Gaelythe
a 39-year-old lady from the United States
I've had periodic pretentions about being a writer since I was 8, when I started writing my first novel. Over the years, I 've started many writing projects. I unfortunately have no discipline, and soon abandon each project in favor of the next shiny thing that presents itself to be written. I have a million page ones, a few page tens, and one short story I ever actually completed.
I'm a history buff and was a member of Ancient Sites, where I wrote collaborative historical fiction set in the ancient Greek deme of Marathon and centered around the Delian League. With the demise of Ancient Sites, I moved with the community of writers I worked with to PanHistoria. There we branched out into sci-fi and fantasy. Our association with PanHistoria ended some time later. We talked about starting our own site, but years later this is still a pipe dream.
I also stumbled on the old, original addventure site years ago, and added a few branches to Addventure 3 before it was closed down for good.
I've missed collaborative writing since. My favorite style is still the model we used on Ancient Sites and Pan Historia, where we wrote a shared story from the POV of different characters. But I have also enjoyed the addventure style of collaborative writing. This isn't surprising to me, since I was a huge fan of Choose your Own Adventure stories when I was a kid. So of course, I came straight here as soon as I heard about Protagonize. And I'm very happy that I did.
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But you're right, we are not the ones who have to write it..."
I've disabled the notifications on items you've commented on across the board (though you can turn them on again if you want.) I'll be modifying that option so that it only notifies you only if someone posts immediately after one of your posts, too."
I guess what I mean is, its just not the same type of control as say, the number of posts one writes. : )"
Luckily the favourite author ranks are completely out of my control or else I'd really feel ashamed for knocking Nick out! Haha"
That reminds me, I should really branch Joyride tonight. I think I need another glass of wine, first, though..."
Thanks for that; I really appreciate you giving me the background as I never would have come across it without major research on my part. I haven't participated in that type of collaborative writing community so the concept is new to me (as far as having never participated in such a system), but it interests me and I think I have a few ideas for changes to the site that will meld nicely with the concepts you introduced in your comment.
I don't have time to come back with a detailed reply now (sleep beckons), but I'll email you in the morning — after I have some time to digest what you've written — with a few questions about some of the points you brought up.
I'm definitely looking to expand Protagonize in a variety of ways, and I think that some of what you've described lends itself well to the new features I have planned for the site. I'll get more into it in my email, but suffice it to say, you should be able to satisfy both of your collaborative writing cravings in one place if I get things built the way I want them. :)
-nick"
I started a comment earlier about AS and PH, but discovered that I was running off at the virtual mouth. I'll try to be a little more concise this time, and not include all the history of how the things developed as they did. I find it interesting, but I don't know how useful you'd find any of it.
On both AS and PH, everything was posted on your basic threaded messageboard system. On AS it grew up a little haphazardly, as it was not the original intent of the site. Folks who were interested in writing their own collaborative historical fiction rather than only discussing actual historical events were eventually given their own set of boards, divided by area of interest (ancient Greece or Egypt, for example). These were further divided by section, further narrowing it down to areas of group interest. The playground I was part of covered two of these subdivisions - the deme of Marathon where our characters lived their home lives, and the Delian League, our collaborative ancient Greek military fiction. People could have multiple logins, each with a different character name, and some did. Most invested their work in only one or two characters. Overarching plots that involved most or all the characters were periodically introduced into the narrative by our elected leader, who had moderator powers (though our moderators tended to be pretty hands-off). Everyone developed their own sideplots, alone or in small groups, as well as working on any overarching plot. We had a lot of freedom to do as we pleased and develop the stories of our characters without interference by a moderator. Our moderator would also periodically put in little nudges to keep things moving if it began to slow down or it appeared the main story arc was getting lost in the shuffle. We had a lot of very active writers, and the freedom to develop our characters and subplots the way we did really gave everything when taken as a whole the feeling that it was a living, breathing village in ancient Greece.
Posts were always written under the character name whose point of view the author wanted to use from the ones the author had created. Most wrote in the first person, though not everyone held to that and no one objected to the change from first to third.
AS had an IM system, and some of the smaller groups within the main one would use it to plan where their subplots were going to go. Sometimes we even roleplayed over IM key sections of a post one of us was going to make, so everyone's characters would stay true to the concepts of their authors no matter who was currently posting.
PH was much the same. Anyone could apply for a set of boards (called a novel on the site) if they had an idea for the setting. PH included more than history, which is how I added sci-fi and fantasy to the collaborative writing I did. The boards could be either threaded or unthreaded, depending on what the applicant felt would best form the narrative. Novels could be given an open acceptance policy, or it could be by invitation or request. Some did take advantage of this if they wanted a certain quality of writer involved. Most were open to everyone. It also had instant messaging, which facilitated planning by those who liked to plot things in advance. In addition, it had novel-member-only boards hidden from the general public where the story ideas, moderator elections, and other out-of-character discussion could take place.
It is a very different way of storybuilding from addventure-style collaboration, but it can be just as much fun. I like both about equally, for different reasons. Addventure is a little more off-the-cuff, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants storytelling. The AS and PH model usually allows for deeper characters and story development. It would probably be a lot of work to develop a site that catered to both styles, and I don't know how many would be interested in being able to do both. I can only speak for myself, and I would love to be able to indulge both my collaborative writing addictions in one place. If, that is, you decided to take the site in that direction someday. If not, I'm quite happy here as things stand.
I know this is getting long, so I'll leave it alone for now. But if you're curious and want to know more, I can probably dredge up some more for you, either here or through email, whichever is your preference. And I hope that there's at least something useful for you in all this rambling. :)"
Welcome to Protagonize! I'm glad to see that the site is attracting long-time collaborative authors such as yourself.
I was just reading your profile and I'm curious about the way Pan Historia and Ancient Sites worked -- it sounds as though they had an alternate method of building stories. It would be interesting to look into the possibility of adding that option here too; I'm contemplating adding for a few different methods for building stories on Protagonize. Do you have any suggestions from your time on that site?"