“FORKING PATHS” AS A SPATIAL AND COMMUNICATIVE MODEL IN INTERACTIVE CHILDREN’S LITERATURE (ON THE EXAMPLE OF THE “CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE” GAMEBOOKS)

Abstract

The “Choose Your Own Adventure” is an ongoing collection of children’s gamebooks published by Bantam Books, the first issues released in the late 1970s. The success of the series was ensured by the opportunity provided to readers through a sequence of decisions (a choice from a closed list) to influence the development of the plot, to complete and variably complete the story, to “join” the story as the main character. Readers also interact with the fictional spaces created within the narrative in a new way. They do not simply enter “pre-existing” spaces, but instead, they “complete” them, transforming them into dynamic, mutable forms that can be reassembled. Readers find themselves in two spatial dimensions simultaneously, immersed in both the “adventures” of the protagonist and the “adventure” of reading itself. The dual immersion allows navigation through multiple narrative paths, creating a reading experience akin to a game. This allows readers to replay events that have already occurred, rediscovering the fictional world they had previously explored. It is also important that the interactive story is presented in the form of a printed book (rather than in a digital fiction, for example) because the illusion of an “unlimited” selection of options confronts the reader with a more awareness of the finite nature of the “adventure” of reading. The number of possible choices, paths, and endings is inherently limited (as the volume of a book is finite), while the fictional worlds offered by the story are still open to completion and further development in the reader’s imagination.

Keywords: interactive fiction, narrative emotions, space shaping, metafictionality, gamebooks, metasuspense, suspense, reading experience