{"id":222,"date":"2007-03-13T15:24:49","date_gmt":"2007-03-13T21:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nerdflood.wordpress.com\/2007\/03\/13\/ficlets-making-mini-fiction-into-a-social-app\/"},"modified":"2007-03-13T15:24:49","modified_gmt":"2007-03-13T21:24:49","slug":"ficlets-making-mini-fiction-into-a-social-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/ficlets-making-mini-fiction-into-a-social-app\/","title":{"rendered":"Ficlets: making mini-fiction into a social app"},"content":{"rendered":"

This. Is. Brilliant.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

John Scalzi has announced<\/a> the creation of Ficlets, which is basically a social app consisting entirely of collaborative short fiction. And it is a phenomenal idea. At the very heart of the concept is what we’ve been trying to do over at the Evil Avatar Writer’s Guild<\/a>. Which is concentrate writing into short collaborative projects that everyone can participate in.<\/p>\n

First, you create a profile<\/a>. Luckily, Ficlets is one of the growing number of social sites to include myopenid<\/a> single sign-on functionality. Then, you begin creating short (very short<\/strong> — maximum of 1,024 characters)<\/em> pieces of fiction. It can be anything<\/em>. Not only that, but you can go through and read everyone else’s submissions. You can rate other authors’ written works, leave comments, AND you can even create a “prequel” or a “sequel” based on their writing. I have one piece<\/a> out there right now that is a sequel to another piece<\/a>, which was in itself a sequel to something started by John Scalzi<\/a>. And in those simple three hops, the “story” (more of a collaborative “chain”, really)<\/em> has become something completely different.<\/p>\n

Fun! And absolutely brilliant<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And if you’re looking for some quick inspiration, Ficlets has you covered<\/a>. Randomly-generated Flickr<\/a> photos can be queried and displayed. Click on any image, and a new story entry opens with your inspirational image to the side for your to reference as you write. They even have randomly-generated story starters and story enders that you can use to get ideas flowing. Find something you like? Save an author’s work to your Favorites<\/a>. Or save pieces of text in your Clippings.<\/p>\n

Ficlets completely embraces the web 2.0 open mantra. In addition to utilizing such services as myopenid <\/em>and Flickr<\/em>, it also includes RSS feeds of all authors’ works and comments, extensive tagging<\/a> functionality, and the ability to add authors as “friends” and track their content.<\/p>\n

As I continue to focus more on my writing<\/a>, I plan to hit Ficlets often to throw quick pieces of fiction out there. If I keep my mind moving and my fingers tapping, I can hopefully keep the ideas fresh and fabulous. Or, at the very least, topical<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This. Is. Brilliant. John Scalzi has announced the creation of Ficlets, which is basically a social app consisting entirely of collaborative short fiction. And it is a phenomenal idea. At the very heart of the concept is what we’ve been trying to do over at the Evil Avatar Writer’s Guild. Which is concentrate writing into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[93,425,714],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-community","tag-ficlets","tag-writing","last-post"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielpayne.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}