If you are a regular writer, the rules are simple and fairly well enforced. You will be warned if you break the rules, and given a chance to correct the error. With that in mind, you could skip the rest if you are of the impatient persuasion.

Stafettskrivning is all about writing stories collaboratively, a few words at a time. Start off on the menu page. If you are a part of the writing rotation for a particular story, you will see a link imploring you to peddle your creative juices somewhere on the left. Follow that link, and you end up on the writing page.

How many words you have to write is shown next to the input box on the writing page. This number will either always be the same for that story, or it can vary from turn to turn; that is not your choice, but is up to the admin of that story. The input box will only be there for you to write in when it is actually your turn. There is a checkbox under the input box you can use to end the story. Stories generally end when one writer gets either fed up or completely satisfied with how the story turned out, and other writers have no say in the matter at that point. This is entirely true to the original spirit of Stafettskrivning.

When it is not your turn, but you were the last writer, you can go ahead and fix your last entry if you misspelled something or just came up with something better. There are links for that all over the place.

If you have nothing to write, you can discuss stories with your fellow writers in the Forums. There is also a General Forum for reporting technical problems or discussing Stafettskrivning on a more philosophical, story-independent level. You can also go change your preferences to alter the look of the menu page to your personal tastes.

That is all there is to it. The going may be slow sometimes, but your stories can also grow surprisingly fast, depending on the other writers involved. It's all good stuff, though.

For admins, things get a little more involved. You can invite new users and start new stories. You can now change details about the stories you started as well. You will have a link off of the menu page to your admin page, where you perform all of the above functions.

There are just a couple of things to keep in mind:

• The choice of language is mostly academic
• You need to add your new users before they can take part in a story

You can also choose a range (e.g. 3-8) instead of a number (e.g. 4) for the number of words in a new story. That would result in a new number within your chosen range being randomized out at the beginning of each complete turn, and that will be the word count for that turn.

So there you have it. Go forth and Stafettskriv!