Hi Guys,
We have a lot of great caption writers on caption.me, and I’d love to see that talent unleashed into longer forms of creativity.
I’ve chatted with Chris about the possibility of a spin-off site for short stories. It would basically operate like caption.me, but with extended time frames. So photos/ideas would be submitted and the best selected. Users would then have a period (maybe a week) to write a short story based on that theme, after which Voters could offer edits and vote.
If people wanted, the best stories could be online published and/or entered in eligible external competitions. I reckon with the talent we have on caption.me, we could create some great short stories.
Opinions welcome.
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I’ve just seen this idea again after a long time. This is so up my street personally. I’d definitely have a go at this. I love getting the chance to write something that is funny to definitely some people. About 10 years ago, I was a member of a live joke web site that had an excellent forum. One of the topics was The Never Ending Story. It started as just writing about 4 words i.e, “The man woke up with a…”
The next person might reply, “with a massive…”
You can guess the rest but not necessarily the obvious.
I started doing it and wrote about 6 lines, some followed suit and we ended up with the most daftest, funniest storyline going on. Before the site changed hands, and no longer ran a forum. The story line had reached the stage where we had a regular gang of people who traveled around in a giant flying kettle and we featured everyone on the site in the story lines as we went along. The things we got up to. We were in the Eurovision Song Contest once and what when on there was hilarious, before setting off again in our kettle. May not sound funny the way it reads but us lot were doubled up every day for a good few years. So, regarding short stories from a picture or a particular title, or theme, then I’d LOVE to join in. I hope it materialises. Could it perhaps be a topic in the forum? Where James starts us off with something, and we can write something, then after a certain length of time, who ever has the most lols wins. (That’s if it is an in site comp just for fun? No need for money is there? Just a picture award added to your profile would be plenty I would’ve thought.)
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Cheers, Karen.
Yeah, I think there’s definitely potential here with caption.me’s pool of creative minds and writing abilities. It’s the editing that could really make this work. I bang on about it all the time, but as great as Shakespeare was, it was his editors that made him the greatest.
The initial idea was that the original creation process would be individual, then the editing collaborative, but there’s no reason why a collaborative writing process couldn’t be another option.
There’s also the opportunity for diversity, as any genre could be tackled. We all like a laugh, but I’m sure we also have many other varied interests and ideas that could be expressed / unleashed in the short story format.
Anyhoo, glad you’re keen, Karen. We’d probably need quite a few more numbers to make it viable, but 2 is a good start 
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Great idea guys.
Not sure I’d be any good at this but I love a bit of creative silliness so I’d give it a go.
www.story.me is available!
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Lol, Wolf, many of your captions are already short stories so I’m sure you’d be great 
Seriously, though, it was actually the creativity expressed in some of the longer captions, yours included obviously, that first inspired this idea.
Nice find on story.me too. I secured shorties.me a while back in case the idea was embraced, but story.me is as good, if not better.
So, that’s 3 keen. Maybe if we could get to 10 or so this could be worth pursuing further?
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Be careful what you google, Karen! 
Chris has his hands in many things which probably includes Women’s Underwear. 
This might be a good idea. Maybe we could have a Caption.me gift shop? I’d buy some caption.me pants with ‘The Wolf’ on the back. It would probably lead to me getting divorced but it would be a laugh!
I’ve been married for many years, Wolf, so the only time I get near women’s underwear is when I’m sorting the laundry 
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What was wrong with these, Wolf?
Hang on a minute … Maybe Chris does have a sideline business?
I feel your pain, Chris. Same here
They’re nice James but they’re a bit too big for me, if you know what I mean. If I wore these pants, The Wolf would look like it’s just been punched in the nose by a Polar Bear.
Getting back on topic, the more I think about the Short Story Comp the more I like it.
I wouldn’t worry too much about getting confirmation in the forum as many captioneers might not engage in here as much as we do. If there was a link to this from the main site I’m pretty sure people would engage with it.
Any idea what’s required in terms of admin, costs, etc?
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Chris would have a much better idea of costs than me, Wolf, and also of what would be involved in setting things up. I’d love to be able to help out in that respect, but my coding skills don’t go beyond BASIC 
As far as the actual structure of the site goes it would lend heavily on Chris’s established caption.me format, with a few obvious tweaks. So, I’m guessing the code could be cloned to a large degree, but would still require a fair bit of work.
On the pro side, there are many external short story competitions that offer cash prizes, so perhaps we could enter our best stories in some of these and put any winnings back into the site.
There’s also the self-publishing option, and again, earnings are possible there. A shorties.me/story.me annual anthology could be a good earner.
The potential drain on Chris’s time is the most significant factor. Perhaps (given time) I could learn the Coding format and help out? It’s been a while, but I used to make my SEGA SC-3000 sing
Anyhoo, it’s an idea I’ve been mulling over for a few years now and, like you, I’d love to see it come to fruition if at all possible.
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Hi There
A couple of observations on this.
I like the idea but I think you would need to set a word limit.
Self Publishing might be an issue as you are using other peoples photographs.
Also to self publish you can do it on Amazon relatively easily. Someone would need to set up as the author and that includes giving all your tax details. They could get taxed on sales (plural)!!
As you have rightly pointed out there are lots of writing competitions and I would hate to see someone taking our work and using it to enter for themselves.
Thanks
Phil
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Definitely, Phil. I was thinking 1500 as that is a fairly common short story competition entry limit, and also a very readable length for voting purposes.
The photos would only provide inspiration for the short stories, they wouldn’t be used in any tangible way, so that shouldn’t be an issue.
Yep, there are a number of platforms with various fees and extremes. Amazon takes up to 70% of sales, while others, like Smashwords, only take 15%. There’s also tax and selling power to consider, so issues, but workable issues.
Absolutely. I have no idea about intellectual property laws, but that’s definitely something that would need to be addressed.
Many thanks for your input, Phil. All good things to consider.
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Is this a sideline or is it the robot??? Lol Chris xxx
