Young Writers Society

I had been thinking about collaborative stories and storybooks and I came up with an idea. It is kind of like a more serious storybook combined with a contest.
What I'm think is would it be fun to have a novel where any writer can compete with other writers to write the next chapter?

The way it would work is there would be a story outline available for anyone to see. There would also be a page of character descriptions, and a map of any locations that might be important. The first chapter would already be provided at the beginning.
Then we would host a contest for the second chapter. There would be some guidelines and requirements for what happens in the chapter (all very simple stuff). The only requirement for the writer is that they've read the first chapter. They would have four weeks to submit their second chapter. After that deadline there would be a poll (who each chapter was written by would be a secret so it wouldn't be a popularity contest) to determine which chapter became the "official" second chapter.
Then the second chapter would join the first and we'd repeat the process for chapter three.

Do you guys think that would be fun? It would be a writing contest but also a collaborative story! If I get a good reaction to this idea then I will go ahead and make one.

I like it. The only thing that might not work so good is by, say, your nineteenth chapter you might not get any entries because people may not want to go and read all those chapters first. I could see it if the original contestants stuck with it, but otherwise I'm not sure how that would work.

I think it would be very fun though!

I think that it could work, but that 4 weeks is far too long... Think about it! a month for a chapter? Quite a few people would get bored or forget if it was that long. Also, it would take forever to finish the story, seeing as you'd only do max 12 chapters a year. I think a week for a chapter would be more than enough. Look at Last Man Standing!

The thing about Last Man Standing is that all of those chapters are -- correct me if I'm wrong -- below 2000 words per chapter, which is generally considered kind of short for novelling, and even if you have a lot of them, people might not like splitting it up to that extent. Not to mention, some people need more than a week to write a chapter because of time constraints on their writing or online life and some such.

I do think 4 weeks is a bit long, however. Perhaps shorten it to 2 weeks instead, and that would have an estimated 26 chapters in a year?

Thanks for the input guys!
The story probably wouldn't be very long. Like Holysocks said, the farther along it gets the fewer new writers it will get. So I'm not to worried about how many chapters I get a year.
I guess I do see your point with four weeks being a bit long. I will probably shorten it to two or three weeks.

I would also suggest, perhaps, getting sign-ups and preferred chapter numbers before you actually start writing -- of course people can leave due to issues and such while it's going on -- just so you know you have X number of chapters before you have a desperate need for Chapter X+1 to have sign-ups.

(I did have more to say, but then I reread the original post and went "what even am I saying this makes no sense", so, uh. Yeah. xD)

A potential problem could also occur if people tried to continue with their storyline in the second chapter because it would differ from the "official" one. Therefore, people would have to right each of their chapter in accordance the the chapter(s) before it, which could be hard if the storyline went in a totally different direction.

The overall concept, however, does seem really cool! I like it for its experimentalism! Brilliant idea!

I see what you're saying, Ark. I will definitely pursue that.

@r4p17 I don't quite get what you're saying. Maybe I wasn't clear in my first post...? It would be required that they read all official chapters before submitting the next chapter, and there would be some requirements for their chapter. I should probably add in a small review stage before the poll so that I (and several designated people) could read through the entries to make sure they meet all the requirements.
After the poll just one chapter would be selected to be the official chapter. That way there is just one storyline to follow.
It is always possible that someone would add in something that would greatly affect the storyline, but that's the fun of it! The story in the end won't be exactly what I set out to do, because each writer took it and made it a little bit of their own.

I realize that every writer reads other's work. I am just saying it might be aggravating to change yours all the time to conform to the main one.

I'm sorry, I'm still not sure if I completely understand what you're saying. When you say "you" are you talking about me or the writers?

I think R4 means that if one contestants chapter doesn't get chosen, then it might be annoying for that same person to have to follow the winning chapters plot.

But I could be wrong.

I believe that was cleared up in WritingWolf's first post, where they stated:

The way it would work is there would be a story outline available for anyone to see. There would also be a page of character descriptions, and a map of any locations that might be important.

As a result, the plot would already be decided, so there would be no huge deviations from the plot itself. It would be smaller storylines and traits that would have to carry over from the "official" winning chapter.

Oh, okay, it makes sense now. (I don't know why I can be so slow sometimes)
Thanks for pointing that out for me Ark.

It is possible that people would be frustrated anyway, but I don't see how it would be any different from something like the storybooks where you take turns writing a few paragraphs. I will keep an eye out for it, but I don't see it being a problem. Thanks for the advice though.

Hello, everyone!
First off, I'm new here, and I'd love to get get to know you guys.

Second, @WritingWolf, I love the idea! I think it would be totally fun!