To answer some of the questions that have come up:
MATT WROTE: “…Aeon Timeline…”
Matt, thanks for the very kind offer but as Windows user I’m currently unable to use AT (entirely my loss). However, I am happy to share with you the breakdowns and notes after the fact to help reverse engineer something for your site.
VARIOUS WROTE: “don’t give me the sex scene” / “I’d prefer a section with more than one character”
The plot doesn’t have any scripted sex scenes, although like real life sometime these things crop up unexpectedly if that’s the direction someone takes in their own section.
Sections will be allocated MOSTLY at random. That is to say, I will try to accomodate strong preferences stated unless it turns into a logistical nightmare worse than coming up with the plot was in the first place.
Key exceptions will be:
If someone is volunteering for more than one section I will make sure they are a “safe” distance apart.
The story DOES have some ‘grissly’ scenes. If anyone wants to opt out of (or indeed into) those I will respect that.
It might be worth letting people express a specific willingness to write the very first section.
JRAVEN WROTE: “…character sketches…”
I’ll provide photos for the physical (I want to avoid reading the same phrases over and over), but will also provide a background narative, and brief samples of dialogue for each character.
I’ve added a EDIT to my post on the first page to update the list of volunteers so far. I’ll update that intermittently. IN the meantime, do please spread the word wider…!
Well, problems with Naked Came the Manatee was a “lack of rules” set up front. Dave Barry said if he would do it over, there would be NO addition of new characters unless there was a compelling plot point with it. Every author in turn shifted the focus of the novel to “their” character. Another mention was adding of plot devices, which is why you have something like half a dozen “Fidel Castro heads” in the book and no one knows if any are real or not. I think a good firm set of rules is essential and should be looked over for any possible “loopholes” that may jam up the story. A day is wicked fast for people to work through previous plot elements.
BAYAMO, ‘Naked Manatee’ worked on a different premise. In our piece, whilst participants are free to add all the secondary characters, plot devices and colour they can legitimately fit in their sections, the primary plot will be set out in advance. Participants won’t have the previous sections to read.
By the sound of it, ‘Naked Manatee’ is at it’s core a much more involved version of our "three word story’’.
SIN, I dunno, mid terms sound important! Are you sure?
Perhaps we should follow up with Edit In A Day (EIAD) day.
That would be where everyone gets to read the entire novel beforehand, and then everyone spends a day editing a section to make it more cohesive as a whole.
Depending on preference, we could either edit our own section, or to makethe “in a day” more enforcable, we could edit a different section we only find out on the day.
Quoting pigfender:
“Yeah, but if we did that it would be a Novel In Two Days… two days. I want no piece of that kind of madness.”
Two days? Strictly true. Still, we could say we wrote it (first draft) in a day. Then we edited it. The “one day” thing is not that important to me.
But, in my opinion, it’s a decision as to whether I’m doing this to help produce a work that someone might actually read or simply performing an act to be able to say “I helped write a novel in a day. Of course, it’s chaotic, boring, and ultimately unreadable. But, it only took us a day…”
Assuming a reading speed of 700 wpm (very fast, I think. I probably read less than half that fast) and a length of 50,000 words, it will take pigfender about an hour and 15 minutes to read the first draft. If he reads at my speed, it would take him about three hours. If it takes an hour to assemble the project and produce the final output, that leaves no more than an hour and 45 minutes to do ANY editing of ANY kind. For instance, checking for and correcting misspelled words. If one reads at my rate, they would have about 30-45 minutes to edit. And if a contributor gets their timezone offset confused in the wrong direction, there goes at least an hour. My point? There’s not much, if any, time in the current schedule for editing. I expect we all understand that.
Personally, I would like to have a chance to edit our work. But, I’ll leave the decision of whether or not to spend a day, or any other amount of time, doing that to pigfender.
Gottchya!! Y’ mean one of those nobeds wot park arf in one parking space and arf in the space next to it. Next time I see someone doing it, I’ll shout, “Gerrtchya!! y’ narchy!!” That’ll teach em!
Cheers Ned
Vic