Can You Write a Novel as a Group?
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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.
Where? I’ve stopped long time ago and miss it a bit. Care to recommend any sources?
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/forums/quests.29/
https://forums.spacebattles.com/forums/roleplaying-quests-st...
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)
I've been trying to get back into it, but writer's block is a bitch.
(Re: your project. I've long toyed with tools in that way, but never quite finished one. Have you taken a look at Storium? That's currently the most interesting, currently released and used tool of such a type as I'm aware of. I keep meaning to actually find a game in it.)
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.
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 having written code, or to write a book about marketing, after having spent a 40-hour-workweek having worked in marketing, etc.
So, if you are going to go to the trouble of writing a novel, how on earth would it occur to you to not avail yourself of the opportunity to satisfy that need?
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.
The Goncourt brothers wrote novels together until the one's decline and death--the linked piece mentions duos as more common.
Why would writing with someone else necessarily leave the need unsatisfied?
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.
For illustration, single authors have interacted with support communities in a variety of ways, from blogging almost complete chapters, to discussion forums brainstorming plots and characters. What are some others? And how does single and group authorship blend, given early readers, and writing groups, and collaborative research, and so on?
I don't have a feel for the design space. This post prompted the thought that it's richer than I'd been considering.
I've failed at creating social infrastructure for a hobby project around transformative improvement of science education content. It seems clear I'd need a diverse hybrid of multiple support processes, but the path to minimum viable process has been a challenge. So I'm hoping for "oh... that's an interesting possibility I'd not considered" fodder, as I found this post to be.
Someone wrote a hilarious oral history of Naked Came The Stranger: https://www.wnyc.org/story/naked-came-stranger-oral-history/. It's all writing and presumably SFW, as well as being an amazing story—and perhaps an amazing story about recognizing market conditions, then capitalizing on them.
The rules were loose but you would write about a paragraph of the story and email it back. The experience was unique. You had some control of the story but not full control. You were both along for the ride and the story felt unique.
Disclosure I've been a publisher of works in this series, but the glue that has kept this project together is their contract. If an author kills or damages a character they give up their share of revenue which stops people from painting characters into impossible corners.
I don't know if you can call the book a novel, or even readable. But there is an attempt at a plot somewhere in the mess of Tao Lin flavoured chan-style prose.
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.
There is not enough money in novels to bother but it is trivial if needed.