THE AUTHOR
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Having just survived writing a speculative crime novel that lets readers choose what happens at certain points in the story, when CrimReads asked me to write an essay about the experience in the same format, I felt:
Terror
Excitement
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TERROR
It’s hard enough writing a book. But writing one in which there are multiple versions of the main character’s story, all of which make sense and, more importantly, all of which feel equally true, was a whole other story. What if I bit off more than I could chew? What if readers thought my book was too weird? What if I failed? Writing the manuscript really was like a microcosm of life.
And that’s the thing, both in writing and in life: one of the best parts is being able to make choices about what’s most important, because that’s how you define yourself as “you”—and one of the hardest parts is having to make choices about what’s most important, because you might get it wrong. And if you do, how do you live with that?
Nostalgia
No good option
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NOSTALGIA
Many of us know children Choose your own adventure series of books from our childhood, in which you start as a blank canvas and are immediately launched into an incredibly fun adventure in space, on the high seas or deep in a jungle.
Why did we love this series so much as kids? Why did those paperbacks transport us to other places for entire afternoons? My own theory is that choice is exciting for kids because at that age, you almost never get to make it. Most of your life is dictated by your parents or teachers, so any opportunity to exercise some autonomy, no matter how small, is exciting. If you wear a blue shirt to bed, will aliens invade Earth? If you eat granola instead of chocolate puffs, will a portal open in your basement?
But when you're an adult, the game changes. You now have a complete too much A choice that doesn't lead to aliens or scuba diving for lost treasure in the Bermuda Triangle. The responsibilities can be so heavy that we might almost wish that sometimes the pressure of choice could be taken away from us again for a brief moment.
And then it was.
You can only access “No good options”
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NO GOOD OPTION
In January 2020, my life was upside down. I was living in a city that didn't feel like home, missing New York, deeply stuck on the final draft of my previous novel, The cartographers (which was one of the hardest revisions I've ever done) and I had to deal with some serious family issues. And then, well… we all know what happened.
Overnight, the world went from a mad rush to a complete standstill. And during this forced pause, it was hard for us not to look inward and take stock of our lives, including mine. Was I happy? Had I made the right choices? Should I give up and try to start over? Should I just stand outside in the grass for five minutes and then chat with a friend on Zoom over a glass of wine? I kept thinking that if only there was some kind of magic reset button, I’d probably be able to do much better the second time around.
I waited, I climbed the four walls of my house and I waited some more, but I couldn’t stop thinking about this dream of a magic reset button and all the ways it could be used. In my brainstorming notebook, the sparkling kernel of a new idea slowly began to germinate.
And that's how I ended up writing a novel that contained multiple paths.
And if?
Traditions
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AND IF?
All this and more is a roller coaster that sits somewhere between a mystery and a thriller, with a healthy dose of science fiction and a touch of romance.
We’ve all had to make tough choices or face regrets about things we wish had happened differently. But what if you could actually go back and fix your past mistakes? How would that change your life? And would it be worth giving up all of it?
That's exactly what happens to Marsh, a woman full of regrets who wins a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become a contestant on the mysterious game show “All This and More,” which has swept the world by storm with its miraculous promise: If you're willing to accept the consequences that come with falsifying your past, the show will end. literally change your present life.
Marsh readily agrees, but rewriting her past choices is never that easy. When problems begin to appear in her perfectly designed future and she uncovers evidence that someone or something may be trying to manipulate her fate at the same time, Marsh must decide how far she will go to get her elusive happily ever after.
But it doesn't stop there. I really wanted readers to not only be able to read a novel about someone in Marsh's miraculous situation, but also to experience firsthand what they would change in their own past if they could, and consider what those changes might cost them. All this and more can be read cover to cover like a typical novel, but at certain points in the text, the book will give you the chance to help Marsh choose what she changes in her life – and you can decide whether to continue reading her story as it is presented or change paths.
Traditions
The reader
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EXCITEMENT
Do you remember the joy you felt when you received a new book at the library or bookstore as a child? A whole new adventure awaited you and you probably delved into the first few pages of the book in the car or on the bus before you even got home. This is what I experienced as a writer. Writing a novel is a very, very long process and even on the best days, the end of your manuscript seems very far away.
It was an incredible challenge to build a premise that could support multiple versions of the same story, weave them together into an organized web, and then allow you to jump from one thread to the next without getting lost. It kept me feverishly returning to the keyboard day after day, eager to push myself, the book—and maybe you—to its limits.
Yes, interactive fiction can ask a bit more of its readers than a conventional book, but it’s worth it. They’re really able to engage you in their story in a way that many other books can’t, and finding your way through it offers the same kind of pleasure as putting together a puzzle or solving a riddle. But in the case of my novel, there’s also the very meta aspect of having to make decisions for a character who’s been given the power to explore what her life would have been like if she’d made different choices. By choosing yourself, you’re making a statement about what matters to you, both as a reader and as a person. And that’s exactly what All this and more is about.
Nostalgia
No good option
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TRADITIONS
All this and more is not the first of its kind aimed at adults. One of the first multiple-path novels is that of 1930 Consider the consequences by Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins, which allows readers to make decisions about the love life of a woman being courted by two suitors, and offers a staggering forty-three possible conclusions. There is also Hopscotch by Julio Cortázar (published in 1963, translated into English in 1966), which allows the reader to move freely from one section to another at will; Neil Patrick Harris Choose Your Own Autobiography; Carmen Maria Machado's Absolutely Chilling Chapter About Being Trapped in an Abusive Relationship in Her Memoir In the dream house; the fantastic, the continent and time The crossings by Alex Landragin; and many others.
Many of our most modern forms of storytelling have also adopted this branching path aspect. On television, the recent Bandersnatch allowed viewers to push the troubled young man at the heart of a dark and surreal mystery to his limits, and video games have been asking players to make decisions for their characters and shape their destinies for years.
No matter your age, there is a whole world out there filled with deep, complex stories that ask you to go beyond passive reading, to more actively participate in the tale you enjoy.
And if?
The reader
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THE READER
Congratulations! You've made it to the end. You've just finished reading an essay that has helped you grow in multiple ways. I hope you're left feeling entertained, intrigued, or even hungry for more, but I'll leave that up to you to decide.
Through their stories, all books try to ask you a question. But a book that asks you to make choices to get to the end doesn't just ask its question, it actually implores you to answer it.
Now the only question left is: what will you read next?
All this and more
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