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 reconigition. 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."
Example: Once upon a time, a fairy tale about fairy tales, by diaskeaus
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.
Examples: Shrodinger's Cat
Cellular Civilization
Crossover Wikistory[]
Basically, you take a storyline --- let's say, of a college kid going to the grocery store to pick up his weekly ration of food. As the story progresses, at various points in the narrative, other stories are linked to, and once read, when the reader comes back to the main narrative, it has changed.
- For example, while going to the store, college kid Ryan saw an old lady on the other side of the street. If the reader chooses to read the story about the old lady, when they finish (at the end of the old lady story is a link back to Ryan's story) his story will be enhanced by that knowledge, and will have been changed.
- The trick to this is to have Ryan's story covered before going off into any of the other stories. So, Ryan's original story is that he leaves his dorm, gets on his bike, rides past a school, and sees a bunch of stuff, but not being interested in any of them, he goes to the store and gets his food.
- The cool thing about this style is that if he does get interested in any of the stuff he sees on the way to the store, his story changes. So if the reader goes into the story of the old woman, then when we go back to Ryan's story, then perhaps he meets the old lady in the store and says something to her.
G – ABDG
/
D – ABD
/ \
/ \ ABDH
/ \ /
B – AB H
/ \ / \
/ \ / ABEH
/ \ /
/ \ ABE
/ \ / \ ABEI
/ \ / \ /
A E I
\ / \ / \
\ / \ / ACEI
\ / \ /
\ / \/
\ / ACE
\ / \
C – AC \ ACEJ
\ \ /
\ J
\ / \
\ / ACFJ
\ /
F – ACF
\
K – ACFK
So, the original storyline is 'A'. From A, during that segment of the story, Ryan sees an old lady on the road, who represents 'B'. If he chooses to look at her (and the reader reads the story of the old lady), then Ryan's story becomes 'AB'. If however, Ryan doesn't look at the old lady, but instead reminsces about his ex-girlfriend, which represents 'C', then Ryan's story becomes 'AC', after the story of his girlfriend is finished. And so on.
Movement[]
- Fourth of the WikiStory:Styles
This is a story that is told in and out of time.
This kind of story begins in the present, and through triune story arcs (present, future, past), interweaves with other stories at integral points in the story. The reader has the option to shoot forward into the future or backward into the past, and thus, learn more about what is going on in the story.
future: joe is on his deathbead
/
future: joe is released from prison
/ \
/ past: joe is in jail
/ \
present: joe the mobster shoots Marconi, his best bud, joe gets caught by the police
\ /
\ future: Marconi cheats with joe’s wife
\ /
past: joe and Marconi live out the good life
\
past: joe and Marconi meet
Labyrinth Wikistory[]
This involves taking a central storyline, and a plethora of other storylines, and constructing a maze out of the various stories. So, the central storyline might be a man questing for the holy grail, and on the way, other paths are opened to his quest, and other stories are opened up as the main story progresses. Some of these stories will lead to other stories which might dead end, and the goal is to find the storyline which will lead to the end, and hence, provide full knowledge and explanation.
- So, for example, in his quest for the holy grail, our hero, Roland, is wandering through a dark forest, and in the forest he espies a young maiden slipping through the trees, and he also sees a dark cave. Chasing after the maiden might bring him closer to his goal, or going through the dark cave. In this way, this way of telling the story is much like a Fighting Fantasy gamebook or a Choose-Your-Own Adventure.
- But as a writer, you don't need to follow such strong guidelines. You can be more creative, and instead of telling of the quest of Roland in his search for the grail, he might espy this young maiden, and instead of telling of his quest for her, you tell the story of this young maiden and why she is in the forest. Then, the labryinth becomes more philosophical, and the quest for the ending of the story is the completion of some idea rather than something practical.