Word Fractal

May 31, 2008 11:43 PM

Word Fractal
Word Fractals are stories that allow the reader to choose their own path through the story, leading them to an ever expanding set of endings. Additionally, any user can add their own choices to pages as they see fit, giving other readers the opportunity to make new and unexpected choices. We're just getting started... help us grow a tale!
posted by shogusumi (5 comments total)

Cool! This is kind of like those old 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books I loved as a kid, except now I not only get to choose my own adventure, I can potentially help write it. As a hack who enjoys writing, this appeals to me. I'll be interested in seeing what this project looks like in a few months when more people have contributed; myself included (when I get some free time, that is).
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:05 PM on June 1, 2008

I was part of something like this back in the day! It was called the Book Wheel and I don't know who started it. You can get a taste by looking at the Internet Archive (if it's not being temperamental) in 2004, in 2003, and also in 2003. Each page ("lexia"!) of the story had three choices at the bottom that the author of the page wrote. You'd click a choice and sometimes the resulting page wouldn't have been written yet - so you would fill out what happened next, and also write three "next choices" for the bottom of that page. It was a lot of fun, and I'm glad somebody else has implemented something like it.

My recommendation for the front page of Word Fractal: instead of providing links to genres and a "random page", list a few titles of active stories with a snippet from their first pages. For my first exploration of the site, I want to hop into some interesting story from the beginning - not decide on a genre (I don't know what to pick!), or start somewhere in the middle of a story.
posted by dreamyshade at 2:00 AM on June 3, 2008

Thanks for writing back! dreamyshade - great idea and I'll see about implementing it in the next couple of days.

It's nice to get new eyes on it :) I've been a bit too close to be able to step back and look at it as a whole!
posted by shogusumi at 9:35 AM on June 3, 2008

Have you seen Protagonize? It's similar in some ways - so you probably have, but who knows.
posted by dreamyshade at 3:11 AM on January 22, 2009

As this seems to be my unofficial place to collect these kinds of things, here's another one: "choose your own adventure".
posted by dreamyshade at 11:30 PM on April 29, 2009