Stories grow
in branches.

Every story starts as a seed. Seeds are rare. When one finds its way to you, plant it carefully — whatever you write on it becomes the root of every branch that grows from it. If nothing is coming to you, pass the seed along to someone else whose opening line you’d rather read.

Each bud is short — at most 500 words. Small enough to write in one sitting, long enough to mean something.

For its first 24 hours a bud is growing: visible and readable, but not yet open to be extended. That window gives the author and first readers a quiet moment with the bud before the next writer picks it up.

Once a bud has bloomed, many branches may grow from it. Each branch tells its own story. One rule: you can’t continue your own bud. A tree is nurtured not by a single author but by the readers who pick it up.

Leave pollen on the buds you love to help them reach new readers. Pollen shapes the home feed and decays over time, so what you see is the writing people are responding to now, not the writing that happened to be first.