Help:Wikistory

A Wikistory is a work that's developed in a certain way that is facilitated by the wiki framework.

Descriptive Wikistory
Motto: "The universe and everything in it" 

Optimally, each noun is described in more detail, which leads to additional information and stories. More often, key terms (people, proper nouns, phrases) are the only ones further developed. For example:


 * You may start out simply, with a very short story or a scene of an area, a room, a landscape. Then, for every noun in that landscape, you describe it further, adding details you might not have added. These details are told objectively, as if you were only using the senses to observe, but you can include words within that description, which will take you to other stories.


 * So, if your first page of the story was, "From the northern corner of the sky, the wind comes. It arrives with a scent of spring, and wraps itself around a small cottage.  The cottage is old, sitting on a sparse hill, and looks as if it had the flesh sucked off it.  The boards are old, beaten, and the windows are smashed in.  There are broken flowers perked up near the base, and piles of dark wood are stacked haphazardly about the hillside."


 * So then, you would take each noun that is observable: sky, wind, hill, scent, cottage, boards, windows, flowers, and wood. Each of those you give an extended description, and within the description, you use one of the words to link to another story.  Remember --- to have it make sense.  The idea here is of course art, but the best art is rooted in what we know, and that makes it beautiful.


 * So, if you are describing the flowers, you might say, "The flowers are twisted and broken almost beyond recongition. The petals are shredded, and they hang in the breeze, twittering and twitching.  It was as if some great force came through, like a thief in the night, and took their beauty away, twisted away their strength, a monster of nature, a hideous wraith of the night.  The flowers are like children whose legs have been crushed, and when they walk, they look like poor dolls."

Choice-Based Wikistory
In series 2, there are multiple stories branching off from two choices in a story. These choices can happen at any point in the story. The point of this series is to express a variety of different perspectives, because in every story you write, there will be two options, in which you may continue the story from that point from the perspective of a different character. For example:

V             / J – W -- w          /     X          /     / A – D – K – Y -- t   \ E – L -- Z       \    \ \   a         M – b           \ c

In which the various letters are different stories. So, you start with your story, and in this case, I chose three options initially, and from then on two options.


 * Let's say the first story is about a woman named Catherine who runs away from her family, because of being mistreated by her husband. Within that story, you might have a number of characters, Catherine, her husband, her daughter, and maybe the man who picks her up in his truck.  So, initially you would pick out three characters (for the first set of stories), the husband, daughter, and man in the truck, and at some point in Catherine's story, you would start writing from their perspective.


 * From then on, you would be telling a different story, and that would connect you with other people. And by the end, you will have an intricate web of personalities, styles, stories: a magnolia of experience.