Friday 23 March 2012

How to write an adventure gamebook

The distilled wisdom of two decades of writing adventure gamebooks presented in four easy to digest chunks.

Part 1 - The Idea
On Monday I start writing my fifteenth adventure gamebook. And I can't wait to get started!

If you're a fan of adventure gamebooks, you might like to read my piece on Fighting Fantasy's 30th in the new SFX Special.

6 comments:

Tom said...

Hi! Could you tell us which game system is it going to be for? Fighting Fantasy, Gamebook Adventures, something else?

Jonathan Green said...

Hi Tom

I've actually got two more gamebook projects on the work slate. One is for Gamebook Adventures and one is for Black Library, but more than that I can't tell you just at the moment.

Jam Hirons said...

I never did get to ask you the one question I always reserved for you since last year. Always get a bit starstruck lol. Our dear Geraldine Cooke said at FFF, many people sent in books to Puffin they had written but all were ignored. How did you manage to get on board? Was it lucky dice or did they approach you? :)

Jonathan Green said...

Ha! They certainly didn't approach me! I was 18 at the time and had never been published anywhere!

I wrote to Puffin Books generously offering to write them a brand new series of gamebooks. Rather than file my letter in the round filing cabinet in the corner, my missive was forwarded to Marc Gascoigne who was FF consultant editor at the time. He kindly replied, saying that I was welcome to try out for the FF range if I liked, but warning me that my chances of publication were very slim.

The rest, as they say, is history...

Conker said...

hi ho jonathan :)

i want to try to write an adventure gamebook myself

everything i got is kinda okayish now

the stuff i made is fun(ish) to play
(aka my friends arent to harsh when i show it to them :D)

but i kinda cant wrap my head around on how to slap a cool dungeon like in fighting fantsy over it so that people can draw along while playing

would be awesome if you could make a blog where you explain this process
(maybe with some behind the scene pictures of narrative path or layout stages)

iam not sure if you even read this because this blog is from 2012 :/

Rob Hatton said...

Thanks Jonathan, even though I'm 3 years behind the times! This is something I am keenly interested in attempting, so you're advise had helped out a lot