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Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

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Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#11

Post by laser »

phoe-krk wrote: post #4

A lot of online roleplaying is exactly that: two or more people cooperatively telling a story. (Disclosure: been roleplaying online for over 15 years.) I am actually in the process of writing a tool that facilitates that process and allows one to edit, manage, reorder individual posts and paragraphs, and spatially order them on a timeline. I'll throw it at HN when it's ready enough.

What platform and tools are you building with, and how far in? I created a roleplaying iOS (swift) app and Vue website, both on a shared Elixir Phoenix / Postgres / Elastic Search backend which currently has 1.5k DAU / 50k daily messages exchanged that I haven't created such tools for yet. Possible collaboration? https://apple.co/2jV2ZOa

Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#12

Post by logfromblammo »

I have written portions of a few novella-length chain stories on bulletin boards.

If you ran the whole board topic through a style filter and then edited it for consistency and continuity, one or two might even be somewhat readable.

My guess is that you need a number of editors proportional to the square root of the number of authors, and anything greater than two authors requires a style manual, character reference guides, and a story map. Otherwise it's kind of a disconnected mess, with dangling plot hooks everywhere.

In order to not kill the topic, you have to write it sort of like comic pages, where there's a miniature cliffhanger in the last panel, to get you to turn the page. Except you're goading the next person to pick up the story and carry it for a few more paragraphs.

If it goes on for long, you get a sense for which of the regular posters should be next. It's been a while since we had some expository dialogue, so everybody waits for X to post. Y likes to write thrilling action scenes. Z drops in romantic subplots. W inserts political intrigues. U throws in gratuitous plot twists. T is the troll that tries to kill all the characters and burn all the scene settings in every post. S explains, after every T post, about the recurring nightmares that one of the characters has every night.

Mainly, the fun is that you get to see the story unfold without doing all the work to make it unfold.

Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#14

Post by AndrewStephens »

This is unusual but not that rare. When I was younger I wrote half a hard-boiled detective novel with a friend, alternating scenes every week or so over email. We even had a rule that we wouldn't discuss the direction of the plot, which lead to some amusing twists.

Plenty of books and more that one author (sometimes credited, sometimes not). Things like movie tie-in or spin-off novels might pass through several hands to ensure brand-consistancy before being published.

This group seemed to have a lot of fun (and success). I am slightly jealous.

Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#16

Post by SolarNet »

phoe-krk wrote: post #4

A lot of online roleplaying is exactly that: two or more people cooperatively telling a story. (Disclosure: been roleplaying online for over 15 years.) I am actually in the process of writing a tool that facilitates that process and allows one to edit, manage, reorder individual posts and paragraphs, and spatially order them on a timeline. I'll throw it at HN when it's ready enough.

There are also variants like questing (main writer(s) and a community of players who vote on direction and sometimes write short story add-ons), see SpaceBattles and SufficientVelocity forums. A lot of it is fan fiction (like most online writing) but there is original stuff in there:

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/forums/quests.29/

https://forums.spacebattles.com/forums/roleplaying-quests-st...

Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#17

Post by stakhanov »

laser wrote: post #9
stakhanov wrote: post #8

Why would anyone want to do that? It seems to me like humans have a basic desire/need to see their own creativity come to life and to truly take ownership over that creation without other people meddling. This human need largely goes unserved in our economic system which, in my mind, explains why someone would opt to work on open source software on a weekend writing more code, after having spent a 40-hour-workweek ha…

Because humans are social animals, and far more people seem to have a need for social contact than to see their own creativity come to life, as evidenced by what most people spend their free time doing (not writing code or books, but enjoying time with family and friends). A creative social activity viewed as an enhanced social activity instead of a degraded creative one is perhaps the perspective you're looking for?

No, not particularly what I'm looking for, but it's probably to do with my own personality traits rather than any universal truth... You make a valid point.

But the thing about human desires is that, typically, you want to fulfill all of them, and you can easily satisfy the need for creativeness by working on a book solo for a couple of hours, then satisfy the need to socialize by helping your significant other out cooking a meal and raising a child.

To speculate a bit further: I would suppose that lack-of-creative-outlet is more likely to be unmet as a basic human desire in most people than lack-of-socializing, although I do grant that loneliness is on the rise.

And, last but not least, if the goal of writing the novel is to write a good novel, there's an argument to be made that creative endeavor is what it's actually about.

Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#19

Post by jeffwass »

phoe-krk wrote: post #4

A lot of online roleplaying is exactly that: two or more people cooperatively telling a story. (Disclosure: been roleplaying online for over 15 years.) I am actually in the process of writing a tool that facilitates that process and allows one to edit, manage, reorder individual posts and paragraphs, and spatially order them on a timeline. I'll throw it at HN when it's ready enough.

I just wrote - How does your tool differ from Scrivener?

But I think I get it now. Is the idea that your tool lets you take blog-style posts from multiple authors and let you rearrange those? (As opposed to a bunch of posts composed by yourself)

Re: Can You Write a Novel as a Group?

#20

Post by kmote00 »

stakhanov wrote: post #8

Why would anyone want to do that? It seems to me like humans have a basic desire/need to see their own creativity come to life and to truly take ownership over that creation without other people meddling. This human need largely goes unserved in our economic system which, in my mind, explains why someone would opt to work on open source software on a weekend writing more code, after having spent a 40-hour-workweek ha…

> Why would anyone want to do that?

Funny -- I had the opposite response when reading the headline: I can't understand why collaborative authoring isn't ubiquitous in the industry. One of my favorite parts of watching a blockbuster movie is the credits: I sit there as all those names scroll by just marveling at the accomplishment that this huge group of people collaborated on. ("What a privilege", I often think, "to be able to work on that team.") I am writing a novel now (mostly solo, sadly), but the best chapter in the book was co-written with my daughter. My creative juices run deepest when they are mixed with someone else's.

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