Fiction is not atop my interests here on A Storied Career, but today, I’m dipping into two fiction-based story projects that have implications for storytelling outside fiction. Both of these are also mashups of fiction and social media.

Erik Hare has launched a fiction project called Mythnology, which he explains here. Here are some excerpts:

Many kinds of truth are best explored through fiction. … Mythnology is set up to be a novel written in blog form. … Each chapter, after the first three, is available only by subscription. I hope to develop a community of subscribers commenting and asking questions which help guide this process through to its completion. This should be a lot of fun as the process of writing a novel (really a novella) becomes a kind of performance art, as the ancient art of storytelling has long been. … The title Mythnology is a combination of Technology and Mythology. One is based on a system of faith where the other has a core of truth in it. … I happen to believe that myths, or stories that illuminate a grain of truth at the core of them, are the strongest connections between people. If a strong society is all about connections between people and people or people and ideas, our faith in technology is certainly going to test us in ways we probably do not understand very well yet. The ancient art of storytelling, or the crafting of myths, is how we usually fill the gaps.

Role Pages is “a fictional, in-character, role-playing social network where you can be anyone that you can imagine.” Here’s how the site works:

Our members include vampires, werewolves, demons, psychics, aliens, and elves. Sign up for an account, and tell the story of your own unique character by uploading pictures, videos, and written accounts of their adventures. You can also role play with our eclectic members, and participate in the creation of elaborate multi-player interactive stories.

Exploring fictional approaches can be an effective way to work through our storied realities.