A Quiet Community

Ichor Falls is the brainchild of Kris Straub, creator of the popular webcomics Starslip and Chainsawsuit. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that the concept began as a comic. What it ended up being, however, was a short fiction, horror concept site.

I am making my way through the archives and I love it. Straub provides a lot of material to draw on--A fake "wiklopedia" page detailing the history of the town, and brief descriptions of three local legends. Writers submit stories within the Ichor Falls framework, and Straub puts out more than a few stories himself.

I love this concept. It provides some constraints--however loose--on the writing, since writers are supposed to connect their stories with the fictional town in some way. It also provides a central point for a lot of different stories to accumulate. As I have started seeking out more fiction to read, I've found that writing on the web is often very dispersed and very individual. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, but it often makes it challenging to find more than one story at a time.

In his book, Clay Shirky talked about an aspect of Flickr I had no experience with--the group. He looked at one group in particular that formed with the intention of being a place where photographers could share their work with one another and get feedback. There are difficulties to successfully organizing such a group, however; every photographer has an incentive to submit their photo to try and get attention, but pay no attention to anyone else's submissions. So the group organizers made rules to try and counteract this; in order to stay in the group, after submitting a photo, you had to go and look at the photo submitted just before yours and comment on it. Then they added that you had to have a substantive comment, not just "nice work!" or something equally as effortless to write.

The idea is that the web is a big, open place where anyone can put up anything, but that doesn't mean that it's going to get any attention. So people can join communities and associations that are more closed off in terms of who is let in and what can be submitted, but offers the promise of the attention of the other members. These things don't just spring up and start working perfectly, however; as Shirky's example illustrates, there are many challenges associated with the development of a successful community.

I think Ichor Falls has a lot of promise. It could use a lot more submissions than it currently gets, to be sure; but as far as I can tell just about every story gets feedback in the comments section. And I really do love the concept; I hope more writers pitch in to making the little community a little less quiet.

Check out the latest story, The Cedar Cove Incident; a great horror story in its own right.