It’s a mix of cultural tourism and storybook adventure, I jumped at the chance to bring such an exciting project to my home town. My story would of course be a romance. There are lots of very romantic locations Byron Bay.
The producer Emily Craven has gathered together a dozen award-winning authors, each with a world-wide fanbase and published in over a dozen countries, to write Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style stories in cities across the world. Each adventure is written specifically to highlight the beautiful and intriguing parts of a specific city and to appeal to a young, tech savvy traveller.The international project creates a completely new way of telling a story, by dropping the reader physically in the middle of it. Rather than reading the choose-your-own-adventure in printed book form, this project is creating maps so adventurers can read the story in the location the adventure is happening. Each map has a series of QR codes that a reader can scan with their smart phone. Each code links them to a webpage where they can read the next part of the adventure and then choose from several options to continue the story. Each new part of the story takes place in one of the locations on the map, showcasing the landmarks of some of the world’s most trendiest cities in a whole new way. Each story happens in a specific city. Other stories are being set in Prague, Paris, New York, Toronto and more.
Not only are we trying to create real adventures, but we’re going to lead you to the hidden nooks and secret features of Byron and other cities around the world, taking you on a journey you would never find in a guide book. At the same time you could be avoiding an alien invasion, solving a mystery, surviving a zombie apocalypse, falling in love… Hey, anything can happen on an adventure…
Not only is the project unusual but so is the method of funding it. To get this project off the ground, Emily has organised crowdfunding. Crowdfunding involves raising funds from the public, via ‘pledging’ to support the project start-up costs. In return, the ‘pledgers’ get rewards for contributing to the project, with different rewards for various levels of contribution ranging from maps, to books to, private conversations with authors, to actually having a character in one of the adventures being named after you! You can pledge for just $5.
The crowdfunding campaign finishes on the 4th of October 2013. If you would like to find out more about the Choose-Your-Adventure project, see the crowdfunding page. There's a video that explains everything!
If you could Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, which destination would you like to explore during your adventure?
