Portrayl.com - Collaborative Story Telling

There are those who have decried internet decorum; email degrades language, they say; the short jots we parrot off in forums, or the myriad of acronyms deployed in chatting effectively curtails the richness of communication, according to some Luddites and naysayers. Certainly, spending hours on the web looking at e-zines and sites touting cool and curious objects probably won´t expand your mind that much. But for those who think that the internet is a poor diversion from books and literature, Portrayl begs to differ. This site offers a new way to share and create stories. It´s all about writing. The site features a library where you can read works, chapter by chapter; there´s a forum for discussing the latest tales spun, characters, techniques, and books; there´s also an option to print out the books as a PDF or you can read them as serialized RSS feeds. Writers submit their work a chapter a time; any other member can add to the story, but the original version remains intact, similar to fanfiction, so that each story is potentially endless. The stories on site so far are interesting to say the least; if you want to check out the goods, sign up and invite your friends, it´s free.

“The aim of this site is to create a friendly and constructive environment for writers to showcase their works to the public. We want to provide both freedom to write and a growing supply of new and imaginative stories.”

Portrayl is a well designed site that actually offers something new to the playing field. The community aspect means that writers will get valuable feedback, while readers can enjoy new material.

The site would do well to employ guest writers, or editors and feature some premium content. Also, will it expand it´s site to offer actual categories, rather than just a tag cloud? Will people be interested in reading these stories; from the looks of it, the current offerings just aren´t that great.