7 Collaborative Storytelling Websites to Weave Your Own Digital Stories

 

Everyone loves a good story. Writing it is another matter. Come to think of it, crafting a good story shouldn’t be too difficult. We are surrounded by stories of all kinds. Films and soap operas are the visual ones. Advertisements on TV are brand stories. The dreams we concoct in our minds are also kind of stories; even the lies we conjure up are one of a kind stories.

A good story can move us with emotions. A well framed story can motivate and teach. In the end all stories should entertain.

The web has given rise to collaborative storytelling. Collaborative storytelling involves a group where one writer starts the story and others keep on adding threads to it, and thus the story evolves. The imagination of the community gives a digital story a path one wouldn’t have thought of at the start.

If you are into digital storytelling ideas of any kind, try out these seven websites for a spot of collaborative writing.

Folding Story

Folding Story is a writing game where each writer is constrained to write one line of a story (120 words or less) and pass it on to another writer to add to it. Each user gets just three minutes to write a line. You get to be on the scoring leaderboard by the number of likes you receive for your lines. In the end, everyone can read the finished story. You get to read some pretty wacky stories because each writer gets to read just the last line entered. It’s a neat writing exercise because the time and word limit really gives creativity an adrenalin shot.

Ficly

Call it micro-fiction in a collaborative way. Start your own story or jump into someone else’s with a word limit of 1,024 characters only. Also, you don’t need to follow the stories; you can insert events into the narrative as sort of a prequel. Ficly (earlier it was called Ficlets) is great for breaking the writer’s block and breaking through your writing lethargy by writing a few lines at a time.

Fabulate

Fabulate is a collaborative book project, where each writer may submit a story with a maximum length of 500 words. The story must continue where the last published entry left off. The difference with the above collaborative storytelling websites is that the submissions have to keep to the overall theme of the book; though the writer is free to introduce new characters and situations. All submissions are accepted or rejected by reviewers in the community. The collaborative story is heading towards the goal of a published book.

WikiStory

The concept of using a Wiki for collaborative storytelling is worth the browse. A member can begin or edit a story, poem, plot, or character description. There’s also a 3-Word Story that’s doing the rounds right now. Each author can add just add three words to prolong the story. Of course, the words have to make sense so that others can add to it and continue the narration.

One Million Monkeys Typing

Now, that’s a title that should get noticed. The secret behind the name lies in the infinite monkey theorem. Here, each story has three possible paths. You can choose one out of the three or craft your own ‘snippet’. Snippets get comments and also get rated by bananas. You can also chat with your fellow monkeys using the online chat app. Of course, monkey language is not mandatory.

StoryMash

StoryMash might appeal to amateur writers who want some of the spoils for their writing. The site shares half of the advertizing revenue stories get with their writers. On this creative writing community, each author can write an entire chapter and open it up for the community to provide feedback via the linked forum. Anyone can pick up the story and run with it from there, or the original author can continue to work on it. This peer review system and the chapter lengths make it ideal for an amateur writer to improve his compositions.

Novlet

Novlet allows you to start a collaborative writing effort in any language. Each story here is divided into passages. You can continue with the previously written passages or write a fresh one. Thus, each story with a single beginning forks out into multiple stories over a course of time.

Getting into the writing habit now is easier than it ever used to be. Combine these seven websites with Simon’s 4 Great & Inspiring Sites For Creative Writers To Visit or my 5 Websites For Writers To Cure Writer’s Block With Freewriting Exercises and a beginner writer has very little reason to hide behind an excuse.

Have you ever put your creativity to the test with collaborative writing? Give us a few words on it.