It's fun to write
your own adventure.

When you start to write your own adventure, you will realize that every piece of writing that you will ever read or have ever read is an adventure. You may not realize that even though there may not be any magic or mystery, fantasy or science fiction present in the story, you are embarking on an adventure of creativity, faith, and imagination to come up with the plot, conflicts, characters, and other essential additions for your tale.

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However, let's look at the idea of beginning to write your own adventure story in terms of making choices. There have been books around for years that allow readers to choose their own adventure. You might find yourself engaged in a book that has you traveling through a narrow passageway, and when you get to the end of it, you have to decide whether to go left or right. That decision may be monumental in the saving of another character's life, or some other essential plot point. Then, the author of the "choose your own adventure" tale gives you the option of going left or right. If you choose left, you might turn to page 92, and if you choose right, you may turn to page 103. Whatever page you turn to, based on the author's instructions to you as the reader, you will have chosen your own adventure, and made your own choice of how you want the plot to develop. The author has been kind enough to write continuing plotlines for both choices so that all readers can find closure for their individual choices of how to continue their reading.

A great activity to try when you are attempting to write your own adventure is to write in such a way that you give yourself choices. As a writer, you are obviously always thinking of new and interesting plots, conflicts, characterizations, etc. that stimulate you, and therefore, you feel they will stimulate your readers.

Create your own adventure story by considering all possible choices and coming up with plotlines for them. Write notes, or even full-blown paragraphs, that embrace different plot choices. See which one works best. You can always use the other choice later if you find that another choice you make later on in the plot is more deserving of it.

This can also be a great group writing activity. One person can begin writing a story. After a certain amount of time (five to ten minutes is probably enough), that person should write down a choice that the next writer will have to make as they progress in the story. Then, the story is passed to the left or right (whichever you prefer), time elapses as before, and this second person has to write down a choice for the next writer. By the time the writing gets back around to the preliminary author, they can see how different choices led to different results. The writer may realize that they might not have completed the story in a similar way to another writer, but the decisions brought the story full circle, to a conclusion.

When you write choose your own adventure stories, you connect with ideas that might not have ever entered your mindset. You begin to see possibilities and strengths within your writing that always seemed nonexistent until you began considering and contemplating. This activity, as you see, can lend itself quite well to a "what if?" exercise. Take some of the following ideas and consider any and all options that exist for which way the story may go depending on the choice made:

If a boy in your story chooses one girl over another, what might have been the result if he had made the opposite choice?

The doorknob is beginning to turn, and the door is starting to open. Do you stay put and wait to see who it is, or do you run and hide?

A mother tells her five-year-old son, "If you don't turn off the TV immediately, Santa won't be stopping by to drop off your gifts." Does the little boy turn off the TV and go to bed right away, or does he wait and see what will happen come morning when the gifts are normally under the tree?

Think about your everyday choices and what would have happened if you had made the opposite choice instead of what you ended up deciding. Would the results have been the same? Quite different? Disastrous? More exciting? Write your own adventure that leads up to the thrilling climax of what happened and how it came to pass. It all comes back to noticing what is around you, not taking anything for granted, and acknowledging all the different possibilities that exist for you within your writing.

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