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Writing Game Thread Ideas

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With the success of Cutlerine's text-based adventure, it's time to brain-storm ideas for other threads in the same vein. Some simple threads that will bring in some activity and allow anyone to join in and have fun.

One thing we could try is a thread where each person writes one sentence that tells a continuous story.

I'm sure there are other suggestions that people may have. So post and discuss them here!
 
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I think you should make a choose your own destiny story where there are lots of different path's at different times in the story.

You could let people share funny battling stories

You should let people share awsome pokemon battling teams
 
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Khawill

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Well to bring in more activity yo could appeal to the other sections, like we could do a text base game (like cutlerine's) and challenge the art section to draw what they read.

Or we could do a writing section collaborative (as in the whole section) to make a video game plot, and then see if anyone in the video game area would want to try their hand at making it.

Or we could make a thread where everyone posts short stories (as in full, not with chapters) about whatever they want (not going to extend out of this forum section much probably)

Finally, we could start doing something like news articles on events going on in all the sections (this one is boring to me, but a pokecommunity newspaper sounds decent!)
 
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Another one I forgot to mention is probably one of my favorite kinds of threads: We share whatever project we're currently working on. Not the whole thing, but the part that we just finish or something.

Actually, Khawill, one of your ideas (the one about the thread full of short stories) I thought of too. Prompt challenges, but we can also do free ones about whatever people want to write about.

I think you should make a choose your own destiny story where there are lots of different path's at different times in the story.
A lot of people want to see this happen, but I have no idea how to make it so. Would anyone? With this much interest in seeing one, it might get a lot of activity in if it works.
 

bobandbill

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I think you should make a choose your own destiny story where there are lots of different path's at different times in the story.
A lot of people want to see this happen, but I have no idea how to make it so. Would anyone? With this much interest in seeing one, it might get a lot of activity in if it works.
Only idea I've got with that at the moment is having it done like a chain story. Someone starts the story and has an option at the end of the piece they wrote. Someone takes up the next bit with the restriction of having to take an option. May need some sort of time limit on making the next part to keep it moving as well that way. Not sure how feasible that is though...
 

Daydream

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Another one I forgot to mention is probably one of my favorite kinds of threads: We share whatever project we're currently working on. Not the whole thing, but the part that we just finish or something.

I like this idea. Especially because it could involve advice and/or encouragement to keep going.

I was going suggest a Corpse? I think its been done on this forum before. Essentially, everyone participating collaboratively writes something (the 'Corpse'). The first person starts off the story, and the next only gets the last sentence/part of a sentence that the first has written and has to continue on from that. This continues until everyone has written something. It can be an interesting way to just 'get you writing', so to speak.
 

Cutlerine

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The Corpse is an excellent idea, and I know it often works out surprisingly well. It's a more sophisticated and usually funnier variant of the 'everyone writes one sentence of the story' game, and I'd love to see it implemented. A word limit, however, would be vital, to prevent people overfond of their own prose (like me) from spouting entire novellas where others might submit only a few paragraphs, and therefore imbalancing the overall tone of the story.

I also agree with Astinus and bobandbill on the 'in-progress sharing' idea and the method for developing the CYOA story, respectively. It is possible to write a CYOA story by oneself, and I've done it before, but it wouldn't do much for community cohesion without some method of active participation. If the success of A Smell of Petroleum Pervades Throughout (which I'm thrilled about, by the way. Huzzah!) is anything to go by, there shouldn't be too much trouble with people not responding - and anyway, if people who had agreed to write the next segment pass their time limit, I'm sure there are others in the community who would be happy to take their place and dash off a quick chunk of prose to keep the story going. (For a start, I'm happy to write anything at all at pretty much any time as long as it can be dark, funny, or both.) We'd need to decide upon a method of selecting the next writer in the chain, though, and also a reasonable time limit for them to respond within that would be long enough to give them time to write but not so long as to hinder the development of the story.

As for prompt challenges... I think they're a good idea, but only if there's going to be some kind of feedback on them afterwards, perhaps from a rotating panel of volunteer reviewers. This wouldn't have to be an in-depth critique like the feedback usually derived from the SWCs, but if people don't get any response at all, I can't see that the challenges would last that long; it's just as discouraging as posting regular fics and not getting any replies. I think there'd have to be a fairly strict word limit, too, in order to keep entries short enough to be read and processed by others.

Actually, now I think about it, we could open up the prompt challenge entries for audience review, but I'm not sure how much of a response that would generate, given that the prevailing mindset in FF&W seems to be at best 'read fics and stay silent' and at worst 'post fics but don't read them'.

F.A.B.
 

bobandbill

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Might as well start the 'sharing projects in progress' thread in a bit then as I don't think that'd be too hard to figure out how to set up with OP, etc. Needs a catchier title though. =p

Re: CYOA
We'd need to decide upon a method of selecting the next writer in the chain, though, and also a reasonable time limit for them to respond within that would be long enough to give them time to write but not so long as to hinder the development of the story.
People could maybe post in order in the thread/a separate sign up thread, and it'd go by that order unless the person is unavailable by the time they posted. Time limit... well, no more than a week at most I think. Lastly also need a length (say a page or two as a rough guide? People can do more if they want of course).
 
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Saw this thread title and it made me wonder if some kind of game/contest/event with one of those Choose Your Own Adventure creation programs was happening. I just started playing with one called Twine. Seems you're looking for ideas, and ones that are more interactive in nature though. Still, since I'm here I thought I'd drop off the idea. It might be the kind of things that appeals more to game makers than writers though.
 

Cutlerine

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Re: CYOA
People could maybe post in order in the thread/a separate sign up thread, and it'd go by that order unless the person is unavailable by the time they posted. Time limit... well, no more than a week at most I think. Lastly also need a length (say a page or two as a rough guide? People can do more if they want of course).

Seems reasonable. Perhaps a little less than a week, though - I get the feeling that a full seven days might cause the game to fossilise before completion.

As for catchy titles, I'm afraid I'm at a loss.

Saw this thread title and it made me wonder if some kind of game/contest/event with one of those Choose Your Own Adventure creation programs was happening. I just started playing with one called Twine. Seems you're looking for ideas, and ones that are more interactive in nature though. Still, since I'm here I thought I'd drop off the idea. It might be the kind of things that appeals more to game makers than writers though.

That's an excellent idea. I've played about with Twine before, and it certainly appeals to me as a writer; I'm sure there are others in this forum that would feel the same way. I could certainly see a contest arising from it, although I'm not sure what else we could do with it that would involve the community. Perhaps something could be created by the writing community as a whole... but then again, that would be more easily done via the previously-suggested route of creating a regular CYOA story.

F.A.B.
 
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Might as well start the 'sharing projects in progress' thread in a bit then as I don't think that'd be too hard to figure out how to set up with OP, etc. Needs a catchier title though. =p
"SHARE YOUR WRITING!!" isn't catchy enough?

As for prompt challenges... I think they're a good idea, but only if there's going to be some kind of feedback on them afterwards, perhaps from a rotating panel of volunteer reviewers.
I wonder if it would even be feasible to even think of having a group of volunteer reviewers. Would there be enough interest in that? Because, as you said, there's plenty of stories, but not enough reviews.

We could do a sign-up thread and a schedule for the CYOA. It worked for the Corpse idea that we tried a few years ago. And there's no reason why we can't do a CYOA fic and then a Corpse at a later date if there's enough interest.
 

Cutlerine

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I wonder if it would even be feasible to even think of having a group of volunteer reviewers. Would there be enough interest in that? Because, as you said, there's plenty of stories, but not enough reviews.

Hey, a guy can dream, right? I know it's a long shot, but I'm not sure how many people would submit stories for the challenge if they didn't think anyone would read them.

We could do a sign-up thread and a schedule for the CYOA. It worked for the Corpse idea that we tried a few years ago. And there's no reason why we can't do a CYOA fic and then a Corpse at a later date if there's enough interest.

That sounds reasonable. We wouldn't want to flood the forum with a mass of new game threads all at once, especially when there's no guarantee of interest.

F.A.B.
 
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Hey, a guy can dream, right? I know it's a long shot, but I'm not sure how many people would submit stories for the challenge if they didn't think anyone would read them.
I can see where you're coming from. It is true that we shouldn't really be posting more stories that won't get reviews to a forum that's already begging for reviews. Your idea is a good one. I just don't know for sure how many people will be willing to be regular reviewers.

Then again, we would only be having the prompt challenges every third month? That was the original schedule, with a reviewing challenge the month before a prompt challenge.

I don't know. Now there's too many ideas for me to keep straight!

So maybe where's a good place to start is to try and bring in new people with the CYOA thread or other threads, help those new people stick around, and in the meanwhile work on a way to show people how to review to help get the amount of reviews up.

I'm guessing this means that we would like to try the CYOA thread after the "SHARE YOUR WRITING!!" thread? Any other ideas?
 

Cutlerine

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I can see where you're coming from. It is true that we shouldn't really be posting more stories that won't get reviews to a forum that's already begging for reviews. Your idea is a good one. I just don't know for sure how many people will be willing to be regular reviewers.

I'm inclined to believe that precisely none will, or at least so few as makes no difference. It just seems to me that people will feel like they're jettisoning their art into the void if no one responds.

Then again, we would only be having the prompt challenges every third month? That was the original schedule, with a reviewing challenge the month before a prompt challenge.

That seems the best route, given the current lack of activity here. We simply don't have the resources to deal with prompt challenges any more often than that, I think.

So maybe where's a good place to start is to try and bring in new people with the CYOA thread or other threads, help those new people stick around, and in the meanwhile work on a way to show people how to review to help get the amount of reviews up.

I'm guessing this means that we would like to try the CYOA thread after the "SHARE YOUR WRITING!!" thread? Any other ideas?

Depends. Do we all have stuff to 'SHARE!!'? If so, there's nothing to stop us launching that immediately; the CYOA one will take a while to set up, anyway, given the fact that there's the sign-up list, time limit and all that to set up first.

I think we have four really solid (and widely-accepted) ideas here, namely the 'SHARE YOUR WRITING!!' thread, the collaborative CYOA, the Corpse, and the prompt challenges. That's enough to start making changes, I think; like I said, flooding the forum with a mass of new threads probably won't help, and neither will meticulously crafting an elaborate ten-month-long plan of action covering the step-by-step introduction of nineteen new games and events. Given that all four of these proposed threads could well continue almost indefinitely, and would necessitate a good deal of input and activity, I think that would be enough to begin with.

F.A.B.
 
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So I think we'll cut the ideas off here, because yeah, we don't want to overflow the forum with NEW THINGS!! I'll think up a catchier title for the writing sharing thread, post it either tonight or tomorrow.

We could just keep using this thread to discuss how to work the CYOA. I think we just need to determine how long each person will have to write a part, and then it's just a matter of writing the sign-up thread and then starting it, no?
 

Cutlerine

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I'll think up a catchier title for the writing sharing thread, post it either tonight or tomorrow.

Catchier? Do my eyes deceive me? Is a catchier title even possible?

We could just keep using this thread to discuss how to work the CYOA. I think we just need to determine how long each person will have to write a part, and then it's just a matter of writing the sign-up thread and then starting it, no?

I think four days is reasonable. It gives you some time - more than half a week - but it isn't so long that it would get tediously slow. In fact, I'd only give people two or three days if I thought it was really reasonable. The story can't be allowed to stall.

I suggest we have a 750-word minimum count, in order to make each chunk a reasonable length. Not sure if we want a maximum word limit - if we want to stop things getting too long or too slow, we might want to set it at 1,500.

In short: the speed, man. It's all about the speed.

F.A.B.
 

bobandbill

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Catchier? Do my eyes deceive me? Is a catchier title even possible?
What if... we used three exclamation marks!?
Four days sounds fine to me, and we can always adjust later anyway if there's a need to do so.
I suggest we have a 750-word minimum count, in order to make each chunk a reasonable length. Not sure if we want a maximum word limit - if we want to stop things getting too long or too slow, we might want to set it at 1,500.
I also think this is alright (that's around a page-and-half I believe). Although I wouldn't mind with just going with 500 (from what I recall as well with CYOA books that the amount of writing between each choice was typically not that much).
 
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Yeah, I think the limit should be at least a page. That's short enough to be written about in a few days, and long enough that there's some story there.

How many exclamation marks am I using? Should I just put in however many will fit before the title cuts off?
 
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So, does this mean you don't want people starting up more "interactive story" threads on their own, like Cutlerine's now? If many people are writing, it's more difficult to keep an underlying consistent setting and plot for the story, which a moderately interactive story still can have.
 
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If someone else wants to do their own interactive story in the style of Cutlerine's, then there's no problem.

This other idea, where a lot of writers are working on it, could be considered something a little different. Perhaps we should call the collaborative CYOA something different? Honestly, the way I'm thinking about it, it's not really a CYOA project and more like a giant Corpse. Or am I just missing something?

This is why we need to plan out what we're doing more with this.

At any rate, anyone who has an idea for their own interactive story can go ahead and post them.
 
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