Trying to make a story that will appeal to a wide audience.

Basically what I want to do is combine the ideas of a storybook and a contest.
How it will work is there will be some information on the story (a plot map, character descriptions, ect) for everyone to see. Once every three weeks (may change this to two weeks) we will open for submission for the next chapter. There will be guidelines for things that have to happen in that chapter and some recommendations for other things that could happen in that chapter. Whoever wants to can write the next chapter and submit it to me (or whoever is running the contest for that chapter). It will be reviewed for accuracy and then we will open a poll. Whichever chapter wins to poll will become the "official" chapter and then we will move on to the next chapter.
The poll will be done anonymously so we know people aren't just voting for whichever writer is the most popular. I have a plan for how this will work that I will share soon when I ask for help refining it.

Probably List:
- Fantasy
I think this is one of the most popular genres and also the easiest to work other things into so it is probably our best choice.

Definitely List:
- Love story sub-plot
I don't want it to be the main plot because not everyone likes love stories, but I do want it to be there because so many people love it.

The people of this land are capable of entering this state of mind (I'm not sure what to call it yet). When they first learn how to do it they have to start by meditating and as they get better it becomes easier until they reach the point that they can do it while still engaged in other tasks. While in this state they can feel the life around them (probably represented by different colors, because that would be fun to describe/read). They have an particularly sharp view of themself. While in this state they can view the details of their life force are extremely clear. When they look at someone else they will see just a blob of whatever color represents that person. But when they look at themself they can see that the blob is made up if millions of tiny dots. Those dots represent the time they have yet to live (if they where to live their full life span without interruption by things like illness and injury). Each dot is a moment (which means every moment a dot disappears).
To use magic it costs you your life, quite literally. Every spell that someone casts removes several dots (which will need a better name). How many dots it takes depends on how big the task is and what it's intent is (things focused on harming other life forms will take more dots then things that help other life forms).
The only way to replenish your dots is to have another life force give you theirs. You cannot take them, only give them. (we could potentially change that so you can take them, and that would certainly make things more complicated and interesting)

It is possible to create things with magic. But the things created by magic have no life force and cannot exist on their own. It must share the life force or dots or whatever with something that already exists.
Objects don't need dots like living things do. They merely need the glow of existence. So when someone creates an object they can bind it to whatever they want (there will probably be some sort of rule about it has to be of similar mass or something).
Living things are harder. They need dots. So they have to be paired with something that has dots (aka another living thing). When you use magic to create a living thing then it will share the dots of whatever creature it is bound to. That does not mean that every moment the original creature will lose two dots, it means that when the original creature loses a dot that dot counts for both creatures. But when a magic creature is made it must be bonded to a creature that has as many dots as it would have needed it it was born naturally. So the bigger the creature you make the bigger the creature it has to be bonded with.
I haven't figured out the details of bonding an existing thing with a magical thing yet. Except for the fact that any harm that comes to one of the two also affects the other due to the fact that their life forces (their dots) are intertwined so closely.

We could also make it so that alternatively whenever someone creates something with magic they can give that thing some of their dots. Then whatever they created would last as long as it had dots. This would exist alongside the idea of binding two things. With this idea you wouldn't be able to make anything too big or else you would use up to much of your own life creating it (because you also sacrifice the dots it takes to use the magic to create the creature)

In this land there are tales of magical creatures that don't really exist just like in ours. Due to the fact that they can create creatures with magic there have been occasions when a magician has created one of those creatures.
There are many tales of how all things come from the earth, so when someone is born their dots come from the earth. Since things created with magic did not come from the earth when they have children those children do not naturally get dots from the earth. So for it's child to live the magic creature and it's bonded creature would have to agree to give the child some of their dots. Unless someone who can work magic is present, in which case that person could bond the newborn magic creature with an existing creature. Because of this species made by magic rarely thrive, unless they are intelligent (in which case they can use magic and can bind their children to existing creatures).

Dragons where created by a magician many years ago. Due to their intelligence they must be bonded with other intelligent beings like humans, elves, dwarves, and such.

Due to a dragon's natural advantage over pretty much everything else (due to size, strength, intelligence, and such) they have little use for magic (most of the time). So by the time a dragon lays and egg it has used very few dots and doesn't mind sparing some to give its offspring the best life it can. Often times that is achieved by making slight alterations to the child to improve certain aspects (like a hollow bone structure for better flight, a barbed tail for fighting, and such edits). Every dragon has a different opinion of what "better" is, and they each pursued a "better dragon" differently. So as the generations went on dragons became more and more different from each other, creating the different types of dragons that exist in the world when our story happens.
Most other sentient creature find that practice appalling and would never use it on their own children. But the dragons do not mind it because the first dragon was born of magic, so in a way they are honoring that dragon by having their young born already embedded in magic.

Dragons needed to have intelligent beings to bond their children with if they wanted their species to survive. And a dragon's strength and abilities where very helpful in most areas of life, particularly for humans. So it did not take long for it to become custom that every human and most other intelligent beings be bonded with a dragon.

I haven't thought much about other beings, but I know how the human society will work with the dragons.
Once a child reaches the age of twelve they are considered old enough to decide if they are willing to be bonded with a dragon or not. Of course, the almost always say yes (the practice as been going on for so long that anyone without a dragon is looked down on. That is only made worse by the fact that now the only people who don't have a dragon are those who couldn't get one, usually caused by either not having access to dragons because they're very poor, or because the dragons refused to bond their young with that person).
Once someone has decided to bond with a dragon they seek out pairs that have and/or are expecting an egg. Once they have decided what dragon the want to be bound to (based on breed, gender (which and be determined by the color of the egg), parent's standing, "changes" the parents have made to their offspring, and that kind of thing) then they present themself to the parents. The parents then decide if they are willing to bond their young with that person or not. If they're not then the person continues searching, if they are then there is a ceremony performed to bind the two together (after which the egg will hatch).

Other changes have been made. Like what job you can get depends partially on what kind of dragon you are paired with (because the dragon will help their human and what they can do will be better suited to certain jobs rather then others).

My idea is to tell the tale of a boy who cannot find a pair willing to bond him with their young. This would probably be due to his parent's reputation.
It will start by showing how hard it is for him to not have a dragon in a society where they are highly prized. It will lead him to eventually steal an egg and bond himself to it. Later on he finds out the egg he stole is of important lineage (I have several ideas of what exactly that means). So when someone finds him and his dragon he ends up engaged in a web of politics (the details of which I have yet to figure out).
It will have something to do with the interactions between two kingdoms (or potentially two species). The one would have something they desperately want, but the other would be considerably bigger. So the smaller one needs something but they don't want a war because then they'd be obliterated. Which makes it so that they have to manipulate the bigger kingdom into giving them what they need. The boy would be from the bigger kingdom.

My favorite idea for why the egg is so important has to do with a legend.
My idea is that the first pair of dragons to figure out how to bind their offspring with other intelligent beings (rather then giving their offspring some of their own dots) also happened to have a quarrel with a certain magician.
They had thought they had finally settled their quarrel and had found a home and had children. They laid three eggs. They bonded the first two (each person eventually went on the rule the two different kingdoms). They where extremely picky about who they bonded their children with. Before they had a chance to bond their final egg the magician came back again. There was an epic battle blah blah blah cool stuff. Just before they killed the magician he managed to cast a spell on their last egg. The spell was something along the lines of it can only be paired with one specific person who would not walk the earth until the egg's parents and siblings where long since dead.
The egg was well protect and everyone waited patiently until one by one its family passed on. It's parents had several more eggs, so it took some time. When its youngest brother died there was much grief for two weeks, and then the excitement of the egg finally being able to hatch caught on. What they had forgotten was the magician very had implied it would be a while after they died that the egg would hatch. So they arranged for the child of every nobleman in the land to be presented to the egg and for the binding ceremony to be attempted. It never worked.
Soon people lost hope. But the egg was still a valuable piece of history. So when the kingdom went to war they where desperate for funds. So the kind decided to rent the egg out so that different families could have it displayed in their homes. The idea was so popular that even after that war ended they continued doing it for years to come.

When the boy stole the egg it had been in transit from one family to another, so he had no idea what it was. The only reason someone found out the he had that dragon was because when the magician cast his spell it left a mark on the egg (don't know what it should look like) and that mark transferred onto the dragon (and possibly the boy too).