I did this very same thing last year with two dozen Prosers. The best way for a group chat is to create a post for all those who get involved, tag them all and start pitching your idea. When I did this it was a group challengve to finish a novel in 30 days which we did. It's called "Survival". 47 chapters with both Forward and Prologue, and 65,843 words. Each Proser has their name at the end of each chapter. You can expect a lot of debate, a lot of ideas but you have to maintain control or it can get out of hand. Keep everyone focused, keep it lively and interesting. It would bes best with whatever idea you have in mind to write the first chapter. Then designate other writers in order of each chapter and make sure with each chapter, all thiose involved are always tagged so they can who is next in line to write, what has been written so whoever is next has a strong idea of what to work off of. It's best to do at least one mass post each week so everyone knows what is going on and one thing you can do in the post, is highlight what each chapter entailed. In doing so, it can prompt more questions to getting the novel written. Continuity and clarity are key. If a character is 6'4 and 220 in one chapter and two chapters later he is suddenly 5'9" and 180, that presents a problem in uniformity. Good luck!

I tried to post this in the Beta version but it wasn't working. Or if it did work, I saw nothing to show that it did.

This is the link to the novel I mentioned: https://theprose.com/book/2939/survival

Heck yes, I would love to see this happen.

So, I've done a group novella before in an interactive writing class, and it worked out pretty great-- we began by choosing the first scene/overall plot of the story's beginning as a group. Then, one person wrote the first chapter, a second person continued where they left off with the second chapter, and so on. The issue with each person writing a chapter by themself, is that no one had to agree with the content whatsoever (So, I took advantage of that by making a humorous hippie appear out of the sky in our story, and one classmate randomly threw in a kidnapping). Also, only half the classmates felt comfortable writing an entire chapter by themselves without any groupthinking/teamwork. If I were doing that class over again, I probably would've wanted the professor to do teammates for chapters (like two people work together on a chapter), or let all the students contribute to each chapter in some way- maybe by giving out setting, character, dialogue, etc. to the students.

So idk, just stuff to think about. The fact that Prose doesn't do groupchats (as far as I know) makes this even more of an adventure. I'm really excited :)

This. Sounds. Amazing. So of course I'm going to contribute, because I, if possible, would like to be a part of this epic feat.

Some ideas? I have a couple book ideas that I have written down in my room... I'll look through those and see if I can find one I want to share...

Huzzah! Found them! Ooo... this is a fun one. My Life with a Serial Killer. I started writing this comedy a while back, but I hit a dead end in the first chapter. I think the title is pretty self explanatory, and it would be cool to see where this goes when turned into a collaborative effort.

Keep me updated... I would love to be a part of this.

By coincidence, one of my guilty sonic pleasures came through my headphones right after I read a post to this challenge. I will never use the song’s inspired, inchoate lyrics in my own writing, but in case someone else skimming Prose likes them too, allow me to refer you to the ridiculously-titled Lady Gaga track “Highway Unicorn (Road to Love).” And before you laugh too hard, check out the opening lines:

Run, run with her top down, baby, she flies

Run, run with the fury of a saint in her eyes

Run, run, cha, cha, cha, baby, she goes

With blond hair and a gun smoking under her toes

Moving into the chorus, the lyrics include “Ride, ride pony ride ride,” and “Ride, ride pony tonight,” which seems a clear reference to a Ford Mustang. And that, dear reader, is a hell of a setup.

Whom or what did she shoot? I don’t know. Why does the song later say “She’s just an American riding a dream” and that she has “a flag in her bra”? I don’t know. What the hell does a unicorn have to do with any of it? I don’t know! It makes little sense, really, and the peak of the chorus sounds like a desperate attempt to wrench a few more soaring notes onto an album that already had “Born This Way” and “You and I.”

But in my mind’s eye, Horatio, I play the music video that never was, and an establishing shot of a desert highway at night gradually zooms in while tracking an impossibly red Mustang, its headlights blazing along the dotted lines. The driver’s blond hair whips wildly as she blows past a speed limit sign, but the camera continues zooming all the way to the pedals and a very-Tarantino shot of her sandaled and pedicured feet, the end of a shotgun’s smoking barrel visible along the floorboards.

This is probably of no use whatsoever to your project (which I’m afraid I do not have time to participate in – I’m actually shirking a stack of grading right now to type this). But to see a series of posts of people batting about ideas, just as Gaga paints the picture of that Mustang in my ears? Fate, clearly.

Have at ye, Prosers. (If anyone ever actually uses this setup, please tag me :)

brainstorming what the books going to be about...

Let's make it a little less restrictive than that, eh?

I'm a pantser. Planning is only something that happens in my head, not in paper and those often get overwritten when my writing goes off in unexpected directions.

There's the fun, you never know what you're going to get, so, how about instead of brainstorming the topic of the book, we just try to decide on the opening scene?

Time, location, season, weather and characters and move on from there?

You Only Live Forever: A play on the traditional vampire romance novel.

Aisla is a junior in high school when it happens. Daenero enters her school. He plays the role of the mysterious hot new boy. He has short dark hair and the beginnings of a mustache. He's very pale with large, sunken black eyes. Aisla falls for him instantly, and spends months of her junior year neglecting her schoolwork and battling popular girls and personal drama. She finally scores a date with him, and he reveals the truth— he's a vampire.

Aisla believes she's going to be plunged into a Twilight romance. But the truth is much darker.

The universe is ruled over by two omnipotent gods— Merlin and Morgana. These two gods created humanity, and now they want to end it. In order to have the most effectiveness, they studied popular earth literature to find out what humans thought was attractive.

Due to the prevalence of vampire romance novels, Merlin and Morgana decide to create a "Master Race," called Vampyres (with a Y). These Vampyres are sent to earth to convert every living human into a vampire. But these human vampires are not the same as the Vampyres. They're called "Vamps." They still have eternal youth and life, but their every action is controlled by Merlin and Morgana. Most Vamps are immediately killed, but a few are chosen to continue what the Vampyres have started, almost like pawns in a chess game.

The chosen Vamps become almost in effect like Vampyres, but still everything they do is controlled. In order to convert a human to a Vamp, they must be bitten.

Aisla is bitten and becomes a hunting Vamp. Eventually, Aisla is sent back to earth and assigned her first target— a girl named Bri. But both Bri and Aisla are straight. Over time, however, Aisla's human remains develop feelings for Bri. But if she converts Bri, Bri will be killed. Yet she can't fight her programming.

Aisla wants to escape the control of Merlin and Morgana, but doesn't know how. She eventually gives up. She invites Bri over to her house, intending to bite her and get the whole mess over with. Before she can bite Bri, however, Bri kisses her, and it breaks Merlin abd Morgana's control. Now, the two girls have to stand up to Merlin and Morgana while dodging Vampyres and hunter Vamps.

I would love to write this story, but I probably will never get around to it. I would love to collaborate with someone to write it!

I’ve seen these type of challenges before where someone suggests of creating a book where all participants contribute a chapter to the book. I'll be honest I usually don't enter in those challenges. It's a neat idea, however, there is one issue: not everyone is on the same page (no pun intended). The problem I find is that everyone has there own idea of how the story should go. Sure, you can communicate with one another but not everyone is going to have the same idea of how to tell a full story. One person is probably going to want to focus on character development while another is probably going to focus on worldbuilding.

Picture this, let's say that a character is introduced and this character as a great backstory that a writer really wanted to explore later on in the story. However, in the next chapter, the chapter that another writer is working on, that character is suddenly killed in way for another character. Again, I'm sure the different writers can communicate with one another about this, however, but this scenario shows that each writer has a different idea of how a story should be told.

Another concern I have is conflicting writing styles. If each writer was going to write one chapter each, that writer is going to write in their own style. A writing style is much like a fingerprint. It's only unique to the individual. If one chapter is written by one person and the second chapter is written by another, any reader will pick up on that. Sometimes that may throw them off, which is something a writer wants to avoid. Again, sometimes different writers working on a project together can work. Look at Good Omens, a novel by two of the best fantasy writers Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. While it is a good read, you tell which section of the story was written by which writer based on the style, if you're family with their works.

So I have a different suggestion on creating a book. How about making it an anthology, a collection of different stories. There's a ton of free range with anthologies. An anthology can have an number of stories all centering around a single theme or genre. Personally, I like anthologies. I like having to read a bunch of different short stories from different writers, that way I can search for those writers and check out more of their work, if they have any more. Many great writers started off writing short stories for different anthology series such as Weird Tales. Writers like H.P. Lovercraft or Robert E. Howard or Arthur Conan Doyle. That's where I stand. Of course, this is just my personal preference and my thoughts on how we could all contribute in writing a book. Give it some thought and let me know.

#book #writing #anthology #idea

We could possibly do a story where one person starts it off with an idea then we add onto it and see what we get?

Example:

Person one: One day we were going on a trip to (Place)

Person two: On the way we stopped for (something)

Person three: Evil pigs came and attacked us and we all died.

Maybe not person three's idea but you get my point. We could also do it where we each added one word at a time?

Example:

Person one: One

Person two: Day

Person three: We

Person four: All

Person five: Died

1) Feminast noval

2) Kids noval

3) Horror

4) Kidnapping

5) Every chapter

So basically this is my favorite one. There are like a million people on prose. And maybe like thirty people want to do this, I thought maybe each person wrote there own chapter, about anything. So the first chapter maybe in first person, and the next in third. But the twist is, it's the same characters every chapter.