NaNoWriMo 2022: Chyoa Edition

November is nearly upon us which means NaNoWriMo season. For those that don't know about it NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a creative writing challenge whereby a writer tries to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. Our challenge here will be a different one but in the same spirit of encouraging writing and creativity. The first major difference will be that this will be a community challenge. I invite all writers, particularly first time writers, to contribute to this project. The second big difference will be our goal, which I will get to shortly.

The past three years the CHYOA community has gotten together to do this and we created a couple of pretty cool choose your own adventure stories, you can check them out HERE and HERE and HERE. We were even highlighted on the front page for a time, thanks Friedman! While they didn't draw a ton of readers I think we authors had a lot of fun writing and collaborating. The goal each year was to create a "complete" choose your own adventure story. I made a contest of it, points were tallied and winners of various categories were announced at the end. Those stories are now locked as time capsules of past years.

It is that time of year. Fine ladies and gentlemen of Chyoa, shall we go again?

Can we write a complete Choose Your Own Adventure in one month?

Our goal again, if we choose to accept it, is to write a complete and finished Choose Your Own Adventure novel in one month's time. This year I've decided to keep the same criteria as last year. It's a challenge but a doable one.

This year's definition of a complete Choose Your Own Adventure story will be:

• Chapters 2-7 (as displayed at the top of the chapter screen beside the author name) all must have at least two options. Beyond this a chapter may have a single option.
• All threads have at least two end chapters.
• Chapter 8 is the earliest a thread can have an end chapter.

If I calculated correctly this definition will lead to a minimum of 32 story threads and 64 endings, obviously this could go much higher too. Based on participation levels previously I think that should be plenty to keep us busy for a month.

Our story will be considered complete if all of these conditions are met. No matter what path a reader chooses they ought to be able to reach and an ending or two.

How will this work?

I will leave this story on Private until November 1st whereupon I will switch it over to Public. Chaos shall ensue for the month of November then on December 1st I will switch it back to Private and the story will remain closed forever more. It will be something of a 2022 time capsule buried in the Chyoa archives.

What are the rules?

Please see Rules section below.

How do WE win?

The community wins the challenge if we can achieve the goal stated above.

How do YOU win?

To encourage participation I thought I would add a game element to our challenge. Writers will gain points for contributions made to the story as detailed in the Rules section below. When the story is closed I will tally the points and list the winners of various categories in the final chapter ever added to this story. You can see previous year winners HERE and HERE and HERE. Will we have a new champion this year or will one of the previous champs return to reign supreme for another year? We shall see.

Readers, you can help too!

Help us writers with feedback, suggestions, and observations in the comment section. If you see a rule broken or have an idea as to where a thread could go let us know. Please be respectful and constructive. As there is no central kink or flavor to this story (and all are allowed within site rules) you should be prepared for anything. And, as always, hit that thumbs up button if you enjoyed a chapter. Likes are a huge motivator for many authors and just feel good for us. They also let us know what is working and what isn't. Don't be stingy with them.