Round Robin

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 character derailment, loads and loads of characters, plot holes, retcons, spotlight-stealing, and worst of all Dead Fic if someone fails to go through their turn. In general, the most major danger of a Round Robin is that each author is more eager to introduce his own characters and subplots and then talk about them than to write about characters introduced previously.
Furthermore, it's hard to give a Round Robin an actual ending, since even when all the plot points are wrapped up, someone will likely reveal that this was all part of the villain's master plan, or another mega-powerful villain will show up suddenly - all in a desperate try to lengthen the story for at least as many pages; of course, it won't work, since everyone else are tired of the story already, and so the Round Robin will never get a proper ending.
Category:Terminology