Although Steve works as a school administrator at this stage in his career, the reason that he got into the education racket in the first place was because of his love of literature, writing, and teaching great books of all shapes and sizes to young people.

When he himself was young, younger than the students he has taught, though, it took him a while to fall in love with the kind of reading he was asked to do in school. Partially, this delay was caused by the fact that the experience of reading in school was asymmetric to his experience of reading outside of school.

In school, he was asked to read books that his teachers selected and split up into digestible chunks, regardless of whether or not these digestible chunks ended in the middle of the action. He was then told, under no uncertain terms, to read one chunk at a time, whether he was interested or not, a fast reader or a slow reader, and then was judged on his ability to recall information – sometimes picayune details – about those readings.

Outside of school, he read in a different way; he read, as if under a spell, the books that spoke to him. After browsing in his town's library and finding – often by chance – books like Shel Silverstein's poems and Poe's short stories and the Hardy Boys, he read. And read. He read in big, unbroken, unbalanced swaths of time. He smuggled the books he loved into restaurants and churches, annihilating entire afternoons, not so much devouring as himself being devoured. Mastery of the details was never tested; instead, it was utterly complicit in the spellbinding. The closer Steve read, the more he understood detail and nuance, character and setting, symbol and metaphor, conflict and resolution – the deeper the spell, the more complete the experience.

If anything, and sadly, his at‐home reading worked against his in‐school reading. He knew what he wanted reading to feel like, and when it didn't feel that way, he resisted. He became reluctant and disconnected, and expressed his frustration in ways that led teachers to quickly slot him into a negative category.

Choose Your (or Their) Own Adventure

Fortunately, he did not stay in that state forever. In sixth grade, he reached a turning point. It was not that he finally had the chance to read a book that he loved in school or attend a certain kind of school. On the contrary, he finally met an assignment that was seemingly designed solely for his delight by a teacher who, in hindsight, oversaw masterfully the educational variables at play.

The assignment started with a trip to the school library and a simple invitation: pick any book you want to read, then take it home and read it.

As he wandered the stacks, touching the spines of the books, opening a few to sample some sentences, examining covers, he was, for the first time ever in school, reminded of his nonschool reading experiences. He realized that his school had a space just like the library near his house, where he could easily spend a whole afternoon browsing, pulling books down, and only leaving because someone, ringing a figurative dinner bell, came to find him.

Finally, school was nearly symmetrical with his authentic reading life. He wandered through the school library a little longer than he should have and found a book unlike any he had ever opened or read. It was a Choose Your Own Adventure book. What was this? He grabbed the book, thinking it might be some kind of mistake, checked it out surreptitiously, and hurried toward the door, afraid that someone might take it from him.

Later when he got home, he kept hurrying – right by his beloved basketball hoop, right by the refrigerator filled with delicious snacks, right to his room. Door closed, he dove in.

Now, if you know these books, you know that they offer a choice at the end of each chapter. Do you want to go left or do you want to go right? Do you want to follow this character or that character? Here are the choices offered at the ends of some of the chapters from one of the classics of the genre, The Cave of Time (Packard, 1982).

If you continue toward the ranch, turn to page 8.
If you go back into the cave, turn to page 10.

If you seek shelter, turn to page 6.
If you brave the freezing wind to see more of the world about you, turn to page 16.

If you decide to break the egg open, turn to page 72.
If you keep it in your closet until you have a chance to get scientific advice, turn to page 103.

After finishing the book – or, rather, one version of the book – Steve was so enthralled that he started reading it again, making different choices this time. The choices at the end of the chapters propelled him forward, melting time in the process. And, though he was reading quickly, he was committed, as deeply as he ever had been, to reading for comprehension. The deep joy of this particular book was enhanced by his grasp of the details and the nuance of the text. The choices awaiting him at the end of each chapter, that pulled him forward, were more delicious if he brought to them a firm grasp of the details and nuance of setting and character, of symbolism and metaphor. He reread if he had to, the better to make the next big choice.

A look at some research on Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) books tells Steve, the teacher, why Steve, the student, was so drawn into CYOA. According to one study, done by a teacher, these texts can improve reading fluency and comprehension in part because they draw students back into the text, multiple times, helping them to practice that act of reading itself. So, to extrapolate a little, instead of encouraging teachers to teach reading by offering their students descriptive lessons, prescriptive strategies, or graded assessments to point out all the ways in which they did not read well, there's a better way, a more delightful way: to help students actually perform the act of reading more often. According to the researcher, and so extrapolating less now, CYOA books aid reading instruction not because they help the teacher but because they create student readers “propelled by making a choice in reading” (Hoffman, 2016). They push readers forward in, and into, their reading.

We call such a move delightful because it adds value by increasing understanding and by sparking joy, genuine curiosity, and intrinsically motivated persistence. As you'll see, adding delight to typical tasks, services, or products can have a deep impact on the way in which people engage with your work or their work.

Mimic the Real World

Choose Your Own Adventure texts do not only show up in libraries and the hands of impassioned young readers or nostalgic adults. Writing in the journal, Medical Education, Kelly Wilson‐Stewart chronicled the way “nonlinear narrative” helped a group of podiatry students overcome some performance anxiety, with which it is fairly easy to empathize (2017). In Australia, podiatrists can request X‐rays, but as part of their course work, they are also made aware of the dangers of certain X‐rays. To X‐ray or not to X‐ray, that is the critical choice point. Designing for real‐world application requires, to a certain degree, real‐world practice.

According to Wilson‐Stewart, designing a Choose Your Own Adventure style lesson for students helped them to engage deeply, practicing in a setting that “closely mimics professional practice.” The CYOA element of the practice is what made the difference because students were offered several choice points along the way.

The role‐playing game allowed students to navigate through a number of viable patient clinical indications. This was followed by choices regarding the outcomes of the patient's functional assessment, and finally there was a selection of possible X‐ray series. Depending on the path chosen by the student, personalised feedback was given as to why their nominated series was correct or incorrect, along with detailed substantiation. (Wilson‐Stewart, 2017)

Though the choice described in this experiment differs from the kind of choice given to young readers at the close of a CYOA chapter in a book, it still proved to be both engaging, and perhaps more important, to allow authentic and delightful practice to occur. It's authentic because it is deeply concerned with both the practitioner and the person with whom the practitioner will ultimately interact; it's delightful because it's a game that people want to keep playing.

• If you want to read about how a former lawyer and VP of Human Resources uses interactive drama, a form of CYOA narrative, to train leaders and coach teams, keep reading …
• If you're interested in taking a deeper dive into the research underpinning the power of choice and intrinsic motivation, turn to page 147
• Or if you just want to hear about how Steve did on the debacle of an assignment that followed his reading of the CYOA book – yes, that story is not over – turn to page 150