Basically, I wanted to discuss whether online collaboration for novel writing will work? The basic idea is laid out at www.shadowislandproject.com

Let me know if anyone is interested in continuing the discussion.

Welcome to Hatrack!

I think you have it right this time.

I haven't ever tried to collaboratively write a novel, but I am currently critiquing one (or pieces of one) for a friend who wrote hers collaboratively.

From what I have seen, their greatest problem was that they chose to use 2 central characters, and have each one write her section from her characters point of view.

Sounds like a good idea, no?

No.

The difference in 'voices' is so jarring that I immediately told her to choose one of them to rewrite everything the other had written.

I'm not saying this would happen to you. I'm just saying that this is what I have seen in this instance, and that you should consider it, if it applies, and then forge ahead.

Is this the kind of discussion you wished to start?

Like Christine, I want control over what I write, and credit for it, and I want to write what interests me.

This is kind of fun, and all, but you know, here's what your posts sound like:

"None of you know anything! You are doing everything wrong, and you are gullible idiots for thinking that anyone will help you voluntarily. I, with my vast knowledge of open source programming, will lead you all into the light! Shut up if you don't agree with me. I am not hostile, you are, why don't you appreciate my brilliance and come write my novel for me?"

Maybe you could post some of your comments here on your site, and get your coauthors to rewrite them for you, so that your words have the effect you intend - unless you intend to come off as a condescending arrogant idiot.

But, you know, you're right, and I should just shut up, because I don't think my particpation here is doing either of us any good. Good luck with your endeavors.

i disagree. the main reason i want to write is that i have these stories in me that keep me up when i ought to be sleeping unless i give them active release during my waking hours.

the main reason i want to get them published is that i want to have the world be able to share my joy in my work, i don't really care that it's my work, i care that i helped bring a work of hopefully good art into the world.

the main reason i don't want to do vanity press isn't so much that they don't pay (although that is definitely a negative aspect) but also because, as "Atlanta Nights" showed us, they'll publish anything, including complete garbage. and then no one REALLY buys it, i mean, some people might, but you'll NEVER get anywhere near the same proliferation from a vanity as from a real market.

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You know what else is pretty cool, getting an artist to create something from your words. Like a character sketch or map or something....it really makes you feel like a creator.

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Ahhh...I think you finally helped me to hit on the true source of my annoyance with this model.

Ideas are cheap.

I remember giong to Card's boot camp and doing his thousand ideas approach whereby we started with a character, gave it a gender, and just started calling out ideas that branched and branched. End result: Every student in that class could have come away from the exercise with a different story. There were thousands of them to be had, ripe for the taking.

When I walk down the stree, fall asleep at night, or talk to my friends about things in their lives I come up with ideas. When I read the newspaper I come up with ideas. When I paint my study red (blood red...I like it) I get ideas.

I turn those ideas into a story. I turn that story into words. That is what I do. I am a storyteller.

Why would it make me feel like a creator to have someone else intercept this creation process? Why would it make me feel like a writer if my words are so weak that someone else has to come in and fix them? What good is it to envision a plot that someone else comes in and changes? In fact, this would make me feel miserable that my approach so failed that other people had to come in and create their own models and patches. They were the creators, not me.

So you don't know everything you need to know to be a writer? Your dialogue is weak? Your description? Your knowledge of 13th century military tactics and gear? Hit the books and start learning, I say. My mind is a vacuum just waiting to suck it up and I want to know, I want to create. I want to see the story from infancy to birth and then send it off to college.

I made a decision to write because I love to read. I have a good job that pays enough to make me comfortable. If my stories never end up being printed by anything other than my printer I doubt I'll be devistated. But the goal is to see my work in the hands of someone else who will enjoy it. Learning to write is like learning anything else. It takes time and practice. At the moment, I still concider my writing to be inadequate. My words are not as wonderful as I wish them to be. This is fine, it just means I have to work harder to improve them. The more I work at it, the better it will become.

When I read "I can't", that makes me wonder. After the countless hours of listening to my wife talk about accounting, I should be an expert. I know little to nothing about accounting, and it isn't because I can't learn it...I don't want to. There is a big difference between not being able to, and not wanting to. I want to write, so I'm learning. If you want to learn, you can. There are aspects to writing I find quite dull, but I work on those aspects as well. Not because anyone is forcing me, but they are necessary to improve my skills. Does it matter that I'm not an expert after aproaching two years of trying...no, not really. I am expecting it will take a few more years before my writing is good enough to be worth publishing.

Anyone can try and look for shortcuts to bypass the time it takes to learn, but working at it is the only way it will happen. I read Steven King's "On Writing", and he racked up a stack of rejection letters before getting anything published.

Writing use to be (and still is for most) a terrible way to make money or fame. Most of us are not going to plug out a J.K. Rowling first novel success (I believe Harry Potter was her first, at least). But still we write, and authors in the past still wrote. Why? I think an overlooked element is that often we write to express a piece of our soul and we publish for many reasons, including the hope of connecting with the rest of humanity by sharing something of the individual within. So making a "system" work isn't a given motive or desire.

There is also the idea of making a point. A great number of books do have a point the author is trying to make as I am sure we all know: "Huck Finn", for example, has come up lately in forum discussions and is a clear example-- "Uncle Tom's Cabin", "The Scarlet Letter", "A Tale of Two Cities" to name a few more.

My point? There is a time and place for collabrative storytelling for some, but it could not in my mind revolution writing nor satisfy every writer's muse. It would just be one of many ways, and one in which the souls of the authors are lost. Hopefully this is for the outcome of a good story (not better story, who can guarentee that??). The writers would vanish in the work. Is this always bad? Not if they don't mind, but I would not expect this to be a great take over in writing. Some writing might get better, sure, but would we want to sacrifice individual talent to a commercial form of writing?

I conceive and write a novel. I send it out to a few trusted people and they critique the writing and the idea itself. Someday it gets published, in some part due to those who saw my egregious errors.

What do I do? I thank them in my novel for their love and support. If I make any money at all from the novel, I then offer to take them out to dinner at my expense as gratitude. If I get really rich from the novel (one can dream, can't one?) then I charter a jet and take them out for dinner somewhere exotic.

Nevertheless, those who would critique my story and help me polish it aren't looking for handouts or recognition. They did it because they cared.

Now if someone collaborated on a project with me and wrote whole chapters, whether one or several, you bet we'd have shared name credit on the cover of that book. That is only fair. They did work, I did work. It makes no difference if one person did most and the other did little, or if it was split equally. The point is, the respective authors deserve credit for their work on the cover... not on some silly credit page, regardless if they are paid.

Writing may be a business once you're successful. But few get into it to get rich. And those that do get into to get rich probably won't succeed -- or will give up after their first few rejections.

The idea presented here is an experiment. Nothing more. And my knowledge of human nature and ego tells me it won't sit well with the majority of writers in the world.

Secondly, we have proven -- on this very site -- that more heads involved troubleshooting an idea will likely work. Case in point: Mary Robinette's "First Line" story that got accepted for publishing. She posted here asking for help on poisons. A few dozen people responded and Mary then chose the one that made most sense for her story. Still her story, only she did her research by asking the very, very knowledgeable folks around here. She didn't ask anyone to write that particular scene for her... she didn't need to do that. She wanted to write her story and she needed help with some facts. Not one person asked for credit I bet. Not one.

Why is that?

Because they know already they helped and if that isn't good enough, then they shouldn't be helping people at all. (Besides, Mary thanked everyone in that topic several times over and again when her story was accepted.)

Plain and simple to me. Don't mess with a good thing.

Leave money out of it.

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Thanks wbriggs, that good feedback. Selfish people write awful fiction, I challenge you to find a single system that works based on something other than selfishness. Why do you write? Money, fame or both. If you are writing to create, then why do you publish?

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As to your idea, I frankly don't think it will work on a large scale. While it may work from time to time, in a group with the right leadership and composition, I can't see that combination occurring often. It looks an awful lot like the old Hardy Boys books, in which the original author (pennamed Franklin W. Dixon, I believe) would sketch out the plot, and then pass the book off to another writer to finish. (I know, in your model it would be the writer, not the plotter, whose name would be on the cover.) But as you've probably seen from the responses from folk on this site, most writers aren't going to be happy having the plot dictated to them. And that is what brings me to the crux of the problem. Minor changes in scenes can, and should, cause major changes in plot. Making changes in a scene should cause changes in the way the story plays out -- it should affect other scenes, and ultimately, may affect the conclusion. Without the power to change the plot, a writer feels very little power to change a scene in any substantial way. And unless your lead editor is very careful about the scenes written by different people, the characters and settings won't FEEL right, because they will have been written by people with slightly different conceptions of character motivations and settings. The reader will pick up, subconsciously at least, that a character really shouldn't be thinking or acting the way they are, based on an earlier scene.

Finally, but importantly to your model, self-interest can be an excellent motivator to get people to work together on a project. Your model would make Adam Smith proud, perhaps. But you've got it spread too thin. I think you said elsewhere that you have 50 or so people working on this project. Take the average advance on a novel (about $5,000, I believe), and split it 50 ways. There isn't enough there for the effort of collaboration to have really been worth anyone's time. So writers who are motivated by a desire to express themselves artistically aren't likely to buy into this project because they aren't really in control. And writers who are motivated financially aren't likely to buy into it because there isn't enough potential gain. And there isn't much fame in being one of 50 names on a cover, so those who write for fame will probably pass on it as well (I know, only those voted onto the cover go on -- but that diminishes anyone's chances of being on the cover at all). So while I can see the occasional group with the right leadership, talents, and personalities making this work under the right circumstances, I don't see it being widely successful. You're better off publishing an anthology of short stories around a given theme.

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5. The Contribeuo Council cannot alter the The Contribeuo Council and Membership Agreement in any way. The Contribeuo Council and Membership Agreement
can only be altered by a unanimous vote of the Founders and a majority vote of the Contribeuo Council.

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For example, many in this particular forum automatically throw money, greed and selfishness into the negative category.

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Yeah, we would, because two out of three of those are inherently negative, and the last can be easily associated with both. I'll leave it to you to work out which ones are negative. Let me know if you work it out. I'm doing a social experiment on common sense. So far, I've realized the majority of people on Hatrack have it... but my data is inconclusive. I need your feedback, Rumi.

Actually, I go to great pains to point out that people can and might want to remain anonymous. The idea that I have to be able to show that you came across my manuscript is wrong. Right now, the Founders hold a copyright of the original and all derivative works. Meaning we have a remedy at law if someone takes the manuscript and profits from it. So, if you joined the group, steal the manuscript and get it published, that's great. My remedy is injunctive relief against your use of the manuscript and money damages. Also, the book got published which is great.

This is actually how JK Rowling got parts of the Harry Potter series. She stole it from the original author and now she is being sued. http://www.vault.com/nr/newsmain.jsp?nr_page=3&ch_id=242&article_id=51216&cat_id=1061
I would be probably be entitled to treble damages for fraud on your part.

//Secondly, you need a hardcopy contract that can have physical signatures on. anything else is just silly.//

Oral contracts are perfectly valid unless governed by the statute of frauds. This is not a contract that would be governed by the SOF and as such could be summarized as a clickthrough agreement, much like when you agreed to the terms to join Hatrack.

//Thirdly,
quote:5. The Contribeuo Council cannot alter the The Contribeuo Council and Membership Agreement in any way. The Contribeuo Council and Membership Agreement can only be altered by a unanimous vote of the Founders and a majority vote of the Contribeuo Council.

So in other words the council can't change this unless it wants to? Decide what you want and go with it.//

Not quite, the Founders are the two original authors of the novel. The Contribeuo Council is a democratically elected group of people who oversee the day to day operation of the group. This is exactly how a Board of Directors and Officers work in a C-corporation. If it helps, think of the Membership agreement as the Constitution and the Congress can't change it without 2/3 of the states votes etc...it's a big deal. The normal day to day rules are different. But in the membership agreement sets out a base for rights in the group, we've made it a supermajority model. It's not perfect, but it certainly isn't a scam.

//
Fourfly, your membership agreement does not have a clause about payment. I know it's written elswhere but if this contract is held up in court then the contributers will be entitled to nothing! That smells of Scam, whether it is or not it smells like it.//

You didn't see a clause about payment because you don't understand the concept of a share in a corporate entity. I'm not going to go into it here, but to rebut your idea that is a scam, you should take a look at the clause that transfers full claim to my copyright to the group, such that Contribeuo holders have the same rights a shareholders in corporate stock. It isn't a scam, because a court would hold that your submission would either be a derivative work or you would hold a copyright. A reasonable person, which is the standard, would probably find that I couldn't "scam" the hard work of the contributors in this manner.

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A reasonable person, which is the standard, would probably find that I couldn't "scam" the hard work of the contributors in this manner.

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Two points:

1. Any reasonable person wouldn't bother with this idea, and therefore would never put themselves at risk at being scammed. It's not a good idea... in fact, it's pretty terrible all around. (But that's just my opinion.)

2. Any reasonable person who came up with this idea would eventually figure out when to cut their losses and move on to another group to try to sell their idea to. "We ain't buying this. Period."

I'm saying simply that people choose to maximize this happiness through any number of decisions. Your decisions are selfish, such that you aren't going to come over and wash my car, because it provides no happiness or utility for you. Now, if you liked me or were friends with me, perhaps washing my car would give you the happiness of feeling good about doing something for someone else. But every decision you make can be characterized as selfish and greedy, in the sense that since you have limited time, you have to rank your choices available to spend your time. And you rank those choices based on the amount of happiness you will receive (this can be long or short term). As such you are greedy and this is good.

Crumbs, dude. Give it up. You made your point. We get it already. If you need to defend it so strongly, it's probably crap.

Offense intended.

what is this insanity? c'mon folks, liven up!

If you continue with this emailing business and posting on this board, I will personally report you to your ISP. As you know, the anti-spam laws passed make emails such as yours illegal. I do have your IP address. Please stop immediately and stop bothering the good folk here.

In case you think I'm kidding, here's an email you've been sending out:

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Hello, you don't know me, but name is Will Rosellini and I'm a graduate student working on a joint JD and MS in Computational Molecular Biology. I wanted to introduce myself and a project I'm working on and see if you might be interested in taking a look and offering some comments. Or sending the project page link to the authors in your group.

As part of a law school project, I wanted to explore a way that open source developers could own the end product. My proof of concept is a group using this ownership structure on a fiction novel I wrote but never published. I wanted to join your group to see if we could collaborate. What do you think?

The novel is complete, but right now authors are working on the novel in a Yahoo user group, such that they are rewarded for their contributions towards getting the book published. So, the basic idea is that they submit revisions or additions and if accepted (through a governance model called the Contribeuo Council) the authors get both a writer credit and a share of the end profits. The idea is working pretty well so far, 50 members, but is still in its infancy. Anyway, shoot me an email at willrosellini@hotmail.com or checkout the project page at www.shadowislandproject.com

Thank you for your time,
Will Rosellini

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Since JK can’t be here to defend herself, I did a little digging on the net. (Actually I just did a yahoo search on “Stouffer” and got 10 pages back). Just to set the record straight, the Stouffer Lawsuit against Rowling was settled almost 3 years ago, with the Judge finding in favor of Rowling. Stouffer was required to pay 50k in fines for fraud. It seems you need to have a little bit more than: “She used the same word I did.”

Here are a couple of websites . I will admit that I didn’t search any farther than this. After looking at 5 pages of websites, I figured I’d done due diligence.

http://www.hogwartswire.com/archives/000296.html

http://www.authorslawyer.com/case/02USDL17531.html

I KNOW I'm right on this one! Who else would be psycho enough to stick around this long?

Obnoxiously and repeatedly broadcasting your own insecurity is seriously not helping your case.

And I tried so had to just end this.

You know, though, I never considered challenging novices to duels to prove my points. I have an intersting theory about black holes and the end of the universe. You know what...I should go to a high school physics class and ask them to disprove it to prove my point!

1. This is either a stupid idea or a self-serving one. In the beginning it seemed like the former, but time has made me lean toward the latter interpretation.

2.(a)Maybe some of the people here are not published, but neither are you as far as I know. And even if you do get published on this, it's not you, it's FrankenAuthor. What will you do with the spare parts?

(b)What if someone that had been published - what if OSC - told you it was a bad idea? Would that make a difference? If it wouldn'tmake a difference than your point becomes moot.