Fiction that continues
The most rewarding way to use slowshop is to build something across many conversations rather than one. A street with a name, a café with a bad radio, a character who always arrives late: those details are what make a story feel inhabited.
Opening a scene
Start with place, weather and one person. Three concrete details give a companion enough to work with and enough constraint to stay coherent. Vague prompts produce vague prose, every time.
Keeping continuity
Refer back deliberately. Name the street again, mention the radio again, ask what happened to the character who left. Companions written for storytelling hold detail well when the detail is reinforced.
Directing without dictating
Say what should change rather than rewriting it yourself. Slower, colder, fewer people, more dialogue: instructions like these shift a scene cleanly while leaving the invention to the companion.
Where it goes
Some readers use these sessions as drafting practice, some as a serial they return to on the same evening each week. Both work. The characters on slowshop are written to keep a thread rather than restart one, which is what makes the long version possible.