Have you ever collaborated with someone to tell a story?
A few months ago, I had embarked on the most creative collaboration I have had in writing. My multi-talented friend, Constantinos Xenofontos, started creating sketches of semi-fictional characters and shared them online. He had only been posting them for a few days, when I had expressed my love for what he was doing, and we then spontaneously decided to collaborate: he would send me a character every day and I would write a short, accompanying story, as inspired by that particular character. The rule was that he would not tell me anything about them, so that I would not influenced. I would just create based on how I perceived what I saw. We called this The Semi-fictional Character of the Day Project and we decided that it would run for one month. This project was quite successful and we had a loyal group of readers who followed it with great interest. Personally, I was fascinated by the way Constantinos would create new characters every day, partly as inspired by his daily life, and partly as guided by his resourcefulness.
Week 2 semi-fictional characters by Constantinos Xenofontos
The dual form of storytelling had always fascinated me (as my doctoral research was on texts which combined words and pictures), but it was the first time that, as a co-creator I began to realise, how a collaboration between different people with diverse media could spark creativity and enable two individuals, thousand miles apart, to have a creative dialogue.
This realisation was partly the inspiration for the creation of an online tool which enables people to collaboratively tell stories, connect with their readers, and overcome creative writing blocks. The tool is called The Socialholic Typewriter and it is one of the finalists in the mahallae challenge common vision for the future in Cyprus. Read more about it here.
I do believe that our idea has the potential to innovate the way we tell, share and consume stories, supporting young people from different communities in Cyprus and the Euro-Mediterranean area to connect through creativity and collaboratively craft unique narratives.
If you believe in this idea too, would like to see it implemented, or would like to get involved, please:
1. go here in order to create a profile
2. click on the confirmation email (if you can’t see it, it has gone to spam)
3. vote for us by clicking endorse on our page right here
4. leave us a comment
Although we have gathered amazing people in our group and the idea has been embraced by important representatives of the literary world in Cyprus, our idea still needs your support to continue regardless of the voting outcome!
I love you for supporting
 Do you have any comments, questions or suggestions about the way The Socialholic Typewriter will work? What has been your experience with collaborative writing? What other forms of storytelling (apart from words and pictures) have you used?
Love,
Louiza
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