Writing Challenge

Seldes Katne

Seldes Katne

Site mom
Joined
Nov 8, 2004
Messages
1,747
Location
New York State
Ultimate Houde has mentioned an idea for a writing challenge that would be open to anyone. It's a kind of story called a Round Robin, where one person starts a story, then passes it to the next author, who adds to it and then passes it on to the next author, etc. The story can go as long as people are interested in working on it.

I've done this in a couple of ways with my homeschoolers' writing group, and it's produced some interesting results. The kids seem to enjoy it.

We would need a group of authors willing to work on this, plus a system of making sure everyone gets a chance to add to the story. One possibility is to make a list of names of interested authors, get the story started, and then pull names randomly to decide who adds the next piece of story. Another is to just have a list of people set up in advance and then each author takes his/her turn.

We would also want to set a time limit of a few days or a week for each author, so that the story kept moving and didn't end up being abandoned. (The homeschoolers had ten minutes each to add their part to the stories, because it was an in-class assignment the first time around, but I promise we'll give you more time than that. Although the 10-minute limit might be fun if we all got together in the Chat Room some evening for a marathon writing session or something.)

At the moment there is no actual story to start, so we're also looking for ideas. If we get more than one good idea, we can always have more than one story thread, and people can work on as many or as few as they think they can handle.

I'll leave this open for discussion, and for Houde to add anything that I forgot.


Edit:

List of interested authors:

Ultimate Houde
Joe Kalicki
Langsta (?) (can't tell if he's volunteering or just commenting)
Victor Von Doom
J. Agamemnon
Iceshadow
Zombipanda
TwilightEL (?) (depending on how we set up the schedule)
McCheese
Bluebeast
Grocer Man
ProjectX2
Dr. Strangefate
Volunteer Fire Detective
Doublehex
Frapalino
 
Last edited:
Basically you covered everything I thought up, just in better detail than I would do it. As for an actual story, we should leave that as open as we can, to make things more interesting.

I also suggest a way for everyone to go, and not the random pull out of a hat. Too much work may fall on one person.
 
I'd love to do this, but I have a lot of stuff to do over the summer (a camp and vacation and stuff), so unless we use the set-in-advance method my name would have to be exempted from the hat for a few turns.
 
I'd be interested in adding short bits, but nothing too long... and nothing too frequent.

Would it be possible for me to say when I'm available, and then someone PM me when it is next available to be my turn? Doesn't matter to me if I say I'm ready and then a ton of people were already ahead of me and want to go beforehand.
 
So I'm thinking listing the names out in order would be good.

Should we try to add some more to this, like everyone try to write in a different genre?
 
I like houdes idea. maybe do something like the same story but each author gives it a different view or perspective or just choose to continue the story. I guess I'm good for what everyone else is comfortable with.
 
I would like to participate, but my Word program is on the fritz right now and I can't type up anything. So add me to the list, but somewhere near the back of the list so I can fix my computer before my turn comes up.
 
There is now a list of interested authors on the first post.

I guess the next thing to decide is how this will be run. Do you want to all work on one story per round, or should we divide people up into a couple of groups and each group work on a story? Or divide into groups and each one take the same beginning and see where each group story ends up? When I did it with students, each kid started his or her own story (based on a picture for inspiration) and just physically passed the paper to the next person in line, who then had a specific amount of time to add to it, but that might be too many stories going at once.

Another method would be to have one person start the story, and just have a list of authors who would add to the story in that order. So the second person on the list would add to whatever the first person wrote, the third person would pick up from there, and the last person on the list would have to tie everything together and finish the story. We could also do random order (the pull-a-name-from-a-hat method) until everyone has had a chance to contribute.

Do you want this story to actually end? I know that's kind of a silly question, and with this many authors I'd suggest just going through the roster once and then wrapping it up, but we could have a sort of "neverending story" thing going just to see how long it lasts. I would prefer, at least for the first round, to just have everyone contribute once and to have the story actually finish, since closure is generally a good thing, and would give everyone an end goal, not to mention a definitive jumping-on or jumping-off point in this activity.

I would also suggest giving everyone a time limit so the story isn't still going next Christmas because Author So-and-So is taking two months to get his/her segment written. The time limit could be flexible, and if it's your turn and you can't complete your section, please let us know so the next person can take over instead.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top