Some Thoughts

While rereading Vladimir Propp for the midterm, I began thinking about stories. Propp discusses the difference between literature and folk tales-- that "literature" is by generally a single author, and never changes, whereas folk tales are an oral tradition started by no single person and are constantly changing.
   
But there exists a type of story that is a hybrid of these two types.
  
For some reason, the first thing I thought of was some different Tumblr posts that I've seen. People will share a random story idea, or an idea for a world in which to set a story, and then other people will add on their own suggestions, and usually someone will write part of a story to go along, and then other people might add to the story. Like literature, there is an original author, and the story is written, and unchangeable. But similar to folk tales, the final result is a group effort, of people building off the thoughts of other contributors, and the story grows beyond the first person's idea.
   
I can think of one other example: pass-along stories. I have encountered this twice in my life: writing club, and Girl Scout camp. In writing club, the idea is that one person writes a story, and then each next person adds a sentence. In Girl Scout Camp, it works a similar way. Each unit of campers gets visited by the "Storytellers", and one activity we do is a pass-along story. It's like writing club, but oral: whoever has the "magical talking stick" starts the story, and then they pass the stick and the next person adds a sentence, and so on. It has the same oral side as folk tales, but like Tumblr posts or the one-sentence stories in writing club, the previous parts are unchangeable.
 
I'm unsure what to call this hybrid story type. Perhaps "folk literature"? I can understand why the book doesn't talk about it, especially since the book the passage is from was published in 1984 (so before Tumblr), and Vladimir Propp probably never went to Girl Scout Camp. I just think it's cool to think about.