The next problem was plot. He knew Choose Your Own Adventure books forked this way and that, then forked again, and then again, and that each story was in the end a unified narrative whole – many stories in one. But his first draft of The Castle of No Return resembled more of a straight line with six short dead ends, with choices that would cause little debate or consternation: Do you want to go left or do you want to go right? (If you go left you die!)
He hoped his classmates would forgive these shortcomings – the plagiarized setting, the lack of multiple cohesive plots – if he could find really interesting and creative and entertaining ways to die. Which he did. Samuel had a talent, it turned out, for killing his characters interestingly.