crowd-written-novel
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why-el
This repo needs structure
I love this idea, but I think it could turn into an unmitigated disaster if there isn't some sort of boundaries put into place. It might turn into a complete circlejerk where the first letter of each sentence corresponds to some expletive (à la James May's hidden message). Although it's a fun idea, nobody ain't gonna take this thing seriously!
It might be an idea to integrate the following:
Brainstorming
I admit I have no idea about this - what does a typical writer do when thinking up ideas for a novel? Character bios, locations, basic structure of how the novel will play out? Either way, I think some brainstorming needs to be done before any actual writing is done.
Maybe some online forum like the /r/writing subreddit could help.
Ideal Length of novel, chapters
We should maintain that the novel itself should have a set maximum length (again, probably by sourcing from). Maybe it would be an idea to split the repository into one .md file for each chapter, and impose max lengths on the chapters too.
What are people's thoughts on this?
charlesism on Hacker News shares a similar opinion:
Novels written by groups are generally unreadable. This is because they have no focus, and because the immediate cheap laugh always wins. It's a shame, because with a little more forethought, such shortcomings could be fixed. Ie: start by communally developing an outline, main characters, etc. It would also be interesting to use Mechanical Turk in a systemic way to have "the crowd" determine which of several proposed plot-points is most consistent with the whole, etc.
@j0rdsta this is exactly the feedback and the conversation I want to start. I had structure initially but I wanted to see what the community can conjure up, and it seems we are off on a good start.
At the very minimum, one sentence is causing problems, accept pull requests will multiple lines.
:+1: I think it's essential for an outline to be written before the actual substance of each section. The direction of the story would still be determined by the community, but it would allow for a system of judging whether a PR should be merged or not.
For example, if the outline states that chapter 1 flows as such:
bob bakes cake -> bob goes to market -> bob sells cake
If someone submits a pull request involving aliens destroying New York, it would probably not fit the spec.
I'm not sure how the outline would best be developed, perhaps some type of repeating sequence of "suggestions", "voting on suggestions", "approval and refinement".
Outline? How's this premise: A man disappears. His concerned wife walks into a police station and is greeted by strange policeman who gives her a strange handout and sends her on her way. From here we go back a few days leading into the man's disappearance. Vibe/mood should be Gilliam/Lynch-esque
Also, possible rule: minimum word count for pull requests should be 100 words?
@jfonte I'm not sure if this issue thread would be the best place for suggestions like that, I think we should first come up with a system for creating the outline. Maybe you can open a separate issue or submit a PR.
@jfonte You are correct about that. Ideally, would you like to have a list of all pull requests and have everyone vote for the best request, one account, one vote? I feel like that would favor older pull requests over newer ones. Also, when would a pull request be sufficiently good to be added? Would the best pull request, for example, be added every fifteen minutes?
@n-r (1) Yes, it would probably favor old requests. It would be a trade-off (reddit suffers from this, no?) (2) Time based voting would probably be the way to go. Maybe we wait at least 24-48hrs for pull requests. A week if we are really going crazy (3) We should have a minimum word count (Also, this is going to be one hell of an experiment in democracy.)
Personally? And to put it crudely as possible, for now I say we just throw shit at the wall and see what sticks. We can organize the mess later.
If you put too much credence and structure in voting, you almost go on record stating "This is what we've all agreed, see, here's the vote, there's no going back, not without another vote". The thing is, everything is easily undone, so maybe something more organic is appropriate here.
What about the model HitRecord (Gordon Levitt's project) uses? That seems to work organically.
@Ghoughpteighbteau I feel like the issue with that is that merging a single PR will completely invalidate many others just because of a change in direction in the story. If 10 people spend 15 minutes each on their submissions, at most two or three will be compatible with each other. All of a sudden 70-80% of the work becomes essentially wasted effort.
@jfonte That looks interesting - can you link to something explaining how their collaboration system works?
@dav- @Ghoughpteighbteau https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6fqJt3mm6I Best way to experience it, is to join at HitRecord.org
@jfonte The difference that I see between HitRecord and a novel is scale.
The pieces of art on HitRecord seem small enough that someone can take them in all by (him/her)self and make another related piece of art. An entire novel may be hard for a new contributor to absorb entirely. Furthermore, it would be even more difficult for someone to make respond with a novel-length or greater work based on the novel. Not that it can't be done, but I'm not sure the contributors would be dedicated enough to do so.
What I said may be incorrect--all of my knowlege about HitRecord comes from watching a few of their introductory videos.
Back to an earlier topic, I agree with @jfonte about the importance of a minimum word count. Without it, the novel becomes too fragmented.
@n-r we can start with a short story and then scale it into a novel :) No need to go crazy. We start small. 5k word project to start perhaps?
yes! That's what I think. Where are you @why-el Roll the dice on a pull request. Take all the ones you invalidated and put them in a big idea bin we can pull from an add to the main story. Expand expand expand! and for the love of god. Follow #16!
@dav- I think we all need to go get some shut eye and regroup after everyone's catched up with GoT and MadMen PS: do you realize everyone who's watching this and getting email updates on this is going to love/hate us?
Yep, I did. I will process this after work and see what we can come up with. Great discussion so far.
re voting. Maybe the the subreddit #28 could be used? I don't too much like the idea of having to create another account to work on the project, but seeing as I already got one :3
One of the guys at Hacker News proposed an organic darwinian structure that I believe has merrit. Every person that contributes to this repository does so on their own branch. Everyone reads through each branch and inherently commits to that branch. Merges can happen, but must be controlled and form their own branch. Branches that get ignored are languished and pruned.
This solves a majority of the problems, and allows everyone to work more or less independently. Branches that lose validity can still be recycled for their ideas.
To my mind, this gives the project the greatest chance of success.
https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=9522580&goto=item%3Fid%3D9522106
I like that idea, but there has to be some sort of list of all branches. Otherwise, there would be no incentive to make a branch because no one would know about it and thus no one would contribute. It would be a list of comments without replies, a tree with all leaves directly connected to the root, if you will.
The wiki is a possible way to solve this problem