You know that collaborative writing website I wanted to make? Well, I should have known that if I waited long enough, someone else would do it.
Ficlets isn't exactly what I had in mind, but it covers many of the bases. People can not only continue a story or write a prequel to a story, but they can also comment on individual story pieces. Ficlets also does me one better: there can be numerous prequels and sequels to any story anywhere. Multiple "canons". If you don't like one sequel, you can write another. And the navigation is really simple--once you've grokked it you can follow a story thread easily either way.
If you're wanting to write a story with a select group of friends, this probably isn't the solution for you. But if you want to get feedback and inspiration on your writing, Ficlets looks like a great place to play.
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I had long considered one of these collaborative writing efforts. Took part in a few, mostly on forums here and there, but found it largely unsatisfying. Too many contrasting styles and too many people fighting to take it in different directions, not to mention the people who intentionally sabotage the storylines.
I still imagine it can work though, so hopefully you've either found something that does or you'll be inspired to take on the task yourself :-)
I tried posting a story on there last night. The sequel was interesting--obviously it wasn't quite where I was going, which was to be expected, but the author also didn't seem to interpret the characters the same way I did. For example, I didn't mean that Christian was bad at playing the piano...I meant that he played every song in a laborious, sorrowful way. And I didn't imagine the narrator ever directly mentioning Sonja's...appeal.
From the title you could perhaps infer that Christian is the narrator's ex. Perhaps. And that Sonja is the narrator's current lover, or maybe simply the person the narrator wants to be with. Yes? But none of those threads were really picked up on, which kind of bummed me out.
My favorite part about playing on the AMRN was having people notice those clues and run with them. Sam was especially good at that. He'd often find clues I didn't even realize I'd left.
But on the other hand, it's hard to do the kind of character development I like to do with so few words. You're limited to 1000 or so characters, which makes it tough to establish much of anything. I think that's why a lot of the stories on Ficlets so far are comedies--humor only requires an everyman, not a detailed character with motivations that have to be learned over time.
I'll have to see what I think as time goes on. I lack the coding skills (and the time to learn the coding skills) needed to build the collaborative writing website I envision, but right now I feel that I still want to get it done someday.
I perused that site for a bit. I think the biggest problem may be that the dude that responded to yours sucks. Well, so far as writing goes. It wasn't so much that he missed the "clues" as it was he saw you mention her breasts.
Really, not that your story started out super awesome, but for the most part, that site doesn't have much to offer in the ways of talented writing to continue it for you.
Oh, but apparently there are plenty of nudie girl pictures on there if you want to look for those.
Joy.
I think they pull in "photostreams" (whatever) from Flickr so people can use them as writing inspiration.
The site is actually owned and operated by AOL, so it's supposed to be family-friendly until you click the "I want to see mature content" thing.
There are some good writers on there. But this thing is really really new. So we may see some more people show up. I'm going to give it a little time.
It kinda reminds me of a site I used to go to, Improfanfic. Different stories that were anime based, or anime themed. Aspiring authors would sign up on the story's list, and when their turn came, they would write the next chapter of the story. No size limits, just one week to write it and get it to the moderator. It was pretty entertaining at first, but I think it's gone dead now.
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