Perhaps we should go back to the what-if phase?

[Jeff Gerke]

Greetings, friends!

Thank you all for the participation in our grand experiment so far. It's been so cool to see what you have dreamed and created.

For some time I've been concerned about the declining level of participation in the project. We had our highest level of involvement when we were in the what-if stage, the phase in which we just dreamed and riffed on the idea of SF vs. fantasy. But then, almost exactly when I moved us to decide on one synopsis so we could lock it down and move forward, participation plummeted.

It's difficult, even with the Story Bible thread, to pull everything together and be sure you're not violating something we've set up. I may have put a damper on things, too, by challenging dulci and others to improve what they had posted. I did it in an effort to both encourage and teach, but I can see how it might've caused more tentative participants to go, "I'm no putting MY stuff out there if he's going to critique it!" If it had that effect on you, I apologize.

I long for those days when we had many more people participating and when it didn't take more than a dream and a willingness to write out the idea to feel like you were as much an integral participant as anyone else. I'd like to return to those days.

Here's what I'm proposing. Please let me know what you think.

I'd like to leave this particular story (the one the Story Bible and Act I threads are dedicated to) going but make it a secondary board. Those who want to keep noodling on it, can. But then I'd like to create another board (at this same Web address) that is more open to nothing but what-if dreaming.

How does that sound?

For that what-if board I thought about having at least five sub-forums: one for SF, one for fantasy, one for time travel and alternate history, one for supernatural thrillers/spiritual warfare/chillers, and one for genre mixing (like SF vs. fantasy, chiller meets time travel, etc.).

What do you think about that?

Maybe it would be better just to have one giant what-if sub-forum with no finer subdivisions. Or maybe the subdivisions should be separated into plot, character, setting sub-forums.

Help me think about this. I want to return to the fun and easy part of what he had going. If folks want to take any of the resulting story ideas and run with them, I could then set up special sub-forums to give them room to do so.

What do you think?

Than you again.

Jeff

[mongoose]

I think you have a good thing going here, or I wouldn't have posted the intro of my char. I hope that didn't violate the story bible, and if it did, I would willingly withdraw it and come at the story from a different angle.

But this isn't about me, I know, it's about overal participation. To that, I don't know the causes, and never have, of what gains group participation versus what stifles it. Here's what I AM thinking:

You mention the "fun and easy" part. The structure of the story bible may well result in a higher quality story, once it's written, but how long does it take your typical author to write a quality story? And how much of their story bibles do they end up sticking with? I read in Karen Hancock's blog about how many revisions she had to make to her most recent book, tearing it apart chapter by chapter. She said that if it wasn't fun to write, it probably wasn't fun to read.

Consider what is fun and easy, on the other hand, and how it could be applied to writing. You comment that the fun and easy part was the brainstorming; the "what-if" stage. I ask, then, why the entire writing process can't simply be a series of "what-ifs?" Qali just came face to face with Miksa, who's ordering him to take his men on a suicide mission, let's say. The next writer has to ask him/herself, "What if Qali refuses? What if he goes for it, trusting his people and their training to keep them alive after all? What if someone third party interferes? What if Qali pretends to go along, but then implements a contingency plan? etc." Then they start writing one of those scenarios, and wait for someone else to pick it up and reveal what comes of the initial writer's decision(s). There's the suspence. There's what makes it fun. It's easy to write just whatever comes to mind, as it comes to mind, if you aren't being constrained, and it's fun to see where the story will take you.

I realize this statement could easily be mis-construed to be a bashing of the whole story bible concept. It is not meant to be such. In-fact, I learned a great deal from watching this process, and appreciate what Jeff has taught me. I used that in a new thread on Tanya's board, where we're discussing a Robin hood based colaborative story. I didn't believe it to be necessary, but we were waffling on whether it could be done given the wide variations in Robin Hood legends. So I posted an outline of the legend I was most in-favor of, and everyone seemed to be pleased with it. Now it's just a matter of getting started, which is always the hardest part. Ultimatly, of the six-eight of us who participated in the brainstorming concerning that story I expect three of us to be active in writing it. That seems to be the way it usually goes, for better or worse.

So, the more structure you have, it seems to me, the less fun and ease of writing you have. Nevertheless I'll continue with the present story until/unless asked to stop, and would encourage further endeavors of the sort.

[Jeff Gerke]

Mongoose,

Thanks for your thoughtful note. I'm certainly not going to ask you to stop writing! And your experience with other collaborative story projects is a great resource for us. I didn't realize the other projects had only about three people writing them. That's encouraging as I think about what we've got here.

Perhaps on collaborative fiction projects that work as you described--writing one part and then waiting for someone else to take it from there--the whole project can remain fun and easy and full of what-ifs. We should do that on this one! I know for myself that when I'm writing a novel there comes a very long phase of grunt work, when most of the what-ifs are behind you and you're just doing the hard work of connecting the dots. It's why I purposely don't map everything out in advance. I have to leave room for some discovery (new what-ifs) along the way or it's intolerably difficult and dull.

By the way, I haven't interpreted your comments as bashing and I wasn't bothered in the least that your character wasn't in the story bible. No worries!

I think you're right that the more structured we are and the more things people have to remember before posting anything, the less fun it is and the more people worry they're going to violate some element of what a species or character would or wouldn't do. My purpose with the story bible was to include in one place all the cool ideas and hard work people had done for us. But I see that it became intimidating for prospective writers who didn't feel like memorizing all that stuff! I was having trouble with it, myself.

Having said all that, I still like my idea of allowing this story to continue and yet at the same time opening up a new area just for the what-iffers to dream together. More thoughts or comments?

Jeff

[dulci]

I do agree that an on-the-fly story is more fun to write. I rarely outline or stick to an outline if I do because of reasons above. Maybe if we continue this, let everything stand, but be open to let it take on a life of its own? I hate to say this, but I am not sure how much (if any at all) I could write here in the next couple of months, as I just phased into first-draft writing of my own and I get over-confused if I'm juggling projects! I'll see, though.

Some thoughts on forum-sectioning...

I was thinking about forums that I like to visit, and many of them have more specialized areas for conversation. I wonder if that would be a plus here. I think an open all-topic chatter room can be a bit chaotic. I'm guessing that everyone who visits the site and is interested in the forums would be either a reader, a writer, or an artist of spec-fic--maybe divide a chatter forum into these three sub-forums plus an open everything-topic room? This might help form more of a sense of community, anyway.

On an idea factory--I think that's really sweet! I think it might be beneficial to divide any category forums (fantasy, alternate history, etc.) into at least base subforums for the sake of easy navigation (characters, settings, plot ideas, art, storm chamber...?) In any case, just some thoughts.

[Jeff Gerke]

Awesome! Good thoughts, dulci. Thank you.

Jeff