Little Bill

Men vs. Women Race to 1000

491

Ardacia

@Lucidnonsense 'Fraid so.

@TheRestOfYou Sorry for the radio silence! Don't worry, I haven't given this one up. Vor and I are working on a collab.

Collaborative Novel

Hey guys, here are some updates. I ran out of bullets for my lists so I'm using these squares.

■ In lieu of applications (Which take forever) I'm looking through all your post histories to look at your writing. I'mma choose 2-3 people based on a lot of different factors, enough to be kind of a pain in the ass to list, so lemme just assure you in advance that if I don't pick you, it has less to do with me thinking you're a bad writer and more with the cadence of your writing, repeating phrases, how much you've reread and re-edited your stuff or some arbitrary GM reason. Just a warning, raising a high bar here. And the bar's not even my son.

■ I'm gonna write a bunch of story prompts, pick some off the internet, rework a fable or two, and hopefully have 12 story prompts. Who knows, this might be hard as shit and I'll have like five. Probably not, though. Probably. Anyway, I'll have prompts I'm already cool with, so the genre/style prompts will hopefully be varied enough for 2-3 people to agree on one. I'm putting a lot of faith in democracy here, don't be shitty and disappoint me.

■ The PM of Acceptance will be sent out tonight before I go to sleep, so this thread is closed to any new applicants. The only other update worth mentioning isn't even big enough for a bullet square, but I figured I should let ya'll know I plan on us putting the completely re-edited, shiny, finished chapters in The Gallery. We can all post them, since the posts will hopefully be worked on by all of us and not have any one of us taking sole credit, so don't worry about your 1337 post count. Figured an audience of sorts would be incentive for us to keep going. Thank you all for your interest, I hope we can really write something worth reading. Th-th-th-tha-that's all, folks.

Collaborative Novel

<Snipped quote by DeadBeatWalking>

I'm wondering how many people would actually be the best balance for collaboration, but wouldn't drown the story in conflicting interests

@Mercenary Lord

I'm hoping for a team of 3-4 including myself.

Collaborative Novel

Bumping this back up. Lots of declarations of interest, not a lot of discussion. There probably won't be an OOC with more info to be waiting for, so start letting me know your likes and dislikes.

STARLIGHT [1980s Coming of Age Sci-Fi]

waiting for posts like

Collaborative Novel

Right, right. Google docs it is. Enjoy your UNUSABLE CHAT SYSTEM working servers. I now realize that all of us choosing a genre will be a bit of a clusterfuck, so I suggest those interested should say what they are and are not interested in writing -- and some reasons why -- and we'll whittle our options down once we have enough preferences that there's a noticeable theme. I'll start!

✓ Stephen King-esque Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi. I like characters that grew up in the same world as me, with traits similar to people I've met. Not for nothing, I don't know many dudes like Obi-Wan or Borimir, so I find stories set in the modern age (Or at least some point in time from the 50's to now, if any of you guys wanna do a period piece) more identifiable. By "Stephen King-esque" I should explain that I mean "Classic Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Horror trope explained rationally". 1408 is about a haunted room, which makes more sense when you consider Stephen King's universe has weak spots in reality Lovecraftian horrorterrors can influence and visit our world through. It is about a monster that turns into your worst fear, which is actually an alien that uses this method to hunt. There are other examples, but I gotta run right now. Point is, I don't like it when fictitious elements aren't explained in some way.

✓ Space Western/Space Opera. The journey into the unknown wilderness is a common element in writing, no doubt about that, I just think it'd be fun to do so with another planet. Maybe a story about crash-landed astronauts trying to send a distress signal? Anyway, point is, I like Sci-Fi when it's not too Sci-Fi, so a story about humans set in a nonhuman place seems about the right amount for me.

✓ Realistic fiction. No space juju, no magic, nothing unnatural of the sort. In order to make this idea interesting, it'd probably mostly be crime-focused. If we're staying strictly realistic I'd prefer to do something set in the past, preferably 1900's onward.

✘ Hard Fantasy/Hard Sci-Fi. I find that a lot of projects get abandoned because people spend a lot of time explaining the world as if they were in-world, when really, "It's a generic fantasy world" would do. The federation is always either good (Star Trek, Stargate) or bad (Star Wars, Firefly). The elves are always pretty. The aliens are always more advanced than humans, except for the one group of not-klingons. The dwarves always like gold. It seems a waste of time to create a whole universe that adheres to a lot of the laws of its genre, save for a few details like dragons being able to turn into people or some shit.

✘ Apocalypse/Post-Apocalypse. This one's more personal than the other, iunno. These last few years, the media has kind of had a zombie boner that I've gotten tired of. If our protagonist doesn't start off in a coma or in a bunker, we have to write out the whole apocalypse, and even then, The Walking Dead has pretty much done everything with the genre that can be done. Special kinds of zombies? Different factions with different philosophies? The real enemies are the humans? TWD did all of those. Just kinda seems done to undeath at this point.

Collaborative Novel

𝕆𝕓𝕝𝕚𝕘𝕒𝕥𝕠𝕣𝕪 𝕔𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕕 𝕘𝕚𝕗 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕔𝕠𝕠𝕝 𝕗𝕠𝕟𝕥 𝕥𝕠 𝕖𝕟𝕤𝕦𝕣𝕖 𝕚𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕣𝕖𝕤𝕥

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Alright, hear me out. Roleplaying is supposed to be a form of collaborative fiction writing, right? At the core, without all the CS's and post orders, that's what it is: A bunch of people writing the same story. What I'm proposing in this interest check is a stripped-bare form of RPing, which is to say, a book. With chapters and shit. The goal here isn't to get published or anything, (That's a whole can of worms and necessary higher quality that would make this not as fun) but just to write a large piece of fiction that has a beginning, middle, end, and is impactful in some way, even if the impact is that we have written it. That's it. That's the idea. That being said, people just love bullet points, so here's a bullet point list of things I'm looking for, points I'd like to make, and other things that would look cool next to a circle.

• The most non-negotiable aspect of this brain trust is that everyone is comfortable, perhaps most comfortable, with Advanced writing. Nothing against you folks in the Free and Casual section, I just don't think it'd be fun to read a book written with Free-level descriptions. I mean, that's fair, right? Anyway, Advanced. Bring your A-Game.

• Another thing that makes this not a RP is that it will not focus on the focus of most RPs; A group of like-minded people comparable to a crew, fellowship, gang, or team, setting out to accomplish something. Even though that's exactly what we are, in a weird sense, I'd prefer that it not be what we write. No stories about 6'2 twenty something attractive characters that may as well be PC's.

• The genre and plot are unimportant right now, as long as we can decide on one for the story we all like. Why not tell us about your preferred genres in your responses to this interest check? Personally, I'm thinking either Urban Fantasy/Sci-Fi or Space Western. Share your thoughts on these, or other genres. Anyway, point is, we agree on a genre, plot, and probably main character.

• One of the things that makes this not an RP is that we all control the characters that exist, though some people will probably have preferences and skills for writing certain characters. The reason for this is plot advancement -- we don't have to wait for anybody to be online to collab or anything, we can just add bits and pieces to the story as we go on.

• This will probably happen on Piratepad. If you are the one person on this site who isn't familar with it, get acquainted with it. It's a site people can edit a piece of text on simultaneously. Learn it. Live it. Love it.

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Anyway, any of you folks interested should make themselves known here. I've been itching to write something long and meaningful and interesting, but the confines placed by forum-based roleplaying only make for certain kinds of stories.

TL;DR: Let's write a book

Red VS Blue (Come Join)

>give Rat a rousing, anti-red team peptalk to assist training

STARLIGHT [1980s Coming of Age Sci-Fi]

As you can see, Cecil posts will read kind of like the middle of Moby Dick. One part plot advancement, three parts boating instructions.