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.
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 (Creative Anime Prose Original Writing, GRIT's (see it's entry) Panfandom "sister" (many early CAPOW members were also frequent posters to GRIT) mailing-list based group that requires aspiring members to submit one original character that has to pass muster by the other members in order to join; anybody can start a story, and the first person to do so is generally considered the unofficial "Gamemaster".
- 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.
Literature
Live Action TV
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.
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.
