A Round Robin is a story written collaboratively by a group of authors, each of whom takes a turn writing a chapter or section; the chapters are produced in chronological order, or at least in the order in which they are intended to be read. There is no agreed-upon outline for the overall plot, and the authors are all free to take the story in whatever direction they wish when it is their turn to write a section, without consulting the others, leaving those who follow to deal with the consequences of what they have written. By the same token, each must accept what previous contributors have written.
A classic Round Robin has each person writing multiple parts, repeating the same order of authors each round. Variations include each author writing a single part or the authors writing multiple parts without a pattern to the repetition, perhaps not even producing the same number of parts. Another simple variation is to have the same person write both the first and last parts.
A variant on the Round Robin format restricts the author's knowledge of what has come before. Typically in this variant, each new writer will be given only the immediately preceding chapter, and must extrapolate how things got there. Needless to say, this is done only as an intentional gambit to produce amusingly incoherent results; moreso the shorter each chapter is. This variant reaches its ultimate expression in comic strips where each participant is given only a single
panel. This variant is often called "exquisite corpse", after a famous phrase created by this method.
A Round Robin presents a number of obvious storytelling dangers, including
Flanderization,
Character Derailment,
Loads And Loads Of Characters,
Mood Whiplash,
Plot Holes,
Ret Con,
Spotlight Stealing Squad, and worst of all
Dead Fic if someone fails to go through their turn.
A modern day Round Robin only rarely results in a publishable work. It is more commonly produced for the authors' own amusement. It has also been used in
Fan Fic.
The
Round Robin is probably
Older Than Dirt, as many the plots involving a group of people sitting down around a fire (or whatever) to tell a story testify.
TV Tropes itself
has one.
Examples
Comic Books
- DC Challenge is a rare comic book example where each issue had a different author except the final one. Each part ended with at least one Cliff Hanger and usually several, which the next writer had to figure out how to resolve.
- Project Pieces
is an attempt to create a publishable comic where each panel is drawn by someone else. So far, it seems to have degenerated into a nonsensical stream-of-consciousness.
- The She Hulk story The Time of Her Life was a very interesting artistic Round Robin. Each artist drew a two pages from the comic in sequence. it was an excellent example of how things can vary depending on the artist. She-Hulk varied from huge 80s perm to normal 00s hair, from bodybuilder to slender in physique, from normal to vast in bust... Etc etc. If memory serves, there was only one writer, however.
Fan Fic
- The Anime Addventure (sic) is an entire site devoted to Round Robin-style writing, using a branching tree structure similar to a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book; anyone can join in on any plotline by simply picking an option from the end of the most recent episode and writing an installment about it.
- CAPOW Anime Prose Original Writing; see the link for more details.
- The Global Ranma Insanity Thread, a combination round robin and text-based roleplay (with, effectively, everybody acting as the Gamemaster) that started on the rec.arts.anime.misc newsgroup and has since migrated to a mailing list.
- Improfanfic, which involves signups and deadlines to help keep the story moving along at a reasonable pace; unfortunately, this doesn't always work and many stories have since just ground to a halt after the signups withered away.
- The Renegades is a Kingdom Hearts fic that has three people writing its chapters in a circular fashion, as well as special excerpts written by all of the authors or a one-off chapter written out of turn, which all eventually connect to the main storyline.
- Thwomp goes to the Chocolate Factory, shared between three Brits, is a particularly hilarious example. It begins with a Thwomp attempting suicide due to boredom at his job as manager of the titular factory, and just gets weirder from there.
Film
Literature
- Sorcery And Cecelia combines the Round Robin with the epistolary novel.
- Parodied relentlessly by Mark Twain in Roughing It with a chapter about a literary magazine's serialized novel of this form.
- Cronicas De UP
- There is a type of Round Robin used in the C18th novel Little Women, where the characters take turn to tell a narrative.
- Black Trillium was written by Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Julian May in this fashion: each of them wrote chapters about her respective heroine (Kadya, Haramis, and Anigel, accordingly), which were then compiled and edited into a single novel. However, the collaboration proved so stressful for all of them that they continued writing in the same universe independently, effectively creating three different continuities after BT.
- Atlanta Nights, which was specifically written an enormous, Plot Hole-ridden mess.
Live Action TV
- In a way, virtually every TV show ever follows this. After all, the individual episodes in a Story Arc are typically penned by different writers. Examples are obviously too numerous to list.
- The Whose Line Is It Anyway game "Three-Headed Broadway Star" featured the players making up a "hit Broadway love song" Round Robin-style, one word at a time.
- They had more games like these, for instance the Irish Drinking Song.
Webcomic
- "El cadaver exquisito" and "El muertito sabrosón" two projects hosted at http://produccionesbalazo.com/ , 19 different authors in the both of them, only Spanish but still worth to check.
- The Centerstorm project, which split off from the old "Fan Art Headquarters" (now a defunct site) Impromanga project; it hosts all of the FAHQ's legacy comics and a number of new titles.
- The Doji project, inspired by the host site's Monthly Online Manga that gave artists a topic to draw a short comic about each month.
- The Multi-Artist Exchange improvisational comics, which after some experimentation locked in the artists drawing for each other, and open discussion of where to take the plot is heavily encouraged.
- The school year starts at WCI High, a collaborative effort by several members of the Webcomics Inc. social network site. The artists have their various characters attend high school together. Normally runs September through May, taking a hiatus during the summer (well, it is high school). Originally stand-alone stories, it started including more and more Cross Over events, including the big "Sadie Hawkins Dance" storyline.
Web Original
Western Animation
- The animated short Anijam consists of segments animated by different animators revolving around a single character. The animators were only given the last frame of the previous segment, which then became the first frame of their segment, and were told only to make sure the character appeared at the beginning and end. The segments range from the humorous to the abstract, and sometimes the character disappears for most of the segment, but reappears at the end for the next one.
