Trouble in a Bubble

Well maybe for you there isn't, but one can't continue to write in a bubble in a collaborative environment. In a moderated role-playing realm, your boundaries are strictly set and the direction of your transparent sphere is directed, but not in a Free-Form Story — a true collaborative rpg/story-telling environment.

When you add to the story through your character you have to be aware of what's going on with all the other character's around you. Your world is their world and vica versa. If someone's post reflects a dramatic shift in time you have write appropriately in order to accommodate the flow of the scene as they have written it.

Many of us who have collaboratively written for a while probably aren't even aware of the time anymore. We just naturally adjust for it, and expect our fellow writers to follow suit. It is only when someone start's to 'bubble-write' that storytellers become aware of this flow of time that we naturally follow.

No one's perfect though, mistiming occurs from time to time and its usually remedied in OOC discussion. It's only when it becomes a habit that other writers can start become annoyed, so the best way to avoid this is simply to be roughly aware of where your characters are on the time line. Realize that once your character interacts with another, that you are now both on the same time line. If the two characters split off from one another they cannot meet up again without synchronizing where they both stand. This can best be illustrated by this example:


 * Mr. Brown exchanges a few words with Miss Purple then takes off to the pub and has a drink while she jumps into her car and drives off across the city (about a forty five minute trip). She gets back to her apartment and starts conversing with Mr. Orange. Time is established by the action of Miss Purple mixing a drink in the kitchen then returning to the living room. In that time, the door bell rings, she answers the door and its Mr. Brown.

If you can't spot the problem here, then you probably need to work on your awareness of the unseen timeline that exists in every story. There's no way that Mr. Brown could suddenly be at Miss Purple's apartment that quickly, no matter how fast he finished his drink (and it was never established that he was following her). Now this might seem a trivial matter to some, but to many, it throws a monkey wrench in the story, especially when a writer has purposely written their post to generate the distance for an important reason. A collaborative story can smother when all the character's of multiple writers are boxed in together for too long in the same bubble. A good story needs breathing space as well as good timing.