Chain Story or Collaborative?

[K5Rakitan]

I want to do a fan-based story with a second-person perspective. I am mainly a fanfiction.net author, and I want this to be kind-of a special-edition story where the reader gets to jump into the bed(s) of their favorite character(s). I have already established a polyamorous arrangement between several of the characters, so there is a lot of potential for building up the story.

I have the first chapter written, but I want the rest to be collaborative. I was thinking about making it into a chain story, but from the looks of it, I would have to get people from this site instead of getting my friends from fanfiction.net to join me. It also appears that I would have to organize all of it over a very short time frame. I want this to be a more ongoing project.

My original idea was to post the first chapter, then build the story through the comments. People could write as much or as little as they wanted, and I would compile the comments into the next chapter, edit them to be more consistent with each other, and give everyone who contributed credit. Do you think I can just do that, or do you think I should try going for a chain story instead?

Suggestions? Support for this idea?

If you want to know more about the specifics of this project, you can look me up on fanfiction.net. I want this to be a sequel to "Buildings Don't Fall"

 

[sr71plt]

What works for my coauthor and me (publishing GM under the names Shabbu and Stephen Kessel--only Shabbu with stories posted to Lit.) is to agree on an overall story arc--the basic idea of one of us--and to take character identities in the story and to bounce sections/chapters back and forth between characters, written in the characters' separate perspective. Then one of us goes over the whole manuscript and carves it into a coherent whole. That's then a collaborative work but with chain story attributes.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Thanks! That is pretty much what I had in mind except it would be something a little looser and open to more contributors, including anonymous ones. I have a draft of the first chapter now. I am wondering if I should just bite the bullet and submit it to see what happens.

 

[sr71plt]

You could. My coauthor and I don't do that, though. We don't see any value in doing rambling, uncrafted stories where there are a lot of dangling threads and you have no trouble seeing different writing styles and level of expertise. None of ours is published anywhere until the story is complete and polished.

 

[K5Rakitan]

I think I would enjoy the challenge in pulling together all the dangling threads into a coherent whole. I am an editor by trade, and I think that this would be a great way to break out of my usual experiences. Anyway, at this point I think that the only way to know for sure is to try.

Thanks for chatting with me

 

[sr71plt]

It's the role I take with the coauthored works. It can be interesting--you have to have a goodnatured, flexible writing partner without power issues, though.