOA but, starting with a mind map, as I did is certainly the best way, since it allows the book and game play to be more structured.

I will admit however, that although I mapped my story initially, I ended up constantly adding to it as I always love to come up with new ideas and these often occur after I have planned. So I ended up writing rather like the other method Gilligan mentioned where writers would write the CYOA as it went along in order to make it feel organic. Gilligan explained that if she used this method she would always run out of pages. Although I never confined myself to a number of pages, I did however cut 2000 words from my final piece as I felt some of it was not entirely central to the plot. Therefore, despite her method being a good one in order to come up with a complete book within the page constants, I think that my method allowed me to be more creative and use good ideas I hadn't originally planned for.   
It's interesting she considered that an average CYOA is "between 100-110 manuscript pages", therefore my 37 pages of demo (excluding the front and back cover) make up nearly one third of an entire CYOA. This is a good thing, as my book is intended to be the first act made available as a demo before the final release.

In another article 'The Surprising Legacy of Choose Your Own Adventure Books' (2014), Patrick Wensink stated "I didn’t realize that the magic of Choose Your Own Adventure wasn’t the fantastic stories or the unique method of storytelling." (but rather) "The secret of the second person". This made me think, as I spent so much time focusing on my story and the characters that the reader interacts with, that I never thought of the player as a character. In this case they are neither the first or third person, thus they are the Wensink's 'second person' since they (the reader) are directly told what options they have and the consequences. Therefore, from including the reader within the experience you make them feel important and as a result want to find out what happens to themselves and the characters they meet and grow to like. This is something that ordinary books generally don't do as they either refer to the characters in the first or third person. 

I find all the above research fascinating as, although I did this research after writing my CYOA, I do in fact see what they were getting at. It could just be because I was the one to write 'Home Base 2-7-1', but I did feel just as immersed in the experience as those who will go about reading it for the first time.
Not to blow my own trumpet, but I believe this is because I concentrated on making an epic story with believable/living characters, not just lifeless drones who might tell you what to do next. It also helps that I was using my own personal experience from reading and writing CYOA books both as a child and more recently as an adult (see previous posts).

Within my CYOA I included numerous conversations between the characters. By doing this I feel that I was able to hint at the relationships the reader may have already had with the characters before the events in the book. As a result, I believe the reader will feel more inclined to react as the character would to a new and dangerous situation. Having choices that allow the player to decide what kind of person they want to be also helps the player to believe they are the character they are playing and as a result choose to do what would make sense for them. Thus making sense of Gilligan's believe that readers "try on other personalities. Then try on other roles."

Wensink's statement becomes especially true when you are faced with a simple moral dilemma e.g. whether or not to return a purse. By returning it you would gain nothing except perhaps a feeling of self worth as a result of having helped someone. Otherwise, by stealing the item you commit a crime, but receive something for your trouble despite possibly feeling bad about it later. It is these two 'paragon' and  'renegade' decisions that may lead to the same path, but will allow the reader the opportunity to role play. After all, what if the player was a security officer who stole it? They could consider themselves to be a bent cop. Whereas a mechanic who may only have a busy job with not many apparent benefits who chooses return the purse can achieve more than wealth by gaining pleasure from doing a good deed.

It's these little touches that we don't always think about and only realise after analysing a narrative that can add greatly to a reader's / player's experience, and one that I am glad I have discovered through this research and module.

Harvard Referencing:

• Shafrir, D (2009) Why Choosing Your Own Adventure Can Really Pay Off. Available at: http://jezebel.com/5342799/why-choosing-your-own-adventure-can-really-pay-off (Accessed: 28/1/2014).
• Wensink, P (2014) The Surprising Legacy Of Choose Your Own Adventure Books. Available at: http://www.theweeklings.com/pwensink/2014/01/15/the-surprising-legacy-of-choose-your-own-adventure-books/ (Accessed: 28/1/2014).

Page images (26/1/2014)

* Realising that I still had concept art that I hadn't posted yet, I have decided to include them now.

Below are some of the original designs I had for the spread pages in the book (fig 1) that were meant to capture the most exciting moments. I then decided against the concept for reasons explained before.
You can also see a couple of possible sketches (fig 2) that would have filled in the blank parts of some pages and kept the underwater feel thanks to the sea life and subs.

Fig 1

Fig 2

From posting the above I then remembered to work on the possible covers for the book as I remembered those are needed to grab the audience's attention. I decided at this point that I wanted the images to show the small one man sub in comparison to the large scale of the underwater city in ruins. 

Although I had come up with some good concepts, I felt that because my weakest drawing area was environments and perspective, that using an environment on the cover would look less professional and off putting.

Therefore, taking my family's suggestion that they thought the image of a giant fish eye on the cover would be awesome (as they felt this was a good tense scene), I decided to experiment with this concept for an hour or so. Using gradients and brightly coloured (but low opacity) brushes, I was able to create a great atmospheric image with a glowing eye. Thanks to the fish, seaweed and bubbles I was also able to suggest the size of the monster's eye and some perspective which helps make it clearer that the eye is behind a giant crack in the wall.  

Overall, I am very pleased with the above fish eye cover as only those who read the book will understand what it is, whilst at the same time it's a rather mysterious cover that grabs any potential reader's interest without giving away too much.

Play tester feedback (28/1/2014)

* Having finally spell checked my work and rearranged it to look more like a CYOA. I decided to send it off for play testing in order to make sure my game was completely up to standard before handing it in.

You can see the feedback I got below...

• Loved the starting chase scene as it was tense enough as well as the atmospheric conversation with the woman in red that made a good juxtaposition as opposed to the other scene mentioned.
• Spotted the odd spelling mistake and sentence structure that I then fixed. 
• Replaced the odd word that would fit better depending on the scene, for example. I changed 'early' to 'ahead of schedule' as it seems to fit in when writing about someone going on shift.
• One play tester was a bit confused about the scientist and thought they should be a doctor due to the scene with the pregnant lady. However, I reminded them that in this world scientists are considered both medical and scientific as the poster in the class room tells the player they will learn brand new sciences including marine biology and chemistry.
• Noticed at some points that I had 'go ahead' or 'go back' to certain pages when in fact it was the opposite, thus I changed this. This is very important in a book like this.
• Another play tester was confused by the fact that they started in the present only to be sent back to the past, then to the scene before they got on board the sub in the first place. I admit that looking back at this it seems a bit odd since its so early in the game, however, I felt it was important to have an establishing scene for the fact that the world is underwater. Otherwise that may never have come across during the classroom. This scene also adds to the atmosphere of the book and allows the reader to imagine quite a strong image in their head from the start e.g. a ruined city underwater.
• Overall, the book functions as intended and all the decisions seem to go to the correct pages.   

Layout (26/1/2014)

* Having spent so long making the contents of the book I had actually forgotten to make a front and back page. Therefore, I decided to work on those today as seen below.

Overall, I am very pleased with them as I used a simplistic colour scheme and good text. Despite it having similarities to the font used in 'Bioshock', which I didn't want to link to in case people confused it since both are set in underwater cities. However, it was the only good text available and therefore despite the reasons stated I feel 'AR BONNIE' was a good choice.
I especially love the blue and black background as it looks very underwater esk. Despite the colours being the wrong way round since water should get darker the further down it is, I found that it didn't look as good and upset the balance of colours. Therefore, I decided to keep it in this manner. 

* I also decided during this point that I needed to make sure that I had a cover. Even if I didn't include whole pieces in my book (due to messing up page numbers and ruining the reader's imagery of characters) I still felt that the cover should have at least something. 

 
* Realising I hadn't looked online for a website that would print my book, or even how much it would cost me, I decided to look today on a couple of websites which seemed to suggest it wouldn't get dispatched in time. Therefore, I will check some local printing shops as soon as I can as I would love to make my hand in look as professional as possible.

Early blog analysis (27/1/2014)

* First speaking to my lecturer, I found out that everything he wanted to see I had practically already done on my blog. In fact, when he did get round to reading my blog he mentioned that despite needing a few more examples for the blogs posted early in the year, the actual work and process on my book was very good and that I didn't need to worry too much about it. Though I will make sure to obviously double check it before the final hand in.  

* I then spent the rest of the session checking over my blog and writing my evaluation in advance.