roachboy

comrades!

baraka guru and myself would like to invite everyone to participate in this collective writing experiment. the project itself is in the literature forum...

====

ltknow posted a link to the National Write a Novel in a Month Challenge in the Literature Forum:
What is NaNoWriMo? | National Novel Writing Month

It's 18 November and that's not enough time for a single person to write a 75, 000 word novel—but maybe lots of people working collectively could do it. Baraka Guru and I were talking about this, and decided to make a collaborative writing challenge.

The idea is that between now and the end of the month we make a 200 page novel, and do it in the Literature forum.


We should make a town.
Let's make this town:



Any town is lots of different things happening simultaneously.
So pick a location and make characters and the space they're in.
You can describe the location, the building or part of the building that your character or characters occupy. You can tell situations, tell stories. You can do multiple characters and/or places by doing several posts—but each individual post should be consistent: one post, one location. You can do multiple posts about the same location—you can make an apartment building for example. But please cross-reference them (see below)

You can tell stories about the past, describe interactions, describe spaces or objects within spaces: you can daydream or nightdream or whatever you like. It's the complexity of simultaneous stories that'd make this doable and maybe cool to wander around in.

If you want to put up a piece of genre writing—fantasy, sci-fi, horror—you have to work it into the town constraint—so for example if you want to do a gothic thing, you could have your character read the story and us read along with your character reading it, or you could have your character watch a film, etc. Similarly, you can do stories about the past present or future so long as you keep building the town in "real time" as well. You can refer to other places via communications infrastructure, patterns of trade or exchange. You can talk about electricity and telephone if you like—a town is all these things, but it is also still a town, so you have to remember: everything that happens is building this town.

Characters and scenes should be self-contained in terms of action. If you want to have an interaction with a character or characters from another story, you have to collaborate before posting. The is no omniscient narrator in this town, no god. You can write things involving characters or spaces that other people have made directly by collaborating with them. This is a rule---if you make a situation in which there is interaction, you should pm the writer who made the characters you're interacting with. Think of it like this: you wouldn't just show up. You call ahead.

It'd be good if a cross-references system developed--so if in a post I were to mention, say, The Acme Penile Implant Corporation (i don't know why i thought of that), another post later could take you into an office of the APIC or walk you around the production facility. To cross reference, please start with the number of the post that you're picking up on. What we'd like to do is link them together so you could go down any number of pathways through the same town. The idea is that this town already in a sense exists, so you can talk about it as if it does. If this works, we can populate it with places, spaces and stories that hang together through the cross-referencing.

I think the movement of the reader through the town is enough of an organizing idea that way, particularly if the link possibility can happen.

To keep things interestings, we're going to move through cycles of days. So there will be DAY and NIGHT. There may also be WEATHER to consider. Baraka Guru or I will post in yellow when day becomes night and if there's weather (rain, snow, hurricane,etc). At first, maybe Day—if this goes as we'd like and lots of people are working on it to do this town-raising, we'll start to break it up (morning, afternoon, evening). Please stay consistent with the time of day. You don't have to refer to it, but if you do, be in the same timezone as the stories around you.

To complete this, we need lots of text, so write and steal freely.
The objective is to submit it as a novel to the website above at the end of the month.
Hopefully, we get a prize.
So the thread will stop at the end of the month.

So let's make a town comrades. The only way this is possible in 12 or 13 days is if all of us help with it.

Have fun. I look forward to visiting this place.

=========

Please put stuff in the literature forum that's part of the project.
We can talk about other things in this thread: questions, comments, etc.

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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Baraka_Guru

Yes, and I'd like to add that this thread here in GD would be a good place for questions, comments, and feedback. Moreover, it would be a good place for seeking inspiration, brainstorming, troubleshooting, or other antidotes to writer's block (not to mention anecdotes about writer's block as well).

The thread in Literature should be reserved for the text itself.

Good luck, and happy writing. I look forward to working with (and feeding off of) you.

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Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

Halx

*puts thinking cap on*

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RetroGunslinger

Ok, you asked for it...

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snowy

This is a very interesting idea that you gents have put forth. I'll have to sit on it for a bit and turn it around in my head a while before I get back to you, but I do believe I'll be able to contribute something.

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Willravel

What time period are we in, or could this take place over thousands of years? Where is Biosphera, roughly?

girldetective

I am thinking of this a little like Maupin's Tales of the City

but all over the city.

*

See you in Lit. Ciao.

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roachboy

will--the idea is that the story has to be tied to the present of the town, but so long as you do that, anything goes. so if you want to run through an extended time period, you can do it if, for example, a character in the "real time" of the town tells the story, or watches it, or reads it.

the reason for this is that we can move the "real time" forward and everyone has to react to that by building it in to the stories--which otherwise need not have anything to do with each other except for where they're set. We started out in the morning---hopefully, if enough stuff happens, we can advance time and maybe change the weather.

Either way, it will eventually get dark, so the characters in all the stories have to adapt to be fact that it's dark--so you have to account for how your character can see. you don't have to make a production out of it, but still...it'll tie things together in a strange way.

you'll see.

======More Generally====
we need stories!
they don't have to be polished--just go in make some parameters and write stuff.
let's build some momentum.

have fun.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

RetroGunslinger

I'm going to go ahead and assume this takes place in the USA, despite all the Spanish.

__________________
It's a rare pleasure in this world to get your mind fucked. Usually it's just foreplay.

M.B. Keene

pavel002

Characters and scenes should be self-contained in terms of action. If you want to have an interaction with a character or characters from another story, you have to collaborate before posting. The is no omniscient narrator in this town, no god. You can write things involving characters or spaces that other people have made directly by collaborating with them. This is a rule---if you make a situation in which there is interaction, you should pm the writer who made the characters you're interacting with. Think of it like this: you wouldn't just show up. You call ahead.

It'd be good if a cross-references system developed--so if in a post I were to mention, say, The Acme Penile Implant Corporation (i don't know why i thought of that), another post later could take you into an office of the APIC or walk you around the production facility. To cross reference, please start with the number of the post that you're picking up on. What we'd like to do is link them together so you could go down any number of pathways through the same town. The idea is that this town already in a sense exists, so you can talk about it as if it does. If this works, we can populate it with places, spaces and stories that hang together through the cross-referencing.

roachboy

comrades!

the more writers, the more characters, the busier the town becomes, the more possibilities open up for more stories.

we are far from 50,000 words...

help make the town the curious place it can be as a virtual community inside the virtual community.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

roachboy

bump.

more writers please.
i'm changing the time of day every 10 posts. right now, ring and i are stuck mid morning.
make a story and post it.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite