So i thought about it and i think it would be a HUGE QOL change to remove a bottleneck.
if it displayed ALL players first cards immediately on the same page so everyone can come up with the first of their stories then the second set after asking if everyone has got their first part thought of.
which in turn could make room for things like having the players able to mix and match, draw a line using other cards or block card being used by someone else.
Actually, that's an amazing idea!! I've also thought about doing this in ‘real’ multiplayer (everyone on their screen and not only couch coop you know) and giving the other players a small pool of cards that they can play to the narrator, who then has to adapt to them. Maybe mix and match or cancel cards, etc. like you said.
what of a point system? some locations esp are bound to be harder, could show all the cards shuffled on the screen with points and they have to make their choices so they would all be selecting the cards at the same time to make their selection before someone else takes them but minimum of a location, situation\genre and 2 items.
could diffuse the voting popularity contest by having them write the story down and someone else has to read it aloud which the reader gets the points for reading. +2 for location, +3 for hard item -1 modifier because they rated the lowest reading performance.
or better would be make it collaborative pass the talking stick. so the first couple sentences starting the story with the location of the the next person writes introducing the characters
