Open Source Noveling?

Not role-playing a character but noveling. Has it been done? Could it work?

You'd probably have to limit the number of main creators but you could easily have a large group of people that contributed in some way. "Open source" might not be the right term but I mean collaborative, anyone-can-edit/write like a wiki.

When you say "noveling", do you mean "The process of writing a novel"? As in, a round-robin where different people continue writing a story?

Yes, but in a less structured way. It would be a novel always being written, I guess. A basic plot would be decided and people would just add and edit freely. It'd be like tvtropes or any wiki, really, but each entry would be a scene from the novel.

It'd probably lead to a lot of in-fighting and edit wars and be rather disjointed. I would imagine there would be a large group that did very minor edits and made suggestions and, within that, a much smaller group that actually wrote the bulk of the work.

edited 23rd May '11 8:04:27 PM by VocabWord

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I figure that you hadn't heard of The Shounen Project (AKA Ashwood Landing), hadn't you, because that is what exactly we're doing, minus the wiki part.

edited 23rd May '11 8:07:48 PM by chihuahua0

Wikistory.

I saw that thread but I'm talking yeah, like a collaborative wiki. Everyone would write every character. In Brave New World terms, everyone would belong to everyone else. Like a writing commune, or something. Scenes and characters would be written by everyone, not a single person.

Could it work? The novel would never really be "finished", I guess, just complete, but could it be good?

Edit: Woah anna that is awesome! Has anyone ever participated in such a project?

edited 23rd May '11 8:18:45 PM by VocabWord

I haven't, I just know that wikistory exists.

It does sound like a really cool idea though.

Also, I'm Anne. Anna is a friend of mine.

edited 23rd May '11 8:39:13 PM by annebeeche

There is an old concept called Thieves World. It was a concept by Robert Asprin in about 1978. Basically, he created a world, drew up some maps, detailed some customs and then asked writers to come up with the characters in the world. Writers could freely write about other people's characters as long as they didn't kill the character off or reform it.

One of the authors that picked up on the concept back in the day include: Marion Zimmer Bradley

Vonda N. Mc Intyre

Jody Lynn Nye

so if you ant to play with it, you'll be in good company! Frankly, in 1978 it was about 30 years ahead of its time as a concept.

the problem is accessibility at this point, as everything is mostly out of print. Well, I could go completely on a self promoting bent, I have an open source concept called Caln: The Hidden Star, that I started toying with on Scribd a couple of years ago. It's still a work in progress that I keep intending on finishing off. I just don't have any interest in it yet, buy, you're welcome to look around what I have.

Caln Open Concept Caln magic Caln Deity Sorrith Caln Deity Meranna Caln concept rough draft race spotlight Daitari

edited 25th May '11 3:39:11 PM by lyredragon

One problem this sort of thing faces is that most people are way more interested in other people getting on board with their thing than in themselves getting on board with someone else's thing. So lots of people want other people to write stories set in their world, but fewer want to write stories set in other peoples' worlds. To a lesser extent, people would rather insert their existing character into a world or story rather than making a new character that fits more harmoniously. Thus, these projects have a tendency to end up disjointed and inharmonious.