Protagonize, a site that launched a few months ago, has been taking off lately within its community. The idea behind Protagonize is to serve as a, in their own words, ” creative writing community dedicated to writing various forms of collaborative, interactive fiction.”
The way that it works is that one author writes a story, and others post branches or chapters to it in different directions. The result is an organic, evolving story where the whole community can participate. Think of it like a collaborative story writing version of the video conversations site Seesmic, where an initiator starts a topic and the direction of it is decided by the community. Users can also subscribe to the RSS feed of a particular sto ry and follow it as it gets new contributions.
So far, a number of creative outcomes have come from the community. A couple of the most popular ones include “If You Go Down to the Woods Today…” which has so far 20 branches, and Day Break, with 8 branches. The service in the past week has also launched a feature for users to submit linear, one-off stories, which should boast its use by even more.
The site, overall, is a neat community experiment and great place for hobbyist writers and enthusiasts to collaborate collectively and create something with the help of other people you can call your own. And of course, if you’re more of the reader type and you’re looking for something to take a breather on from that Stephen King novel, some of the addventures on Protagonize could come as a great read.
