Ask HN: How would you design a version control system for prose instead of code?

Git's fundamental concepts are difficult enough for coders to understand, let alone non-technical users. Entrenched solutions like MS Word's (or LibreOffice's) "Track Changes" are challenging to use well in their own way and encourage waterfall-like workflows[0], yet the tools we use to version code aren't a particularly good fit either - even a simplified approach of forks and pull requests doesn't make collaborating on prose particularly easy.

So, what sort of version control system do you think might actually feel natural to authors and editors of prose?

[0] eg. author to editor to author to editor to copyeditor to author to editor (deep breath) to printed galleys to author to editor to final.