We've tried to update this rules post to be as simple as possible. However, since we're spread across multiple platforms, we realize that things may still be confusing. You're always welcome to contact the mods or your captain with any questions. Contact information will be provided in the sign up and posting order posts on the LiveJournal and Dreamwidth communities, or on the Discord server (invite in sign up).
Introduction
Welcome, welcome, one and all, to the magical land of Shiritori!
You have probably been directed here by your good friend, Curiosity, in which case I hope you will stay with us, even after your good friend has been satisfied. You are certainly in good company of people who, too, were once led by their good friends.
How to Actually Write Your Entry
What's Shiritori?
Shiritori is a writing game based on the word game of the same name.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, Wikipedia defines shiritori as:
a Japanese word game in which the players are required to say a word which begins with the final kana of the previous word. … "Shiritori" literally means "taking the buttocks" or "taking the end".
In the original game, a chain of words are created, for example:
A: いのり (祈り; inori; prayer)
B: りんご (ringo; apple)
C: ごぼう (牛蒡; gobou; burdock [P.S. this stuff is amazing, especially when stir-fried with sesame oil!!!])
A: うらぎりもの (裏切り者; uragirimono; betrayer)
B: のぞむ (望む; nozomu; to desire)
C: むらさき (紫; murasaki; purple)
A: きいいろ (黄色; kiiiro; yellow)
… and so on, and so forth…
Shiritori: the Writing Game
Just like the original word game, this writing game is played by taking the end of the previous person's story as the starting point for your story. You can begin your story with anything from just the last word to the entire final sentence of the previous person's story, as long as the original word order of what you choose to use is kept the same (small alterations withstanding, see below).
Example A: Last word
[…] “And they think we're weird.”
Weird.Why is this so hard? […]
Example B: Part of the final sentence
[…] “You won't get interrupted so much if you learn to lock your doors properly.”
"If you learn to lock your doors properly, you wouldn't have to worry about security breaches," Kitayama says lazily from where he's spread out on the couch. […]
Example C: The entire final sentence
[…] "Maybe it's the leather pants."
"Maybe it's the leather pants." […]
From the building block you're given, you can write a story about anything you want, of any length, and for any fandom — or it can be set in no fandom and be completely original! (Those rare birds; I wouldn't mind seeing a few more of those around.)
You mentioned "small alterations withstanding"…?
Sometimes, it can be a bit hard to work with what you're given, so there are Failbot!Mod (and predecessors)-approved methods of getting around those.
-
It would be okay to modify you've chosen to use by adding an article (a/an/the) to the beginning.
Example:
… what about walls?
The walls of...
-
It would be okay to modify the tense of the verbs and/or the number of the nouns.
Example A: change of tense
… as the wall crumbled.
Crumbling at his fingertips…
Example B: change of number
… as the wall crumbled.
As the walls crumbled…
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It would be okay to modify the pronouns and the proper nouns.
Example A: modifying pronouns
… want to adopt him.
He stared unseeingly…
Example B: modifying proper nouns
… Chanyeol will get anything he wants.
Taemin will get anything he wants…
Are there things that aren't approved of then?
Now that you know the rules and how to circumnavigate them, there are two final things of which you should take note.
The first thing to note is that ending with a proper noun will cause the chain to break! (Your team was on a roll as well! ☹)
In the event that the person before you accidentally does that, you will inherit the final sentence they had been given.
For example:
… Kitayama had a belated growth spurt in his dreams and became tall.
Tall trees surrounded … "Don't die, Fujigaya!"
Tall and proud…
The second thing to note is that you can't squish or break words up.
For example:
… the best one night stand.
One nightstand…
… and vice-versa.
Other writing rules?
There is no minimum required word count. Unofficially, you need to write at least two sentences so that the person after you has a fresh sentence from which to draw their first word(s).
A story does not need to be finished. You can absolutely write a random snippet with no beginning and/or no end. It can be part of a larger body of writing, to be continued, or just a random moment.
Otherwise, that's all of the writing rules!
TOP⤴How the Game and Teams Work
I get it now! So what's next?
After you've signed up (via the sign up form), you can start preparing yourself by joining the LiveJournal community (link to join), Dreamwidth community (link to join) or Discord server (invite in sign up form) and hoarding your metaphorical pens, pencils and paper! (One can never have too many of each.)
Once the final members of the previous round's teams have taken their turns, there will be a few days for the continuing members to take a breather — read: for the continuing members' imaginations to take inventory and restock — before the line-up for the new teams is posted. As every member will be user-tagged (on LiveJournal and/or Discord, as applicable), you should receive an e-mail or notification to let you know that it has been posted immediately (Frank¹ permitting).
Once the line-up has been posted, please take note of three things:
- Your team number: if you post your turn on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth, you will need to preface the subject line of your post with [Team #], as well as selecting the corresponding tag in the tags list. If you're taking your turn on Discord, you'll need to post in your corresponding team channel.
- Your team leader (i.e. captain): they will be your first port of call if you need anything, the person you will be working most closely with to make sure the game runs smoothly.
- Who's next?: It would help if you memorise the LiveJournal/Dreamwidth/Discord username of the person who takes their turn after you (depending on the platform on which you're announcing your turn or skip), so that you can throw the baton their way when you're done. The roster can also be found in the sidebar of the LiveJournal and Dreamwidth community layouts, and the #posting-order channel of the Discord server.
Team leaders will get the ball rolling, and after that, all you have to do is wait (with barely concealed excitement) for your turn!
Once it is your turn, you have 72 hours — that's three days — to write and post your story, starting from when the previous person posts. If you have indicated you'd like to be on the slow team, you have five days (120 hours).
It's always okay to post before your time is up!
If you find yourself in a pickle and are unable to write anything for whatever reason, you can post a skip post on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth, or note your skip in your team channel on Discord, or notify your team leader to do so on your behalf. If no action is taken, once your time is up your team leader will notify the next person to take their turn, but if you know you can't make it, it would be a great help to everyone to skip it personally.
¹ Frank, LiveJournal's resident pet goat, has been known to chew on — among other things — e-mails for afternoon snack, but it's not something that's happened in a long while… reportedly.
TOP⤴How to Post Your Turn
Posting on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth
The subject line of your post should contain your team number ([Team #]) tag. Titles are optional — we understand the pain that is often associated with having to come up with titles.
Unless you're posting the story elsewhere and just linking to it, your story should be contained within the <lj-cut></lj-cut> tags on LiveJournal, or the <cut></cut> tags on Dreamwidth, and you may or may not choose to include information such as characters, rating, word count and warnings, though these are always appreciated.
If you are posting your story elsewhere and just linking to it, please include the last sentence somewhere in your post. If you are posting on Archive of Our Own, please also see the section about posting to that platform. (Don't worry, it's very simple!)
You should always finish off your post by mentioning the next person on your team. Check the community sidebar: if you're posting on LiveJournal, and they also use LiveJournal, then use a LiveJournal user tag <lj user="USERNAME"> to mention them, which — again, Frank permitting — will let them know that it's their turn. If they use Dreamwidth, or if you're posting on Dreamwidth, or if they don't use either platform, then just writing their usernames is all you need to do (since tag notifications won't work anyway).
You must tag your story with — at minimum — your team tag (*team #). Other tags, such as your love ranger tag ² and the fandom tags, are optional, although it would help for future references and perusal. If you do choose to use the fandom tags but your character does not yet belong to any of the available tags, please use the fandom: other tag; if you have written something set in an original universe, there is the fandom: original tag for you to use.
You should always tag your fic with the smallest fandom tag possible. For instance, if you're writing a story for the red velvet fandom (tag fandom: red velvet), please only tag your fic fandom: red velvet, do not tag your fic fandom: smtown or fandom: general kpop girls, (even though red velvet technically falls into both of those categories), unless you have other main characters that only fit in those larger fandoms (such as if you have an SNSD member in your fic, which would merit the tag fandom: smtown, or a member of AOA, who would merit the tag fandom: general kpop girls).
Also, this a good place to mention that all fandoms are eligible to get a fandom tag if they have at least ten fics in shiritori, and the fandom allocation makes logical sense in terms of organization. (For instance, a solo artist will fit better into a label fandom tag than getting a tag for just themselves.)
There are also optional "warning: …" tags that you can use to, obviously, warn other readers of trigger warnings or mentions of death, should that ever be a problem for them, although the rest of the tags are more for catching people's attentions than warding people off. (Mind the cavity-inducing fluff one: there are some really fluffy things.) Please note that if you write a male kpop idol as a different gender, they should still be tagged with their respective fandom tag, not fandom: general kpop girls. Just use the warning: genderswap tag as well. The notification e-mail — if it's a general/tag-specific new post notification — also contains information about which tags have been selected so using the tags can be very helpful.
Once you have posted your story, you may crosspost/link/share your story anywhere you like. It belongs to you, and it's yours to do what you want with. You don't even have to link to this community or reference it in any way, although we wouldn't mind a little publicity, I'm sure.
Additional Note: If your story contains underage characters engaging in explicit sexual behaviour (i.e. an Ao3 rating of Explicit), please post the text of the story elsewhere (i.e. not on the LiveJournal community) with the story linked and the last sentence posted in the community. This is to comply with the LiveJournal Terms of Service. (We realize that most people don't post to the LiveJournal community anymore, but the rules still apply.)
² Small note on your love ranger tag: LiveJournal is an ornery dragon so the first time you post a story, LiveJournal won't let you use your love ranger tag. We've created a work-around by using the tag on a different post to initialize it, but if it still doesn't work, let one of the mods know. To our knowledge, this does not affect Dreamwidth.
Posting on Discord
If you're taking your turn on Discord, please announce this in your corresponding team channel. Link to your fic wherever you've posted it (Archive of Our Own, Tumblr, etc.) unless you haven't posted it yet or it's not public. Include the full text of your last sentence, so the next person knows how to start. Please tag the person after you if they are on Discord. If not, please tag your captain so they can notify the next person.
If you are posting your text on Archive of Our Own, please also see the section about posting to that platform. (Don't worry, it's very simple!)
Posting on the Archive of Our Own (Ao3)
If you are posting your text to Ao3, please add it to the shiritori collection. This is shiritori (main collection) or sonic_shiritori (for sonic entries). Please also add the (freeform) tag Community: writetomyheart. This tag has been canonicized (is that a word?), so we're able to use it to update the shiritori feed on the Discord server. Now that we're scattered across different platforms, this is really the only way to have a full overview of the game.
Other Rules
Are there non-writing rules?
Yes~! There is one final rule to remember, and one clarification.
Rule: In the event that you somehow inherit your own words (i.e. if everyone in your team after you skips and it's your turn again), you have the fortune to begin your story however you like! (Isn't that exciting? To be beholden to nothing and no-one~)
Clarification: Once you post your shiritori, you can repost it wherever else you like in any form you please. You can combine it with any other writing challenges or other challenges you like. The story belongs 100% to you. If you'd like, you are also allowed to lock your shiritori posts to members-only on the LiveJournal or Dreamwidth communities. If you're crossposting previously-posted fics to the Archive of Our Own, you are very welcome to add them to the shiritori collections (see the above section about posting to Ao3), but it is completely optional.
TOP⤴Team Sonic
Team sonic is an "extra" shiritori team; anyone is welcome to participate, whether they are currently on an active team, or are a past player.
How does this work?
In our standard shiritori, (as per the rules above), person A posts a story and tags person B, who uses the last word(s) from person A's story as the beginning of the story they (person B) post, and tag person C. Each person has three (or five) days to post or skip.
Conversely, in team sonic, person A posts a story, and anyone (not just person B but also person C, D, E etc.) can use the last word(s) to start their team sonic story. More than one person can post based on person A's last word(s).
Where the three days comes into play is that person A's story's last word(s) can only be used to start a new story for three days. After three days, person A's story is expired. This doesn't affect any other team sonic stories written using person A's story's words; their stories each have three days after posting before they expire.
This means that if person A writes a story, person B and person C can both write stories using the last word(s) of person A's story, and then person A can use the last word(s) of person B's story or person C's story to post a new team sonic story, or they can even write two.
As long as a team sonic story is not expired, its last words can be used. Person A just isn't allowed to write a new team sonic story using the last word(s) of their own story.
If many players are actively writing in sonic, this means that it is possible that there will be many stories' last word(s) to choose from.
If all of the active sonic stories have expired, anyone can start a new story and begin a new cycle.
If posting on LiveJournal or Dreamwidth, team sonic stories should always be tagged the same as standard team stories, except that the team tag used should be *team sonic and the title of the post should include [team sonic].
If posting on Archive of Our Own, please post to the sonic_shiritori collection, and remember to use the (freeform) tag Community: writetomyheart.
If announcing on Discord, please post a link to the fic in the #shiritori-sonic channel and tag the @teamsonic role.
Conclusion
Great! I'm ready to go now!
Most excellent!
Remember, Shiritori is a writing game. It is a writing challenge, to work your imagination and your writing ability to produce something within a set amount of time, but it is also a game and should not be too time consuming. You can choose to write something, and you can choose not to write anything, if that's your muse's will; you can choose to hop in when you want, and you can choose to step out if you feel too overwhelmed. It's up to you — but if you do choose to step away, either on hiatus or permanently, please update with your team leader so everything can run efficiently!
Now, with everything said and done, I shall send you off get yourself signed up if you have not already done so.
Credits & Acknowledgements
These rules are adapted from the rules post created previously by our former mod jojibear, her credit below:
Many thanks to bluedreaming for providing the general template and some of the wordings used in this post.
Many thanks, also, to the wonderful people who have provided such a wealth of material to pluck words from for the examples used in this post.
