Whello there everyone, I am still alive. I thought I’d set up a new forum game, as I feel like we could use another one. The idea is simple: We are going to write a story, chapter by chapter, together. Of course, following the six thousand words a chapter most books have would be excessive to say the least, so I have a slightly different plan. I don’t know how many of you have read Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, but I want to propose to use the exact same structure as that book: (Which, I know, was a common structure back then) - Every post is either a letter from one character of the story to another, or an entry out of a characters journal or diary. These should not be more than a thousand words each and should be aimed at three to five hundred, to keep the story accessible and to prevent it stagnating. (If you want a sense of how long that is: the first entry is roughly six hundred words) - I would kindly like to ask you to read all that has already been written, before writing the next part, and to ask you to make sure that you can think of some reason why everything written so far is written. In other words: it has to make sense in context. There is, however, no correct or incorrect, only what can make sense and what cannot. If someone writes something that doesn’t make sense with what you thought was happening, but can follow with what has explicitly happened, it is a completely valid entry. To add to the story or to find out what might be happening, however, you are probably going to have to do some Sherlock Holmes’ing. It does not need to, and should not, be trivial. - Then, I woúld suggest to not make it too weird, jet I know that that is a relative term. Most of the times I have seen things like this, they fail at being fun because there are city-sized dragons pulled out of thin air to explain a minor plot point. This usually makes for an unengaging story, as the stakes plummet and all questions can be answered with even more absurd magic. I also know using magic in a way that keeps a story engaging is usually challenging for professional fantasy novelists. Therefore, I want to propose that story plays out in our own world. This means that some traditional medicine or magic might work, jet only to the extend it could exist in the world we currently live in. If you want to think about the supernatural, think H. P. Lovecraft rather than Harry Potter. (Harry Potter plays in a world that coexists with our own, but it doesn’t happen in our own world. In the work of H. P. Lovecraft the supernatural is in our world (mainly as folklore that turns out to be true.) Additionally, the magic in his work can never be really used by anyone; it simply exists. It’s never the solution to anything.) (See this as more of a suggestion than as a hard rule.) - The final rule I made up to keep this fun is that no one is allowed to say outright what they think is happening, apart from the text that you add to the story. No “she’s lying” footnotes or anything. You can, however, use names and such of folklore to suggest what might be happening, such as I did - You might want to look up the dates to look at the news of the time, as our world is happening in the background. Anything happening that would change the international headlines of the time is therefore also not an option. (Again, doing this to keep the story somewhat in the “not too weird” category) For the more practical things: -please try to make everything clearly readable in every definition of the word. -You can post once every three posts (there always have to be two posts by other people between two of you.) Additionally, you can post when it has been more than a week since the last one. -The order of posts is the order in which it is meant to be read, so please avoid any “insert this between this post and this post,” as that will make it confusing -Ninja’s might also become a problem, as writing something takes time. If you are currently writing something, you can post a post stating that you are, and what you are writing on (like “I’m currently writing the morning entry of the January the 13th entry of Dimitri’s journal.”) You can then edit that in within an hour of posting it. If another person feels like this entry cannot possibly affect what they want to write, they can post a “currently writing” post themselves. However, if it states something that you later find out cannot be true with the earlier entry, you have to change it. “currently writing” posts that keep open for too long (an hour or so) might be removed when people want to continue. I don’t expect this to be a masterpiece, but using the techniques you know from creative writing will probably make this more fun for us all in the long run Anyway, so, let me start: _________________________________________________________________ Dimitri Dostoyevsky’s journal. January the 13th, 1917. I woke up in the train early in the morning. Outside my window, the steppe looked like a barren wasteland, and it seemed unlikely that I would arrive in a small town in only a few hours. So far, no snow had fallen, but the mountains not too far away were all white, signalling the place wouldn’t stay habitable for long. I hoped my journey would be successful. The letter I had gotten from the Tsar seemed urgent, but I didn’t really understand why. He asked our team of medical professionals to investigate the rumours that a two hundred year old man would be living in a small town north of Kremlyov. After exchanging letters with a woman named Aleandra, one of the townspeople, we decided that it would be best if would go there to take a look. When I arrived, I found the lady with whom I had spoken waiting for me at the station. She guided me to her house, an old observatory, and showed me the room she had prepared for me to stay in overnight. It was clear she had made sure I could take my time investigating this case. We ate breakfast together and she played some piano for me. After this, she gave me the directions to the old man’s house, which is shared by the Kians family, one of the three big families that run the town. When I arrived at this house, his brother confronted me with the fact that Daniil Kian, the old man, had died that very night. He didn’t seem very emotional, and spent some time telling me how old Daniil had gotten, and what remarkable things he had survived. He told me that the last person Daniil had spoken with was the town’s doctor, who he thought might have had some insights on how and why Daniil died. Jet, when he went to visit him, he found out he also died the same night. He speculated an old mythical creature, a Čuma, to be responsible. “I’m a Bachelor of medicine, not a delusional poet,” I told him. After which he was quiet. He asked me to never speak of it, and call it a Kuga or Teta instead, which, according to my dictionary, are their words for godmother and aunt. I asked him if I could maybe analyse the body, to find how and why he died, and maybe also find out how he survived for so long, but their tradition is to leave dead bodies unobserved for a day until they are buried. I could not, under any circumstances, see it. Additionally, common people are not allowed to touch a dead body, only the Damavik, or, plural, Domovoy, are allowed to do that, shy and tiny people to whom Daniil also apparently thanked his long life. I am going to have to speak one of them to maybe get a glimpse of how he lived such a long life. Maybe one of them is reasonable enough to take my scalpel and dissect his body. I am not going to just go back after a month of travel, after all. Less than an hour after I entered the Kian’s house, I was talking with Aleandra again. She agreed with me that Daniil’s brother was a delusional creep who should not be trusted with any information. I tried to get some more information about the town, but she was more interested in hearing about life in Moscow, which she suggestively told me she wanted to visit one day. After lunch, she went away to get groceries, and I opened my journal to start writing. This town is a strange place for sure. I hope I can find out a bit more about Daniil. The next train doesn’t come in a few weeks, so I am stuck here anyway. (Yes, some parts of the plot of this start are lifted from somewhere. I wanted to have a good beginning, one we can build on. Once we have successfully diverged from this source material, I might reveal what it was.)
Oof, that seems pretty challenging! My father was part of a Christian forum that consisted entirely of this: writing stories together. I really like the idea. I am interested in participating in something like this, although I don't grasp this start yet. I also worry that it will quickly become hard to keep track of things. I like your idea of not adding explanatory notes to cowriters, but I think that a summary of what has explicitly happened every now and then could be necessary, or at least rather helpful. Also, is it likely that this will get to do with the Great War? Considering your note about news of the time...
You don't have to know exactly what is happening, you can simply come up with a theory on what might be happening, and write a second entery based on taht theory. As long as the theory works with what is so far said, you're fine Summeries would indeed be helpfull. I was considering posting one every now and then, but I was mainly talking about footnotes to explain what is suggested, ot give extra information the reader wouldn't know jet. This is not about writing a good end product, after all, it is about having fun whilst making it Serov, or Kremlyov as it used to be called, is a town roughly a thousand kilometers east of Moskow. It might not have to do anything with that. However, the Febuairy revolution, also known as the Communistic revolution of Russia, happened less than a month after the time period I started, so that may or may not be a part of the story. Aditionally, The Čuma and Domovoy are actual creatures of Russian mythology, and looking them up might also be of interest
Maxim Romanovich January 13th, 1917 There is talk of mutiny on the Eastern Front, from within my very own trenches. We have been stuck in this place for over two years now - our line of defence does not shift, we are all war-weary and tired, and now this mysterious plague sweeps through us. The higher-ups laughed when they heard of it, and blamed it on things like trench-foot and told us that we have the same problems as all the other frontlines in Europe. Just yesterday I saw poor Marka get carried off into the infirmary, away from the rest of us, covered in weeping black buboes and with dark blood dripping from his facial orifices. All of the nurses have succumbed to the disease and died. There is no one left to treat us. It strikes seemingly overnight, killing its infected within hours... if it feels kind. Two days ago I lined several of our own men up against the wall and We thought that was the end, that the infected were all dead, but it came back anyway... it must be in the fabric of our clothes, or God is punishing us for our actions throughout this terrible, terrible war. It is no wonder that mutiny is coming. From what I can gather, the mutiny seems to be lead by Anatoliy. Earlier in this diary, when I first came to this godforsaken trench, I noted that he was the old man with the big grey beard who had his own little corner in the trench, where he gave the soldiers tea and such things from a nearby town that he lived in, riding out of it and travelling with the men who delivered us food along the supply line. Many of the soldiers had taken to calling him the grandfather of the camp. For a while, I visited his little corner and drank his tea and sang the songs that he and the others seemed to love. But, you see, it turns out that Anatoliy was a communist, and with the events in the capital in recent years the generals banned Anatoliy's gatherings. He still smuggled himself in from time to time, to see how the soldiers were doing, but I never saw him again... I'd rather keep my head on my shoulders. Now he leads an insurrection among the soldiers who came to love him. I will not stay here much longer. This plague will get me too if I stay, and I refuse to be a part of some doomed communist uprising. I would very much like to return home to my family's farm near Moscow, but that cannot be. I would be a deserter and will be treated as such. Instead, come morning, I will hopefully be sneaking through enemy lines and be able to make a life for myself in Austria-Hungary. Until the next time, M.
