Interview with D.M. Potter, choose your own adventure children’s author

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A fascinating interview today with Deb Potter, writing as D.M. Potter. She writes interactive fiction, choose your own adventure books for the upper middle grade, lower YA crowd. We have a fascinating discussion about second person fiction and the special things it offers to child readers, like the opportunity to take risks without really risking anything and the ability to slip seamlessly into a story, regardless of a child’s gender, ethnicity or other demographics. No matter who you are, the story is about you!

Check out Deb’s books.

And the You Say Which Way website.

Deb Potter lives in New Zealand, which is just above Antarctica, but isn’t quite as cold. It has penguins though! She grew up roaming farmland and forest and in the summers she swam in a huge lake made out of a blown up volcano. She’s one of five authors writing the You Say Which Way books.

Deb is interested in the evolution of stories. When she first played with an eReader she couldn’t wait to make stories that didn’t have to start at A and finish at B.

Potter read her early work in school libraries and classrooms to learn about the cognitive process of choice and get advice and criticism from readers.

“I was really lucky that I could connect with an audience before I’d ever published a book. It was a great way to find out what worked and how readers approach choice.”

She found that simply writing a large selection of choices and endings didn’t cut it with modern day readers. “Kids are smart consumers of story and meaning.”

‘Once Upon an Island’ was the first You Say Which Way book. It’s set on a remote island in New Zealand which Potter visited a long time ago.

“Most kids don’t get to go outside and take risks anymore. The book offers a chance to do that. It’s a bundle of fantasy adventures that start in realistic ways – catching a ferry, going fishing or heading out to explore. Kids take pleasure in making choices and being autonomous.”

‘In the Magician’s House’ allows the reader to explore a house which can change as well as the story.

“I loved writing about the magician’s house, it started out as a small part of a much bigger story but then the house took over and I had to stay and find out more about what was inside,” Deb says. Some of the characters and ideas stayed with her and she is currently writing a companion book: ‘The Magician’s Cat’.

Potter teamed up with writer Blair Polly to create other interactive books including Lost in Lion Country, Pirate Island and Secrets of Glass Mountain.

Potter believes children’s books will become more interactive in time.

“Kids don’t come to books like they used to, TV was a bit of a distraction to me as a reader in the 70s but now there are a lot more distractions. I love games and apps but I also love the pleasure of a good book. I think interactive fiction is a good way to excite kids about story and learn the pay-off from immersion.”

The books are written to be fun first, but using second person also allows them to be gender neutral and to cater for family and ethnic diversity. “A boy came up to me after a class visit and told me how excited he was because he ‘fit’ in ‘Lost in Lion Country’. He explained he had three brothers who lived in one house and a sister who lived in another and that when he was reading it felt like the book was written for him, that he loved feeling like he ‘fit’ with the book. Another time a father rang up to say that he liked the way his daughters could be active in the books.”

Deb has a certificate in Children’s Literature from Christchurch College of Education and a Masters in creative writing from Victoria University’s IMML.