Can Inkvite rejuvenate collaborative fiction?
A new app makes the literary ping-pong of collaborative writing that little bit easier.
When you hear the words "collaborative flash fiction" do you a) jump for joy at the creative possibilities of the web or b) curl up with your copy of Literary Review and wish the internet had never been invented?
Until recently I would have placed myself firmly in the b) camp. Collaborative fiction brought to mind Victorian jeux d'esprit, 1970s experiments, wiki novels and fan fiction by gamers. Flash fiction, or micro-fiction, while nice in theory, tends to be a little unsatisfying.
Somehow though, combining the two works surprisingly well, as I found out when I tested Inkvite, a new social reading and writing app for iPhones.
This is how it works: you sign in with Twitter or Facebook, choose the genre and length of the story, and "inkvite" up to four co-writers – friends or strangers. The antisocial have the option to "solo write".
Then, the best bit, especially for the imaginatively challenged: an automatic title generator. This is how I ended up co-writing a romance story called "The Defective View". You write up to 280 characters, press submit, then your co-author gets a notification that it's their turn. The literary ping-pong goes on till the story is finished. If you're especially proud of your effort you can put it in a library, where other people read and rate it.
The brevity and immediacy of flash fiction really lends itself to collaborative fiction, traditionally hamstrung by a laborious writing process. It's too early to tell if Inkvite will manage to avoid that other pitfall: being more entertaining for the writers than the readers (on the evidence of "The Defective View", possibly not). But as a digital parlour game, it is good literary fun.
Until recently I would have placed myself firmly in the b) camp. Collaborative fiction brought to mind Victorian jeux d'esprit, 1970s experiments, wiki novels and fan fiction by gamers. Flash fiction, or micro-fiction, while nice in theory, tends to be a little unsatisfying.
Somehow though, combining the two works surprisingly well, as I found out when I tested Inkvite, a new social reading and writing app for iPhones.
This is how it works: you sign in with Twitter or Facebook, choose the genre and length of the story, and "inkvite" up to four co-writers – friends or strangers. The antisocial have the option to "solo write".
Then, the best bit, especially for the imaginatively challenged: an automatic title generator. This is how I ended up co-writing a romance story called "The Defective View". You write up to 280 characters, press submit, then your co-author gets a notification that it's their turn. The literary ping-pong goes on till the story is finished. If you're especially proud of your effort you can put it in a library, where other people read and rate it.
The brevity and immediacy of flash fiction really lends itself to collaborative fiction, traditionally hamstrung by a laborious writing process. It's too early to tell if Inkvite will manage to avoid that other pitfall: being more entertaining for the writers than the readers (on the evidence of "The Defective View", possibly not). But as a digital parlour game, it is good literary fun.
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