[Zuton] : Building a Universe with your help

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“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.”

Who, what, where when?

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I’ve decided that I’m going to start some interactive story posts after reading @tadstrange’s story series and seeing the active involvement of his audience. I really like the idea of getting the readers to direct the story and I am going to try and add my own little spin on it.

As well as the inspiration from @tadstrange, I’ve also been taking part in @swolesome’s interactive game, Dusk & Shadows. This brilliant idea is a turn-based game where we read and interact with the story posts set by Swolesome.

We began in the desert with nothing more than an empty canteen, a rusty knife and a mysterious poker chip with ‘Magic’ carved on it.

We are currently three posts deep and it’s a lot of fun. If it’s something that sounds interesting to you, make sure you drop by and see where everyone is at! This is the link for the introduction and here is the link to the first story post for you to follow along.

What is this series going to be about?

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It’s going to be a progressive story where the comments will directly influence the story, characters, and environments.

I’m going to be writing about a dystopian future with a mixture of influences pulled from different shows, posts, and real-life events. My aim is to keep the story going until we come to some form of an ending, although it doesn’t necessarily have to end.

As well as this, I think it could be interesting if people joined the universe that is created. You could write a post, start the progression of your own character and world, and over time, we could collaborate on a post and integrate our timelines together. You can link the posts up to this one by using the tag, ‘zuton' (or whatever we decide the universe to be called).

I’ll carry my story on regardless, so there will always be something to read.

I’m going to aim to keep the parts relatively short. This is so you can digest them quickly and spend more time on a comment. Posting shorter posts will allow me to put out regular parts to the story and will keep things fresh and engaging! I’ll try my best to set the scene and give direction as to what elements of the story can be adapted by using your comments.

How do I get involved?

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I’m going to be similar to my influencers because I’ll be leaving the direction of the character, environment and story, up to you.

Throughout the story, I will wrap phrases like this and at the end of the post, I will let you know what element each phrase is (environment, story or character). You can then comment on the post, with your opinion, about what you think each phrase should be and I will edit before I post the next part of the story. This will let people joining the series later to soak up the atmosphere before reaching the interaction.

Everyone will be credited for their ideas on the bottom of the post.

Funny scenarios will be appreciated a lot, but I will want to try to keep certain atmospheres in the story for obvious reasons. If you want to share a reason behind why you want to see the story go a certain way, that is fine. It will probably give you a better chance of getting your adaptation selected.

Where will we end up?

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I’m hoping this turns into a lot of fun and I suspect there could be a lot of interesting storylines created if people create their own characters. For myself, it’s a way to practise my storytelling and writing, as well as giving my audience something interactive to take part in with me.

Like I said before, I want to keep the posts short and punchy so that people can easily travel back through them and get up to speed with where we’re at. This should also make it easy for you guys to read, comment and get involved!

What do you think?

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I’d love to hear from you about this idea and also if you are enjoying what you’ve been seeing on my blog. It’s important for me to get honest feedback from you guys and hear what would make my content better. I’m always toying about with ideas and throwing things at the wall until it sticks, so if you like to see that (or don’t!), make sure you let me know.

Currently, there is no name for the universe that we will be creating together. Leave your ideas for the name below! For now it's going to be Zuton.

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Until I get the banner made for BuddyUP, I’ll be plugging our server here at the bottom of my posts. I’ve got loads of different posts about the community, so I’ll not shove it down your throat. If you're interested, swing by my blog and look for [BuddyUP] posts. If you’re intrigued now, drop by here.

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All my images are taken from Pixabay.com.

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> "Oh no."