So You Wanna Write a Fan Fiction Gamebook?
Table of Contents
Page 2Introduction
Page 3Step 1 – Brainstorming
Page 4Step 2 – The Summery
Page 5-7Step 3 – The Materials
Page 8Step 4 – Writing
Page 9-10Step 5 – Trial Runs
Page 11Summarization
Page 12-22Number Sections
Bryan Matthew Olson
(Eternal Valor)
Introduction
This is the definitive guide to writing your own fan fiction gamebooks. Whether a fan of Lone Wolf or not I am sure that many of you have often considered writing your own versions of these books for either friends or for your own pleasure. As someone who has written four so far and is working on his fifth, I know that trying to start such a project is daunting and your endeavors may at first seem fruitless.
After completion of my first gamebook I developed a system that works very well. This system was produced with the intention of following along in the style with which Joe Dever wrote the Lone Wolf gamebook series. It is, in my opinion, probably fairly close to how he wrote the Lone Wolf series.
Included in this ‘how to’ guide are several materials to get you through writing your first fan fiction gamebook as well as the steps I take when writing my own. Take from this what you will and hopefully it will help you. Most of all please enjoy this tool.
Step 1 – Brainstorming
The first step in creating your gamebook effectively is to brainstorm. Before you have even written anything down or gathered any materials to start you should have some sort of idea of what will be contained in your fan fiction. Write these things down as you think of them. They are the key foundations to what your story will eventually become. Here are some things to think about before applying pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).
-How long will this gamebook be? You should be thinking in terms of not only the number of sections that will be contained but also the length of the sections that will be contained in. You should choose something that will be lengthy enough for your pleasure but will not drown you in your work. For your first project you might consider doing something smaller called a ‘mini-adventure’. This adventure would contain a small plot and cover only a short period of time. I would plan on probably 100-150 sections. The reason for doing this is that you don’t want to tackle a large venture until you feel comfortable with how the whole system works.
-Who is the main character? Is he going to have a set personality or a broad personality? Where does he come from? Who are his friends? How old is he? Is he even a ‘he’? What are his goals? Developing the main character is most important to any story.
-What is the setting? Is this in Magnamund or some other distant land? What season is it? What could an adventurer expect to find? These are important as you should have some details on setting early on. This makes it much easier for describing to the reader what they can see, touch, and smell around them once you begin writing.
-What is going to happen? A plot is needed. What is the purpose, quest, or goal of this book? Will your character be a young adventurer setting off into a forbidden land in search for riches? Will your character be a dashing hero, off to save a princess from the clutches of her even step-father? Is an evil warlock from a forgotten realm invading your peaceful homeland with an army of undead legions?
Step 2 – The Summery
The summery is simply a short story (approximately 2-10 pages) of what is going to happen in your adventure. Before you start writing beneath section 1 you should already know what is going to happen. This step takes all of the information that you gathered in section 1 and puts it into a story form. This summery will have several different paragraphs.
Paragraph 1 – Paragraph 1 should include all of the events that lead up to what is going to happen starting in section 1 of this gamebook. It should describe what is going on.
Paragraph 2 – Paragraph 2 is the introduction of the main character, also known simply as ‘you’. This ties in with the previous step.
Paragraph 3 – This should actually compose of several paragraphs. This section in your summery should describe exactly what will (and can) happen to your character as he ventures from Section 1 all the way to the final section. There should be parts in this section where there are several different paths that could lead him to the final stage.
Paragraph 4 – This paragraph should contain a note of what I call ‘the reward’. The reward may not always be an awesome item for the character to use in following books but must be a reward to the reader itself. This reward could, of course, be a special item for the character but it could also be something as simple as a well-written closure. Try to think in terms of, ‘is this reader going to be satisfied upon completing this?’ If it is one in a series there can always be cliffhangers but otherwise try and give your readers a satisfactory ending that leaves them with a feeling of accomplishment.
Step 3 – Materials
Now you need to begin gathering the materials that you will need in order to begin your work. For this guide I am going to assume that you will be writing your gamebook using a computer and Microsoft Word (or an equivalent word processor).
The first material that you need is a Layout. The layout of your gamebook could look something like this…
(Title)
(Rules)
(Sections)
Now comes writing up your sections. You should have this done long before you start writing up section 1. Now here’s a bonus. At the bottom of this guide is a list of sections containing 1 through 350. It is much easier to use than simply typing in your own. It takes a long time to do so.
Once you have your layout you need two different materials to help you in creating this gamebook.
First and foremost you need a Section Guide. The section guide is simply a tool that helps you see what sections you have already used without having to constantly scroll up and down. It also allows you to be able to effectively plan where your next sections will go so they do not end up being adjacent to each other. For example you do not want section 250 to have two options leading to sections 71 and 72. By having your sections spread out it helps your reader remember what section they are heading to when thumbing through pages (or scrolling) and also prevents ‘cheating’ by easily seeing the results of the two choices. Your section guide should exist of several columns. I usually write up the section guide on a page of notebook paper like this…
11121
21222
31323
414…
515…
616
717
818
919
1020
And so on and so forth. Starting with section 1 you begin to cross out section numbers as you use them up…
11121
21222
31323
414…
515…
616
717
818
919
1020
This tool also helps you see exactly how many sections you have left to be able to use. So as you get closer to finishing your book there will be less and less sections left to fill as most will have been scribbled out.
Finally you will need what I can a Story ‘Bubble’ Chart. This works along side your Section Guide in order to help you progress in your story by writing up the different sections. Starting with section 1 you make a chart using bubbles containing the section numbers. Lines connect sections that connect. X’s inside a section record the fact that the adventure ‘ends here’ and that no sections follow. It should look something like this…
This chart helps you for several reasons. It allows you to see, at a mere glance, exactly how linear your gamebook is. The farther your different options span away from each other the higher the replay ability will be for your specific gamebook. This is the backbone, the structure for your gamebook and the most essential tool you will have. It ensures that your gamebook has adequate choices with multiple ways to complete your story. It also ensures that you cannot easily lose track of what sections are still open and what storylines need to be continued.
Step 4 – Writing
Now you can finally start to write. This is one of the easier of the steps even though it certainly takes up the most amount of time. Use the tools that have been provided to you to make this step easier. Do not attempt to take upon too much in one day. I usually try to write no more than a total of ten sections per day. If you try to rush through a project such as this you will find that you are trading quality for a quick job.
As you write constantly refer back to your Story Bubble Chart. It is there for a reason: to help you. As you use up sections you can see exactly how your story is progressing from a simple glance at this chart. Using it along side the Section Guide you can see all the different ins and outs of your gamebook as you write. It really is hard to describe how well these three aspects work together. As you use them when writing you will see for yourself how much it helps.
When you are writing use a good work environment. Don’t work on a project such as this when you are tired, or at work, or where your attention will easily be distracted. It is much better to work for only a half an hour when you have some time to yourself where you can sit and think uninterrupted than for you to work for a five hour period where you must constantly stop what you are doing to tend to other matters. You may often find that you are struck with what is popularly known as ‘writer’s block’. This happens to everyone and is thorn in the side of every writer (even the great ones). All you can do is accept that you cannot currently write and do something else. Read a book, watch one of your favorite movies, do something else until your spark of imagination returns.
Step 5 – The Trial Runs
Now that you have filled every section and completed the story to your satisfaction you need to do several trial runs. Using the Lone Wolf style gamebooks for example I do several runs through in this order.
Run 1 – Punctuation
Starting at section 1 I go through every single section (not following the actual story but instead read section 1, then 2, and so on) to myself. What I am doing here is checking for spelling, punctuation, and grammar errors. The key to doing this is reading out loud. You may sound stupid to your family members but reading every word in your story out loud to yourself is the easiest way to catch grammatical errors.
Run 2 – Connection
Using the Story Bubble Chart should eliminate the problem of sections accidentally not connecting correctly. However, while writing it is not hard to accidentally write 331 instead of 231. If something like this occurs while you are reading through your gamebook first consult your Bubble Chart. You should be able to see where the problem is. If the problem is not solved by that you may have to scan through until you find the correct connecting section.
Also, while doing this make sure you keep an eye out for sections that may have been reversed. For example, text on section 21 allows the character to climb up or down a flight of stairs. To climb down, you must turn to 200. To climb up you must turn to 322. Somehow you could easily mix up the numbers so section 200 should actually contain the text of section 322 and vice versa.
Run 3-5 – Combat Difficulty
Game balance is important. This process includes three different runs. First create a character using highest possible stats. For example, in Lone Wolf, using a character with starting values of 19 Combat Skill and 29 Endurance. Run through the adventure, making sure that combat is not entirely too easy for your character. If the main character is rarely, if ever, receiving damage, than you may want to up the strength of the enemies the reader will come across.
Next run through it again, this time using a mid-level stat character (E.G. Lone Wolf with 14 Combat Skill and 24 Endurance). Combat for this character should be enough to make it difficult for the character to get through the story.
For your third run you make a character with the lowest possible stats (E.G. Lone Wolf with a Combat Skill of 10 and Endurance score of 20). Run through the adventure again. The adventure should be extremely difficult, warranting needing to run away or use skills and disciplines to get the main character out of difficult situations. However…it should NOT be impossible to make it through simply because a reader rolled lowest possible stats.
Run 6-? – Outside Influence
Have a friend run through the adventure. Better yet…have several friends run through the adventure. If you have someone who did not write the adventure they will be able to spot grammatical errors, story inconsistencies, and flaws in the writing that you might have missed. This also helps with determining the difficulty of the adventure. See how often they reach sections with ‘auto death’. While running your characters through you were able to avoid them because you knew where they were. If it is far too easy for a character to die while running through your adventure your friends will surely say so.
That is the final run. You are now ready for distribution!!!
Summarization
If you are seriously interested in committing your time and energy into writing a fan fiction gamebook I hope that this small guide will prove useful to you in your endeavor. If you have any questions or comments feel free to reach me any time at .
My most usefully piece of advice that I can give is this: your project should be fun. Only take on something such as this because it is what you want to do. And if it becomes stressful to complete your project feel free to set it aside for as long as you need to. Have fun, and good writing!
Bryan
Number Sections
Note: I have shrunk down the font as small as I could as at Font 12 these numbers take up 16 pages. Once you have moved them into your own document you can resize them.
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