I’m in the mood to bring you a list of recently discovered prompts, tools, and platforms instead of merely listing them on the inside page dedicated to that topic:

• Saikat Basu on MakeUseOf.com shares 7 Collaborative Storytelling Websites to Weave Your Own Digital Stories, some of which I’ve listed/written about before and some that are new to me. I’ve written previously about One Million Monkeys Typing. Folding Story, a game in which players write one line of a story, fold the paper, and pass it to the next person, is listed in the inside page, but it holds a special place in my heart because my cousins and sisters and I played this game as kids. We played three variations: In “Boy-Girl-Where-They-Met,” everyone would write a boy’s name in the first round, fold the paper, and pass it to the next person. The same process was repeated for the girl’s name, where they met, what the boy said, what the girl said, and the consequences. This variation was by far our favorite and is really the only variation that results in a story. In “Love Letters,” the first round is the salutation, the next the body of the letter, and the final round, the closing. In “Funny Pictures,” round one is the head; round two the body; and round three, the legs and feet. Other sites in Basu’s article are Ficly, where stories are limited to 1,024 characters and anyone can pick up a narrative thread and weave a prequel or sequel; Fabulate, a crowdsourced book with submissions limited to 500 words; WikiStory, a site for writing short stories collaboratively or alone and sharing it with and receiving feedback from others; StoryMash, a creative writing community for authors, amateur writers, readers and anyone interested in collaborative fiction and collaborative creative writing; and Novlet, a Web application designed to support collaborative writing of non-linear stories.
• The Brainstormer, pictured above right, is a cool, pinwheel-shaped Web app (and also iPhone app) in which you click on a button called “Random” and get a random set of words phrases consisting of an object or person, an adjective, and a story structure. Great as a story prompt.
• broadcastr, in beta at this writing, is a social-media platform for location-based stories. It enables the recording, indexing, listening, and sharing of audio content.

• Dipity is a free digital-timeline website. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines (such as the one pictured) that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.
• The Story Quest/Challenge is a story activity offered by Heidi Dahlsveen on the blog Historiefortelling (which, I believe is Norwegian). The idea is to create a short story based on an image and a specific story structure. The blog post provides both instructions and a sample story.

• I’ve written many times about the Six-Word Memoirs published on SMITH Magazine (story purists dispute that these are stories); the Six-Word Memoirs Card Game is coming this fall. SMITH Mag founder Larry Smith does say much in his post about what the game will be like, but he tells an interesting story of choosing a gamemaker.
• Guts on the Table is a story exercise designed by Puanani Burgess for community-building and the conflict-transformation process. Participants sit in a circle and are given these three instructions:
  1. Tell the story of your names, all of your names.
  2. Tell the story of your community, however, each participant defines “community.”
  3. Tell the story of your gift(s)
  Burgess says she’s participated in more than 1,008 circles. This exercise sounds wonderful to me; I encourage you to read Burgess’s post to grasp the full scope of the exercise.