Your post has gone unanswered for some while, and I challenged myself to find some sort of answer, even if it's apparently unhelpful.

First, it's not clear to me that there's much of a market for this kind of work. Given that it's delivered electronically, you'll have all the problems of getting paid and digital rights management--not insurmountable, but a challenge.

Since it's a small or emerging market, there's not likely to be much required reading for it. Either you're going to break some new ground and make a mint, or it's not taking off.

On story-telling, well, for that you're in the right place. If you search Hatrack for "books" or some such, you'll surely turn up discussions on books about writing. OSC, our host, has written several, and there is a link to his "Writing Lessons" right at the top of this page.

On storytelling for 'choose-your-own-adventure' that's gonna be real tough, I think, because you're going to have to write many, many decent stories for just one adventure--one story, or at least part of a story, for each choice you give your readers.

For example, if you give your readers one choice of two options near the start of the story, and each option gives a further two options, and each of those another two, that's eight alternative endings to the initial story. Most of us here at Hatrack have difficulty writing towards one satisfying ending, let alone eight--or more if you offer a richer range of options.

Best advice I can offer is this: If you want to write, learn how to write regular stories first, then circle back to the choose-your-own-adventure thing ... or, have you considered writing computer games?

One think I remember was that there were loads of ways to meet a sticky end. Not quite 100% of the time but certainly often, one of the choices you were given would lead to your demise.

There were usually a couple different endings that could be achieved in a number of different ways. The stories, despite giving the illusion of choice, were typically pretty linear. When you made a decision to do A instead of B you might go off course on to some tangential story twist but eventually you'd find your way back to the original story line.

I have no advice as to where you might find more information but I would recommend doing a little research as to whether there is even a market for the physical Choose-your-own-adventure books anymore. This might give you some hints as to whether you might find a receptive audience for your endeavor.

Cheers,

When you say you're formatting it with HTML, do you mean you intend to self-publish on a website? I would imagine that publishing houses which do CYOA stories would have their own preferences for physical manuscripts and HTML wouldn't be necessary.

I've poked around the internet a little since the other day, and beyond the actual Choose Your Own Adventure series, there's not a whole lot out there. Infocom did some interesting text-based adventure games (not the least of which was a collaboration with Douglas Adams on a game based on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and some other weird ones.

I'd probably end up rewriting the same story 50 or so times over, one for each separate branch, while trying to give each incarnation a slightly different yet still satisfactory story arc, and then spend an inordinate amount of time splicing them together and intertwining them around each other. It'll keep me occupied, if nothing else. I'll probably post a couple of them in short story form on Hatrack, just to make sure I'm staying on some sort of right track.

They're actually in the process of re-releasing the CYOA books. I'm not sure whether or not they're publishing any new ones or not, though. I was just going to post mine on a personal Angelfire site, or whatever turns out to be the most convenient. It'd just be for my own enjoyment. I do, however, want to be able to do it well. I kinda like my idea, and I can't think of any way I'd be worse off for pursuing it. If nothing else, it'll sure be plenty of practice. Thanks for the input!