Revolutionary Book Idea

With many people now owning, smart phones or tablet computers, I've come up with an idea of rejuvenating book culture, and creating a possible book revolution.

With computer games letting people live out wild fantasies, literally at the touch of a button, many of the new generation will simply never pick up a book, unless it's at school.

Now many of us can appreciate a good book, but maybe It's time to revamp the current book system.

I'm sharing my idea because I believe It's worth sharing. There would be a lot of work involved as I will explain later on, taking many years to make a good book and that is the only downfall, but it would be worth it.

Ok here goes.

Imagine you are the protagonist, you enter your name on the start screen and the story begins.

Let's pretend this is a crime thriller, you would be the lead detective. The book would read as any other 1st or 3rd person fiction, but you would notice upto the first part of dialogue from the protagonist (you) that the rest of the book is blank...

That's because it hasn't been written yet. Well it has in 2,3,4 or more different directions depending on the choices you make. You control the the story, to a certain extent atleast.

Example:

The suspect sat in the interrogation room, dimly lit, the smell of sweat from countless suspects permeating through the tension saturated air. "We have reason to believe you were in the park that day when Susie went missing," DI James Matherson cut through the tension like a knife through butter, a look of disdain slapped across his face, interrogations bugged him at the best of times but dealing with pedophiles was his pet hate.

"Yea well that's bull, you ain't got nothing on me, I've got my alibi. You can't hold me here, I know my rights," the suspect's eyes shifted back and forth never making clear contact, and a shimmer of possible perspiration caught the lone light.

Protagonist options:

1 "You're lying, I can tell your lying. Look tell us the truth now and we can cut a deal, I wouldn't usually do that with your sort, but I'll make an exception," (Try and temp him to confess if you believe he's lying.)

2 "Let him go, he's right we've got nothing," (You believe him, check his alibi and wait.)

3 "Let him go, he's right we've got nothing," (You don't believe him, keep him under surveillance.)

4 "Actually, your the suspect of a serious crime, we can hold you for 36 hours while we find more evidence,"
(Hold him while you look for more evidence.)

So, depending on your actions the story will change. This has profound and amazing implications, depending on how well you play your role as the detective, the story could have a good or a bad ending. Depending on your skill the case may be solved after a couple of hours, or may take considerably longer.

You may have many murders on your hands as you fail to capture the killer, you may have forgotten a vital piece of information and make a bad decision because of that. Basically the options can be almost endless.

The re-readability of the book would be unbounded (Ok not on a crime thriller, but most other genres). A book where you are the protagonist, where your actions may have amazing or dire consequences.

Anyway, basically the only downfall I can think of a book of such magnificence, is the sheer magnitude of the book. If there were several different paths for each time you had to make a decision or say something, the book may actually consist of the equivalent mass in volume of 10 books or more, so to write such a thing could take decades, especially from an author that writes every part in such amazing intricate detail and smartly makes sure each direction is accounted for and ties into the book immaculately.

Anyway, that was basically my idea for revolutionizing and increasing the enjoyability of book reading. What do you guys think?

Sounds like the fighting fantasy books I had as a kid just updated to be used on a tablet.

reply to post by boymonkey74


I'm not so sure, they'd be pretty primitive compared.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
Sounds like the fighting fantasy books I had as a kid just updated to be used on a tablet.

Indeed. Choose Your Own Adventure.

www.cyoa.com...

reply to post by DAZ21


Or text based adventure games, like my fave of all time Kentilla.



Sorry OP revolutionary erm nope. But have a go make us all proud

Yep, these books were a staple of mine as a kid. You'd make a decision that would inevitably get you killed, and then have to retrace your steps, make new decisions, etc. Fun to read, and re-read....but not new I'm afraid. Choose Your Own Adventure was just one of the names, there were plenty of imitators too. The e-book format would be much better though.

Example: