Ask me anything style post

A story is comprised of five key elements: character, setting, conflict, plot and theme. An "AMA" is lacking in 4/5 of the elements needed to make a story. Go ask any creative writing teacher what it takes to make a story and I'm sure they'll agree there. Just having some people ask you questions and you answering creepily isn't a story at all.

You can't claim to know what the OP intended to actually write in those AMA answers. His "answering creepily" might very well tell a complete story - especially if the initial post had plenty of background info and served as the "beginning" of the story.

AMA isn't a storytelling format, though.

Says who? If somebody can figure out a way to deliver the required info - the beginning, middle, and end of a plot - then that makes a story. The format can be literally anything.

Plays, movies, comics, vidya, etc stories have all the listed above elements of storytelling. If a story doesn't have a beginning or end, then how do you start the story? Are you just going to type for the rest of eternity if it doesn't have an ending?

There are tons of stories on NoSleep that don't have endings. In fact, there's so many of the "Something freaky is happening, please help! What do I do?" stories that people are getting sick of them. There's no endings to most of them. They just have a beginning, a middle, and then they cut out with a cliffhanger at most, but usually all they do is make a spooky setting and that's all.

Also, this isn't my idea or anything that I'm trying to do. I'm not the OP of this thread. I'm just trying to encourage the OP's creativity, as there are in fact plenty of non-traditional stories on NoSleep.

/r/NoSleepOOC Thread Parent