I am a 3rd year student and I will be creating an interactive narrative website. As I have taken part in creative writing courses and websites that act as a hub for writers I know that the key problem for a writer is finding inspiration. I would like to create a site that was filled with triggers; art, music, quotes, and games that kick start story ideas. Users could come to the site to get an idea and then write or after the post of a piece of art or a piece of music they will be asked to 'find the story'. Does anyone have any comments on this idea?
When I was younger I once started making a database of everything ever. But it was for making RPGs, not stories. I don't quite get your idea. Sounds a tad like seventhsanctum to me. I can kinda see where your going with it, but would be too much of a hassle. There are tons of things to inspire people, tons. to compile enough enough on all of that topic. i mean wow. History has a goof 5000 years of inspirational times, with almost every century having 10 different inspiring cultures each with unique names, weaponry, clothing, cuisine, language . That's just a history section and its already a massive project. imagine adding in technology, legendary creatures, scientific theories. Thats what you'd need for EVERY kind of writer to use the site.
I don't believe there is much need for such a website as writers today have an entire internet full of "triggers" for creativity, and there are numerous writers' forums (such as this one) that help aspiring authors refine their initial excitement.
Cripes, I haven't any trouble with that at all. As as longtime writer MY greatest problem has been keeping readers and/or getting them to actually respond! I haven't any suggestions on prompts other than to say, you're going to have to find a way to make your site stand out, as there are literally tons of writing prompts and inspiration sites out there already. Just Google "writing prompts" and there they are--so many of them that it quickly gets tiring trying to sift through to find the good ones. (And the prompts that are inspirational for one type of writer won't necessarily work well for another. Most prompts I find don't fit well with my storylines.) You'll be hard pressed to compete against all that, but good luck anyway.
What are those books called, the ones where your read an introduction to a story and after a while it says "Turn to page 54 if you choose this option" and "Choose page 117 if you wanna follow this path" I always wanted to create an massive online version of these books/ideas (i still) would, but yeah!
Try tvtropes. I come by inspiration rather easily on that site. It's kind-of like wikipedia for literary and plot devices each one with a list of various forms of fiction that use them. Try it.
well thats what i meant! and yes they were bad, but it would be cool to create one where you could actually writinghundred of set peices where by choosing certaij paths you could "change" chacters alignments, gain other characters and so forth, make it more 3 dimenional. but yeah.... they were lame, but they were fun as a kid for a good 20 minutes.
I am going to do that at some point. As soon as i have time to write the story, then just convert it into a little online game. Some series of those books were pretty bad, but the Fighting Fantasy ones were good. And the Knightmare ones, about that old ITV programme.
I thought the Lost in Austen Choose Your Own Adventure (by Emma Campbell) was really good, very tongue-in-cheek! But Sony's Spore looks like it trumps the choose-your-own-adventure computer/video games... As for the prompts site, a part of me actually doesn't find most prompts as fun unless I can read somebody else's spin on it, which is why I like the weekly competitions here.
I could certainly see a more rapid, daily reaction. Like a blog which just posts a quick one or two sentence premise/prompt every day, and people just post their flash-fiction response below, with maybe individual threads for commenting on each one. Some sort of reward system would be nice, so people could rate individual entries up or down. This would be a lot of fun, actually.
