I recently had the good fortune to speak in Portland, Oregon-- an absolutely fabulous city with cool writers.
During the course of my visit, some new buds and I talked about websites and blogging. They'd had this great idea (for Halloween) to do an online "blog story" run like the "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels. But they did it with multiple authors in a round-robin, reader input format.
If you aren't familiar with CYOA, these are books in which you come to a plot point and are given several possible options. You choose what you'd like to read next, flip to the appropriate page # and the story moves forward in that direction.
My Portland buddies reported that they'd asked writers from newbie status to bestselling to guest a "chapter" each day and provide 4 options from which to choose. The readers voted in the comments portion of the blog. Each night they notify the next writer on deck with the results of the vote and the writer has to continue the story from there and end their approximately 1000 word "chapter" with 4 more possible outcomes for what happens next. Readers vote, and you're off again.
Fun, huh? Yeah, well, they asked me if I'd like to guest during the Valentine's Day CYOA. Sunday night, I got my "story bible" for the action so far (I also read the earlier chapters). Then it was off to the races and I was scrambling to blend my style, where I wanted to take the story, with the funny suspense they had going. I was Chapter 4. And to my surprise the folks picked my option D, when I was so certain they'd pick my option B! (Oh, and they all seemed to think that option C meant the hero was dying rather than...well, I'll tell you in comments if you want to know what I assumed would happen if they picked C.)
If you'd like to check out the fun, go to ManuscriptMavens.com
How about you? Had any fun projects lately? What do you think about participating in an online CYOA and being a slave to what comes before and what readers pick for you?
