To explain – I recently became involved with an online Choose Your Own Adventure story. Every week someone writes a section, You The Public vote on what happens next, and the baton is passed on to the next writer who writes their bit of the tale based on the results.
If you are a Facebook user (and I do appreciate it is not everyone’s cup of tea), this post may be of interest to you.
I recently found out via the always helpful Nicola Morgan’s author pagethat the site now requires page admins to pay them cash dollars to promote status updates to folk who already ‘Like’ something. Essentially, if I don’t give them my money (which I haven’t, because come on) 10% or fewer ‘likers’ will receive 12 Books page updates in their news feeds.
I have a number of friends on the internet who I’ve come across through writing stories. One such person is Glempy, also called The Rogue Verbumancer, who you may remember from guest posts like this one, and my almost monthly entries for the Pictonaut Challenge.
As the general setup of Pictonaut implies, Glempy is one of those writers who likes to get other people writing. This predilection could stem from pure philanthropy, or it might be orchestrated so the man in question has a ready-made support network of peers gnashing their teeth and churning out #amwriting tweets at the same time as him – it’s impossible to know for sure. Still, whatever his reasons, the outcome is a positive one – lots of stories for you to read.
Do you remember Choose Your Own Adventure books? You read some of the story, then had the option to choose what happened next – for instance, ‘to go through the spooky arch turn to page 62,’ or ‘to climb the rickety ladder turn to page 4.’ The story was in your hands, and anything could happen – if you made a bad choice the hero might actually die, or at least be horribly maimed.*
The idea of Working Barbarian is to resurrect this storytelling model. Glempy has assembled a group of writers, including yours truly, who have agreed to relay The Life and Times of a Working Barbarian in gripping internet instalments. After each instalment there will be a list of ‘what do you want to do next’ options and you, the general public, get to Choose Your Own Adventure by voting on whether you want the Barbarian to go through the spooky arch, climb the rickety ladder or stroke the adorable cthulu kitten.
I’m really excited about this project, and if you’re excited too then you should CLICK HERE whereupon you can subscribe to email updates or follow the blog so that new posts appear in your reader. You’ll also be able to find out a bit more about the merry band of people involved in writing the thing.
The first part of the story, penned by Glempy himself, goes live on Monday April 8th. Hooray!
*Bear in mind this was pre Song of Ice and Fire / Potter – main characters being senselessly killed was unusual back then.