Beneath Leadmere Manor
You live a safe but dreary life as a servant of Leadmere Manor, the seat of an old and powerful family. One day you stumble upon the chance at an impossible adventure, but you must choose your path carefully or calamity awaits.
Picture by Reinhold Silbermann.
This is my somewhat non-standard entry into @calluna’s 9th Tell a Story to Me Contest. The prompt for this one is the irresistible “Deep below ground, a portal opens…” One of the many—infinitely many, like the dimensions in a portal—things it brought to mind was Cave of Time, the first Choose Your Own Adventure book. That got me to this article, which confirmed what I remembered, that those books were rife with both portals and messed up endings.
Graphical proof of my point swiped from the article linked above, (c) Bantam Books.
If you didn’t read them as a kid, the basic premise is that you make a choice at the end of each segment and the book tells you which page to turn to next. There are multiple possible stories with most of them ending in your gruesome death. And now you can experience it for yourself, in a small way, with Beneath Leadmere Manor! Start at Page 1 and choose wisely.
Beneath Leadmere Manor
Table of Contents
Page 1: Tears
Page 2: Light
Page 3: The City
Page 4: Thirst
Page 5: Bulb
Page 6: Mask
Page 7: At Sea
Page 8: Harbor
Hi sidequest,
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:)
I love this @sidequest
This is just like one of those adventure books that I read when I was growing up where you can answer yes or no at the end of each page to find a different path through the story. I read through the story 3 times, choosing different yes/no answers each time and it always made sense, quite an accomplishment. The prose is crisp and descriptive, without being stilted and the descriptive language is excellent.
Thoroughly enjoyed this read. Thanks for sharing :-)
Thanks so much. I'm glad there's others who remember those books.
What a creative way to present a story. I enjoyed reading it and was satisfied at the end. (Although I kinda... cheated... I went back and choose the other option lol). I love it!
Thanks! And anyone who says they don't cheat with these is a liar or a robot.
This is brilliant! :D I loved the CYOA books growing up and this took me right back. I dig the way you made the format work on Steemit, and it’s a great story to boot! Respect!
Wow, what an interesting concept. I used to read a lot of those books when i was a young kid so to see you doing it here is class. Did you ever get curios and just read it through from page 1 -200 in numerical order. It makes for a very strange story.
Straight through is the best way. Looking back those books probably taught me important lessons about not always following the rules.
You can't always follow the rules in life. Where would be the fun in that?
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I absolutely love it, I have now died several times just for the fun of it.....
I loved these books when I was a kid. This is genius setting the contest entry up like this and some of the other posts seem to be freewrite entries as well. This was very well played and great stories with a good bit of attention to character dev.
Do you have any more of these planed?
I've actually been trying to plan a business book out in this type of format, more of a guidance books pick your option and turn to page ...
Thanks! I don't know how soon I'd do another of these, they're harder than they look but it would probably go smoother if I weren't also trying to follow freewrite prompts.
A business book like this would be very interesting.
It looked like a lot of work, but it was a fun read. I always admire working smart, and using parts of it for free-writes etc. was smart, why use it once when you can use it multiple times, and get paid multiple times.
It's a project that I hope to finish one day, just don't know how the business world would react.
This was incredible, I got so caught up in 'playing' through it on the first read. I read the intro, and immediately felt that rising excitement, a real actual play along story for steemit!
You manage to create a selection of complete stories, each with their own fatal ending, there was just so much to love, I couldn't help getting lost in enjoying it.
Thank you so so much!! This is just, amazing!