It's time for CYOA Thursday! Yeah!

[in_my_nature]

What is CYOA?

It’s the ysosrsmiranda AWESOME, Choose Your Own Adventure EXTRAVAGANZA!

It’s Bigger than Life!

It’s Super Fantastic!

It’s Better than Turtles! Wait a hot little minute, better than turtles?

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For the poor unfortunates reading this that have no idea what CYOA is, I suggest the following sites for more information:

CYOA Official Site, the intro makes it worthwhile

Wikipedia article on CYOA

CYOA wiki with a craptastic ton of stories/ideas/inspiration

Basically, CYOA books are the most awesome thing ever! They’re all I read. But then I have the reading comprehension of a ten-year-old and I’m concocting a version of the Boxcar Children featuring Caroline and Cassidy.

Now to the srsbsns.

Teh Rulz:

K y’all, here’s how this is going to work. If you want to participate in this first experimental round of CYOA, you are a star. If you don’t, well I won’t say you’re a douche bag, but I might think it.

All rules already in place for the community apply. If you feel that you might benefit from a refresher course (or if you never bothered to read them a$$hole) they can be found here.

I strongly suggest working with a beta and there is a wonderful list here.

CYOA chapters will be posted every Thursday beginning APRIL 2. If you sign up and fail to post your chapter, I will personally hunt you down and at the very least kick you in the shin. And I am one crazy cookie who chews metal for fun, so believe me when I say it will hurt.

But srsly, don’t just whimp out. Life comes up, hey, I'm a social worker so I understand that betta than most, but you need to let me know ASAP if you won’t be able to post on time so I can arrange a back-up.

Step One

So step one = respond to this post with an affirmative that you want to participate, your email address (if you’re not comfortable providing that info here, email me directly at cincinnatijake@tds.net or send me an lj message) and give me at least one (more are better) week that will work for you: 4/2, 4/9, 4/16, 4/23, 4/30, 5/7, 5/14, 5/21.

You must sign up by Tuesday, March 24th in order to participate.

If you’re willing to serve as a back-up, let me know. Or if you’re only interested in serving as a back-up that would be wonderful too, just reply to this post with the info above.

If you have another writer that you’d like to work with that’s cool too. You could request to take back to back weeks, or just work together on one week to write something longer.

Step the Second

I will compile a list of the participants and hand out week assignments next Thursday. Along with concise guidelines (ahem, rulz, but I like to be the good cop) for the fraktastic folks who sign up.

Thrice

So how’s this really going to work? Cause it seems like it could turn into something super complicated, super quick.

I hope this shitty diagram will help to clear that up.




Each writer will be responsible for a minimum of 1,000 words. It is the writer’s prerogative in terms of how to divvy those words up between the two sections. More words are great, less words are not.

That goes ditto (as per the diagram) on which strand to end and which to continue. The writer’s creativity is what rulz CYOA!

If a writer wants to incorporate reader suggestions/prompts that is also their choice. It is certainly not required.

As for the style of writing, CYOA books are written “from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character’s actions in response to the plot and its outcome” (ganked from Wikipedia cause I don’t know my first from my second person and hello who’s this, third?) but I’m not going to dictate style.

Write in the style that makes you the most comfortable. Incorporate characters and plots as you wish. It just needs to make sense following from the week before. This is about creating something collaboratively that is new and different for this fandom.

Don’t feel intimated that you have to come up with something CRACK!aliciously amazing. I sure don’t. I’ve got my CRACK!cap on for the Round Robin and so I may opt for something that's more in the way of action/adventure for my CYOA segment.

Now I love Zombies! Aliens! Ninjas! Draculas! as much, if not more than the next girl. But, I know that I can’t convincingly write some of the things that I love. So let me stress again your creativity is what rulz!

Think of the chapter that you inherit as containing two prompts for you to play with and take in any direction that you want.

Misc. Stuff

Well, if you’ve gotten to this point, what are you waiting for? Step up and SIGN-UP. It will be great!

The dramatic prairie dog says, "Join teh dark side!"

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If you don’t want to sign-up, please feel free to comment here with ideas/prompts/suggestions…in other words, FEED THE ADVENTURE AND BE SUPPORTIVE!

Above all this is meant to be good, clean fun.

P to the S peeps

Check out these icons by MRBNATURAL that I stumbled upon. CYOA icons this way!