Round Robin Story Telling

Would anyone be interested in working on a sort of collective story, just for giggles? This is something my friends and I have done before, as it allows everyone involved to tell part of a story. It doesn't matter if you consider yourself a writer or not. From what I've seen here, pretty much everyone possesses the ability to write quite well, so I think we could craft a fun story.

If anyone is interested, just let me know and we can discuss some ground rules for the story.

 

The rules we used among my friends were simple. Here they are, in no particular order.

1. No actual people in the story. Use only made up names. We can use real places, but try not to use an actual person's house, office, etc.
2. No using the line "So-and-so woke up, realizing it was all just a dream." This is an easy cop-out if you don't like the direction the story is going.
3. No randomly killing off a character just to spite another author. Self-explanatory.
4. No cursing.
5. No sudden changes in tense. If the story is written in past tense, don't switch to present.
6. No sudden changes in perspective. If the story is written in third person, don't switch to first person.
7. No sudden changes in genre. If the story is set in the real world, don't just have a troll appear.
8. No double-posting.
9. Leave your post open-ended. This allows the next author to start where you left off.

I know the list sounds quite negative, but it does help to have guidelines.

 

I'd kind of like to see if anyone else would be willing to play along. I've found an exercise like this works really well if you can get something like 5-8 people to play. You get a wide range of voices and ideas, but you don't have so many involved that it becomes clunky.

The last time I did this with friends, we write it over email, with one guy compiling the master story. Six of us were involved, and over the course of two week we wrote about 75 pages worth of material.

 

Charlie gave the Marine a quizzical look, "I just got the dog at..."

"At Fort Devens...I know. I left him there two days ago while I was on assignment."

Charlie slumped, "He had no tags or registration. His DOD was up and I had him processed out."

With this, the Marine seemed to grow angry. Charlie found this interesting, even though he wasn't looking for a fight. What really intrigued him was the way Rambo had yet to respond to the Marine. Charlie watched as the Marine walked toward him...

 

Before the Gunny could reply, Rambo leapt into action, tackling the Marine and biting deeply into his arm. The Marine howled in surprise and pain. Charlie dropped his wallet and moved to pull the dog away.

The Gunny cried out for help. That was when the door to the next room down exploded outward and five more Marines poured out to confront Charlie and Rambo.

 

The Marines were not easily deterred, though. One man drove the Gunny to the hospital, but the other four piled into a humvee and began chasing after Charlie's RV.

 

The driver of the humvee began to swerve violently left and right, but Rambo rammed the windshield again, shattering the entire pane of tempered glass and making his way into the cab of the humvee.

Charlie tucked his RV in behind the humvee and followed them down the long, deserted stretch of I-90, headed west. Up ahead, he saw a sign that read "Sturbridge - 12 Miles."

 

...by driving his dilapidated Ford Galaxie directly into the back of Charlie's RV. Believing that the driver of the RV had maliciously thrown a dog out the passenger window, Paul of PETA was determined to bring him down.