The Five Dales, a literary exercise by Suu

[Suu]

My friend Gabe and I go way back to the early days of online chat-based RPG on Yahoo. (lol I know shutup), and I still do some para-chat based Star Wars stuff with him when we're not sick of the assholes we've been gaming with for the past 11 years.

Long story short, he approached me this week about starting something more along the lines of what could be published work, and essentially it's us starting, from scratch, a high fantasy story the old school RP style, but from the seat of our pants with no plot other than what each other does in the chat and trying to adapt to the other's writing style. Like NANOWRIMO between two people beat-boxing, essentially. The only problem is that he lives in CA and I'm in RI, and he works overnights, so the scheduling isn't going to allow us to get this done super fast.

Sure, you must be like, "But Suu, how the FUCK will you find time to do this?" Simple. I can draw the comic and sit here at the computer for my turn. Like I said, I have no notes on hand, we're letting the plot go and seeing what happens. Each of us are responsible for all of the characters. So far, it's trickier than you think.

[Telarus]

Sounds like what Aspirin did with the Thieves' World series, but more approaching real-time back-and forth (they did it a story at a time by post).

Sounds cool. You may actually want to check out a few of the "everyone's the GM" games to see how they handle passing Narrative Control back and forth, elements of worldbuilding, etc. Although those games are geared more for a group of 3-6. Prime-Time Adventures is one that focuses on 'making up a tv show, and the stars' and then each play session is ended my the players handing out "Fan Mail" points that can be used to influence the game world in a future scene.

Something slimmed down like this might be good, where you'd each have to contribute a certain amount before some-one has enough points to make the Dragon show up and capture the Princess or something dramatic like that.

[Eater of Clowns]

When I was 12 or 13 or so a friend and I, when we were looking for something to do hanging out, would pass a narrative back and forth in person.  When one of us had an idea or ran out of one the next would pick it up, all verbally.  Some of the arcs would last a few months.  Come to think of it, it seems like a really strange thing for kids to do.

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett did this, like Telarus mentioned by post, with Good Omens.

It sounds like fun.  It takes a good deal of comfort and trust to relinquish the story, to have these ideas about directions that you might not be able to explore because another just works better.

[Suu]

It is difficult, and it takes a lot of knowing how the other one writes. Like I said, I've been gaming with him for 11 years. We keep our posts in a separate window than our personal chat, if things get out of hand, then well, one of us goes, "Okay, no. Let's do this again because this sucks."

And then we let it take it's course again. Basically, it's just spur-of-the-moment with our imagination. So far it's pretty cool.

[Telarus]

Can I suggest keeping abstract relationship maps? There's some good 'mind mapping' software that you could use. It's basically just a bubble map with various themes/characters/tags on the bubbles, and lines/arrows between them with tags on the lines.

[Suu]

That may not be a bad idea, since I have to keep looking back at the archive like, "Huh?"

[LMNO]

That's pretty damn cool.  Good luck!

[Iason Ouabache]

No one has suggested using Google Wave yet? I'm shocked!

[Suu]

So far it's all pretty cliche high fantasy with elves, demonslayers, and a dark prince who became a genocidal maniac when he didn't get the girl he wanted...Good think I never said it was going to be GOOD.