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Community => Creative Outlets => Topic started by: Sixth Monarchist on February 21, 2012, 06:20:35 am

Title: The Yarn Project
Post by: Sixth Monarchist on February 21, 2012, 06:20:35 am
or, In Which CtraK Starts Another One of Those Collaborative Thingummyjiggies. Only this time it'll either succeed or fail more hilariously, two far better sets of outcomes that what occurred to Shifting World.

OK, the thinking here is simple: ground-up rather than top-down; write the thing, worry about worldbuilding after. Indeed, worry about plot later - if you start writing at, say Chapter Twenty-Three, it'll join up with enough writing and edits at some point.

Genre is (currently) unrestricted, I've kicked it off with 350 words of I've no idea what. Link is in my sig.

Let the disaster begin...

Oh, and any questions, feel free to ask.
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Art Vandelay on February 23, 2012, 01:58:13 am
So anyone here can ad chapters of whatever the fuck we come up with? If so, I may knock something out for it.

Also, if the answer to the above is "yes", can we also edit it as we see fit?
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Sixth Monarchist on February 23, 2012, 03:47:37 pm
Hurrah, someone replied.

The answer is essentially "yes" to both questions. The odds are that, at first, we will wind up with a series of seemingly unconnected vignettes. With sufficient editing and connecting scenes, this will produce some sort of patchwork novel. With more editing and writing, this will smooth it out somewhat. With more editing and writing, there might be more depth to the project. The whole thing essentially winds up in a state of perpetual draft, where it can always be improved and changed.

Genre isn't ostensibly a problem, because even if a chapter's seemingly set in a Tolkeinesque fantasy world, and another's set in a gritty cyberpunk dystopia (to give two random opposed examples), it's possibly to connect it all via parallel universes, etc., if need be.

I would be hesitant about throwing caution to the wind like this, but of course, Wikia retains the old version of each page, some changing things doesn't permanently get rid of them, there's always a backup.

I've also got half a mind to extend things a little thusly: if, by the end of, say, each calendar year, there's a coherent novel, then it could maybe be released as a free ebook, to provide snapshots of the project and show how it changes.
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Art Vandelay on February 23, 2012, 11:48:36 pm
Super. I may have a chapter or two to add to this.
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Sixth Monarchist on February 27, 2012, 03:53:49 pm
I've now added another 300 words or so in a completely separate bit, and it seems that the recurring motifs (I've improvised both bits entirely) are 1. transport, or at least travel, 2. being trapped, and 3. some kind of big, unspecified conspiracy.
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Cataclysm on February 28, 2012, 12:53:19 am
What about characters?
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Sixth Monarchist on March 02, 2012, 05:05:24 pm
What about characters?

Create 'em. Also, in order to avoid hypocrisy on this point, I've now named two characters in my new update, and one of them even has a physical description. Also an organisation is described. A veritable riot of infodump.
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Cataclysm on March 03, 2012, 07:24:01 pm
So we just make up a random story?
Title: Re: The Yarn Project
Post by: Sixth Monarchist on March 05, 2012, 06:37:27 am
Yes. It's like one of those chain novels, only you don't have to take up where someone else left off, or even, for that matter, where you left off. It does mean having the mother of all editing tasks to yank it all into continuity, but that's part of the plan.

Basically, I'm taking the opposite approach to the Shifting World project, which sorta just died in large part because people couldn't agree on things such as magic systems and mythical creatures, et cetera. Rather than imposing a framework and then writing a story, the idea is to write a story and then impose a framework.