Hogarth fix

For those of you hankerin' for a more frequent M. C. A. Hogarth fix, you're in luck: Flight of the Godkin Griffin (not a Jokka story, btw) has been appearing regularly on LiveJournal for the past couple weeks.

It's a somewhat interactive story, too. Here's how it works: at the end of each entry is a poll. Readers get to vote on what direction the story takes.

At the moment, anyone can vote. After the story's been running for four months, only people who donate money will be allowed to vote. (You don't have to donate much, or often; it looks like even a $1 donation will let you vote for a while.) Anyone can read along for free, of course.

In the first entry, an old soldier is about to retire; the poll asked whether she should get rid of her armor, or keep it just in case. The vote was strongly in favor of keeping it, which led to the protagonist being called back to active duty instead of being allowed to retire. I suspect that some of the voters misunderstood just how much power they had; I'm guessing that if she'd gotten rid of her armor, she would have gone on to have more civilian adventures. I think some of the voters were thinking that the plotline was fixed, it was just a question of whether, when the inevitable combat happened, she would have her armor with her or not.

In other words, I don't think there are right and wrong answers; I suspect the answers given end up having a great deal of influence on the shape of the story (and, for that matter, on the kind of person the protagonist is). But I could be entirely wrong.

4 Responses to “Hogarth fix”

  1. Jay Lake

    What a cool idea…

    reply
  2. David Moles

    I think if I was going to do something like that, I’d get bogged down trying to confound the readers’ expectations of what they were going to get for their votes.

    (For instance, the armor would probably just become a mildly embarrassing conversation piece taking up valuable space in the living room . . .)

    reply
  3. M. Hogarth

    Hey, Jed! Thanks for the write-up. 🙂

    As an interesting note, I’m currently being paid .02 cents a word, based on the rather staggering amount of donations I’ve gotten in the first two weeks. Pretty stunning for something I decided to do on a lark…

    reply
  4. Mary Anne

    It’s a great idea, and I want to steal it, but I’d feel like such a Maggie wanna-be…

    reply

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