Friendship is Magic Fanfiction Round Robin

So continuing our discussion from the Western Animation MLP thread, I've set this space for us all to share as we develop the story. If I remember correctly, the initial request was to create a Celestia/Octavia 'Ship fic. Do we want to keep this a the core of the story in cases where the genre may change, because I can imagine scenarios where things would become rather forced.

I'd assume not, but it would probably be better to just focus on the first shipfic for now and decide what to do with future ones later, IMO.

I'd have to agree with crowlover.

Anyways, I must have missed this on the main thread, but I'd be interested in doing a round robin with you guys.

I believe it was mentioned there'd be a rotation of authors, right? I suggest we have a doc someplace where everyone interested can sign up. We could also put whatever rules we end up using to govern this on the same doc, since I'm sure we'll end up coming up with at least a few.

You both make fair points, and I was leaning that way myself. Glad to have you aboard, Posey!

Yeah, best to just focus one one premise at a time. It will probably spin off on some ludicrous tangent at some point anyway.

I'm not sure if I'm much of a writer, but I could probably do a bit once a few people have contributed.

@Irish One way I think we had in mind of writing this was through P Ms and collecting them all at the end, depending on whether we go with "Next person only sees what the previous person wrote" or not.

edited 25th Jun '13 7:55:06 PM by crowlover

In that case we'd still need something to tell us who to PM so they can write the next part.

First off, do we want to keep a Tavi/Lyra ship fic? Or perhaps go with other characters.

And as for Google, I'm not sure if I can write in them. I could find a way to make it work, but haven't found one thus far.

edited 25th Jun '13 7:58:59 PM by Darkabomination

@Irish Yeah, right. We'll work on signups and an order that we can either put in a doc or in this thread.

@Dark I think it's Celestia/Octavia and I don't have any objections to keeping it that way if no one else does.

edited 25th Jun '13 8:00:30 PM by crowlover

I've got no real complaints regarding whatever pairing we all decide on. I guess we could leave that to popular vote or something.

Octavia/Celestia is what started this conversation in the first place, so it should be at least the starting point of the first story.

OK, Tavi/Celestia it is.

Can I join? Ordinarily, I'm terrible at writing, but an excuse to be deliberately ridiculous sounds fun.

Of course, storyyeller. All are welcome.

edited 25th Jun '13 8:25:20 PM by Thirikal

No, you can never join such a prestigious thread as this! Begone!

Here's my suggestion of how to do this:

1. Create a google doc for signups. We can use that to determine the order.

2. Each person writes a set amount (I'd say 500-1000 words, it's enough to have some progression, but not so long that it'll be too much trouble for people to fill the quota) and adds it to the gdoc.

3. Once we decide that the story is done we upload it to somebody's fimfic account and hilarity ensues.

Also, I think it would be good to have a few guidelines to make sure we don't go too far off the rails, at least for this fic.

My suggestions would be stuff like:

1. Content should remain PG-13

2. No god-moding the story; i.e. no All Just a Dream or Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies stuff. It has to be a good faith effort to actually continue the story.

I'd be fine with that, though I think dark said he has problems with Google Docs.

edited 25th Jun '13 8:43:38 PM by crowlover

Right, that could be a problem. Although we could probably find ways around it. The thread itself isn't exactly conducive to signups or continuations.

I might be interested in this...

I could perhaps post it here and it could be pasted to the doc? You'd jst have to let me know when it's my turn.

So is it ok if we write our section in a completely different style just for kicks or stuff like that?

What, like a section that suddenly shifts from 3rd person omniscient to stream of consciousness? I imagined the style shifting as the story progressed as everyone writes differently anyway, so I think it would be fine as long as you try and remain true to the core themes that the group might agree upon at the start.

Keeping some sort of google doc or having some sort of central authority who people would PM to sign up who then spreadsheets the whole thing and informs others when it's there turn could both work well I think. Though in the case of the latter, it'd be a bit more involved as they'd have to be pretty consistent in sending notices and updating the sheet.

edited 26th Jun '13 4:21:58 AM by Thirikal

This sounds like it could be fun.

On thing I have to wonder though, because I know all of us write in very different ways - well beyond style - would there be any kind of 'control' over where the segments are allowed to go, or is it just a free for all?

Like, for example one person ends their segment in such a situation where it looks like Tavi is about to meet Celestia or something, and the next person decides to latch onto some random detail in the previous segment and pull her off on a political adventure for a while - presuming that that still manages to retain a setup where it could lead to shipping, would that be acceptable, or would focus be preferable?

I dunno if that's a good example, but I'm sure you get the idea. Some of us focus on characters in our stories, others on plot, and others on philosophy and symbolism and the like. It's almost inevitable one person is going to wind up going off the rails to some degree.