Since I’ve been studying engineering, I haven’t been able to write much. In high school, I used to have to write a fair amount, and I rather enjoyed it, and I began to worry that my ability would atrophy without use. So, in October, I came up with a fun scheme to give me an opportunity to keep my hand in, so to speak.
The idea is that I use some sort of random story-idea generator every morning to get some sort of inspiration, then write something based on that for five minutes. I’ve been doing this every day for eighty-eight days now, and I’m finding it a pretty fun experience.
One thing, however, is that some of these stories, I would like very much to continue, find out what happens next–something that my current system doesn’t really allow for. This lead me to a fun idea that could also exercise my web programming skills: Make a site where people can post bits of a story, then have others continue it. The idea is that stories will branch out, forking the plot in different directions (while still attempting to stay true to the original theme), with users voting on which branch of the story is their favourite.
I’ve written a simple version of this site (using Ruby on Rails, for those of you who are curious), and want to start having people use it soon. At the moment, it’s working nicely locally, but dies when I try to start the public-facing version (which lives on Heroku). Hopefully I’ll be able to figure it out soon. Well, writing this entry provided the impetus I required to get it fixed: as of now, http://fiveminutestories.heroku.com is active and working…now I just need to start getting people to try it out. If anyone actually reads this and decides to take a look, please send me feedback at james.nvc@gmail.com!
