Give Yourself Goosebumps - General Plotline

General Plotline

For the most part, play is rather simple, as the books are merely novels with branching plots. The books are written in the second person and enlivened by puzzles or choices. Rather than being simply from beginning to end, the reader is told to turn to a certain page at the bottom of the current page, at certain pages the reader will be given at least two choices of which page to turn to, depending on what they want the main character (one's self) to do. If readers make poor choices, the book may come to a "bad" ending that will feature a horrid fate for the main character but the readers are always able to go back and choose a new choice. There is also at least one page in each book that uses an alternative method to selecting each choice, and is done more by chance rather than the reader's decision. These include; "Tossing a Coin" (where "Heads" represents one page and "Tails" another) "Rolling a Die" ("Odd" and "Even" sides having their own pages), or the reader trying a challenge in real life (and turning to a different page depending on whether they were successful or not). This whole structure came from the very popular Choose Your Own Adventure book series. There are normally two "main stories" and one "side story" which have their own set of choices, and a certain decision - usually at the first two choices that will determine which of the two "stories" the reader will be a part of, the side story will usually feature inside one of the two main stories, and will consist of a small group of choices, and is usually more lighthearted than the rest of the book. Also, there is sometimes a group of choices, which contain one choice which is blatantly wrong (such as eating the blue eggs in "Escape from Camp Run-For-Your-Life" or failing to acknowledge the situation in "Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum" as an emergency) if the Reader makes one of these choices the book will break the fourth wall and demand that he/she turns back and choose a better option. This literary trope is characteristic of many late 20th century Western works of metafiction. It is also worth noting that the main character is never named and is usually of ambiguous gender; therefore the reader can easily imagine himself or herself as the main character regardless of what sex he or she is, however, sometimes the occasional "he" slips through. There is however a "friend character" who is named and given a gender, these characters are normally present throughout the storyline but there are times when they are not. The only thing linking the main character in each story is that they are self proclaimed "Goosebumps Experts".