As you may know, I’m a fan of Wil Wheaton and not for his Star Trek glory, but rather his current life as an author. In his latest collection of stories, Sunken Treasure, Wil mentioned a website called Ficlets (pg. 15):
Ficlets was cool because it forced writers to tell stories 1024 characters at a time. It was also a great source of inspiration for writers, regardless of how experienced they are. Oh, and it was a hell of a lot of fun, too.
…
Sadly, I have to use the past tense, because in January of 2009, AOL unceremoniously sent Ficlets off to the lannd of Wind and Ghosts. My anger at this short-sighted move cannot be contained in 1,024 characters.
As I read I thought this was a very cool idea. Writing short snippets of a story that other people can continue via sequels and prequels. It’s, as Wil put it, collaborative fiction. After reading that it had closed down, I started googling and discovered that it would soon be reborn… that was a long while ago.
Then this weekend I received an email alerting me to the launch of Ficly, the new iteration of Ficlets. It’s such a cool thing. Very short stories, or portions of a story, that captivate and let the imagination run. Add in the ability to continue another’s story and you’ve got one pretty neat system.
My favorite part of Ficly are the Challenges offered. Example:
Here’s the challenge: write a story about the lights going out. It could be by “natural” causes, temporary or permanent. But, it has to contain the actual event of the lights being on, and then going off.
Of course there’s nothing to win here, it’s just a means of spurring creativity and seeing different people’s takes on the same idea. Talk about letting the imagination run, think of it as a prompt from your creative writing professor.
It seems like a very small community right now but I expect Ficly to grow as more people discover it’s awesomeness. If you like to write or tend to express yourself through words — which are likely the same thing — then go check it out. You’ll be happy you did.