Round Robin: Second Stage?

Zombipanda

My Boom-Boom's mostly gay
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So, I'm thinking, I'd like to ramp up a second version of the Round Robin game that's still in progress, learning from the mistakes of the first one and hopefully tightening things up. Here's what I had in mind.

- five to six participants, picked based on compatibility of style rather than at random. If the talent pool is big enough to support it, we could break it up into a couple of different challenges.

- A general direction is picked for the round beforehand. Maybe each person participating "pitches" a set-up for the story, and we decide amongst ourselves which would work best.

- Each participant contributes two parts to the story, insuring there will be long-term interest in following the story and to make sure the individual writers are extra careful about not burning bridges with their entry. The format it would follow (with each letter representing a participant) would be, for instance, ABCDEEDCBA, with the first writer contributing the first section and coming back for the last, the second writer contributing the second part and the penultimate part, etc. The middle writer would contribute a king-sized anchor extravaganza in which the earth shakes.

- Each writer establishes a rule that must be followed by the next person up. Ex: introduce a new character and kill an established one, include a line from a Rolling Stones song that is essentially tied to that segment of the story, or begin and end the segment with a line of dialog from the same character.

Would anyone be interested in that?

PEOPLE INTERESTED:
ProjectX2
Zombipanda
Dr. Strangefate
J. Agamemnon
Baxter
Ultimate Houde
Iceshadow
Grocer Man
 
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Not sure about that last thing, but I definitely think we can make this work, and I would be happy to participate again.
 
Maybe it should be narrowed down to about 4 people a group or even three. That way you get more stories and you have a beginning, middle and an end writer. And if it's 4 to a group then you have two people team up to write the beginning, one to write the middle, etc.
 
I think we should all start off with a default chapter (written by whoever, maybe we all submit one and vote on one we think is the best) and the participants are divided into multiple groups of 2-4 people. Each of the groups take turns writing bits of their own story, so at the end we've got a couple of different versions of a story that started with the same chapter.

I think it would be interesting to see how different each story would be.
 
I think we should all start off with a default chapter (written by whoever, maybe we all submit one and vote on one we think is the best) and the participants are divided into multiple groups of 2-4 people. Each of the groups take turns writing bits of their own story, so at the end we've got a couple of different versions of a story that started with the same chapter.

I think it would be interesting to see how different each story would be.

That's not a bad idea, but it's bordering on being an entirely different animal from a round robin. My worry is that, if it's only two to three participants, the story won't have enough length, and the divergent stories will actually end up too similar to each other?

:D Do we have team captains picking their respective participants? Because I totally call team captain.


I think it should be more than 3 people. I think we need at least four to really play the growing, collaborative style of the exercise.
 
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That's not a bad idea, but it's bordering on being an entirely different animal from a round robin.


I think it should be more than 3 people. I think we need at least four to really play the growing, collaborative style of the exercise.

Well, it would still be round robin, just with people rotating within various smaller groups. You'd still take turns writing a bit of the story, but there'd only be four people or so in your group so you would be able to take a more active role in the story.

And yes, I guess we could decide to choose our own teams. It would be interesting and most of us know who we work well with now anyway.
 
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Well, it would still be round robin, just with people rotating within various smaller groups. You'd still take turns writing a bit of the story, but there'd only be four people or so in your group so you would be able to take a more active role in the story.

See above.

I'm worried that teams that small would really narrow the potential for growth in the stories.

What if we have, say, five to seven participants, with each participant in two or three separate groups, contributing segments at different stages of each story?
 
See above.

I'm worried that teams that small would really narrow the potential for growth in the stories.

What if we have, say, five to seven participants, with each participant in two or three separate groups, contributing segments at different stages of each story?

I guess so. It's all trial and error anyway. We tried having everyone involved but it becomes too cluttered and messy and people lose interest. All I know is that we've got to have smaller groups. I'm up for anything.
 
I think five is a good number.

So let me think this out a little...

People who want to, write an opening chapter. Everyone votes on which beginning we are going to use. We are randomly split into however many groups of five we need, and then ordered.

At the end, why don't we vote on which of the stories is our favorite, as well?
 
I think five is a good number.

So let me think this out a little...

People who want to, write an opening chapter. Everyone votes on which beginning we are going to use. We are randomly split into however many groups of five we need, and then ordered.

At the end, why don't we vote on which of the stories is our favorite, as well?

Definitely. Competition is key.

:D Especially cuz I'll win.

I like the idea of picking teams, rather than choosing them at random, too. That way people can't whine because one of their partners pulled their story down.
 
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Okay, state your name if you wish to be involved and we'll edit your names into the first post. I presume DSF, Zombi and I all want to take part?
 
I'm game again. I think we should try to focus on linear stories this time. Too much jumping around killed what we were doing last time. I loved your chapter Strangefate but I think it lead us down a bad road. Everything jumped around after that.
 
You guys are going to finish the first round robin, though, right?

Several of us were talking about this issue on MSN the other night. One suggestion is that we divide people up into groups depending on who is interested in writing a specific genre: science Fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, etc. One person would then write the opening chapter (or everyone could write an opening chapter and the group votes, or other optional start), and then the story gets passed around, in either a set or a random order. If people are really on a roll, you could agree to allow everyone to go twice instead of once, depending on the size of the group. (We had six people writing in my homeschoolers' group when we did the full-chapter version of this; we had ten people doing the short version, and each person only had five minutes to write. It cut down on time lags.)
 
I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I really like the idea of framing the story with each writer doing two parts. I really, really do think that will tighten the story significantly.
 

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