Over a decade ago author Nate Crowley (perhaps better known by his internet handle @FrogCroakley) ran a writing prompt swapping exercise called SFSwap. While the intent was always for it to be more than a one-off, after its first iteration, it never again saw the light of day. At least until now…

While the original SFSwap website may be gone (which means I should probably post the original here at some point), and Nate may no longer have the same internet presence he once did (I expect he is rather busy writing books for Black Library), I have taken it upon myself to resurrect it, just shy of 11 years (which as I say it feels wrong and outlandish as a concept) after its original incarnation. because this is a thing I can do, because I’m an adult. And if anyone was going to do it, the poor fool who volunteered to help edit and post about half of the original entries was probably going to be the person to do it. That fools was/is me. I am the fool.

One of the main stumbling blocks in a resurrection that I’ve been mulling over for about 5 of those 11 years, was how to handle prompt submission, allocation, and randomisation. But after finally getting around to having a look at it properly, I worked out a relatively painless way to make it work using Google Forms and a linked Google Sheet. Naturally I then over-engineered the randomisation of the prompts using a SORTN, SEQUENCE, RANDARRAY mash-up that mostly does the job.

There may be a new SFSwap website in the pipeline, but for now everyone is posting there efforts on their own sites. You can find mine below.