Don't post the chain story yet!!!

[Whispersecret]

Okay, I was thinking late last night (no, it didn't hurt) that perhaps we ought not post the chain story just yet. There's no hurry to post it right away, as soon as the first installment is finished. I know it's tempting, but here's why.

Say we post now. Somewhere along the way someone will take longer than their alloted week. Things come up. When they do, the readers will be stuck waiting for the next installment, and they may lose interest.

If we hold off posting the first chapter for a week or so, we give ourselves some leeway. If we run up against a glitch, the reader is none the wiser because we built in some buffer time.

Also, no one (except us) is really drooling for this story to get posted RIGHT NOW. I don't think most people even know it's in the works, because most of the talk about it has been here in the Author's Hangout.

There's my idea. What are your thoughts?

 

[KillerMuffin]

I think you just want to steal my thunder!

But it's a good point. Get it finished first. Did this problem arise with the other chain stories?

 

[cymbidia]

I'm droolin' to read it, yes. I *know* KM is done with hers and that WS has a great beginning, maybe much more than a beginning, on hers. I've begun to work on mine even though i'm way down the list.

I'm wondering about some of the people ahead of me. There are one or two that have no stories at all posted here at Lit. Are they still interested in participating?

Maybe we need another show of hands as to who really intends to be part and parcel in this cooperative endeavor before posting the chapters? Or am i stressing over nothing, as almost-green-as-grass newbies like me so often do?

Does this answer your question, WS? No? Okay, let's hold it back, good idea, but can we also try to determine if everyone on the list (at least ahead of me, she says with totally self-absorbed interest) still wants to participate? If people WANT to be involved with this, then it might help them get their pieces of the puzzle done within a reasonable amount of time, right? After all, we all live complex lives Out There and maybe things have come up for some of us, things that would interfere with adding to "The Memoirs of A Lady" in a reasonable amount of time.

[Edited by cymbidia on 05-01-2001 at 10:15 AM]

 

[Weird Harold]

If people WANT to be involved with this, then it might help them get their pieces of the puzzle done within a reasonable amount of time, right? After all, we all live complex lives Out There and maybe things have come up for some of us, things that would interfere with adding to "The Memoirs of A Lady" in a reasonable amount of time.

As I understand the chosen format, the chapters will NOT be sequential, so there is no particualar reason to delay posting. Once the first chapter establishes the character and format, chapters can be posted as they are ready despite the announced schedule as long as those who do get their chapters written are willing to submit them early to take up any slack onthe part of other authors.

 

[cymbidia]

Clarification please!

I am confused. Totally. It's not a good feeling.

Which of these is true:

A. The chapters ARE sequential and we each have to wait until ALL those before us on the list have submitted their chapters BEFORE we submit ours.

or

B. The chapters are NOT sequential and as soon as anyone is done with their bit, they can submit it to be appended to the ongoing saga.

 

[KillerMuffin]

The chapters are in a sequential order, but the story itself doesn't have to have a sequence. WH has it perfectly, the woman writing her memoirs isn't necessarily doing it chronologically, she's just taking bits and pieces of her life and jumbling it all together.

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Clarification please!

I am confused. Totally. It's not a good feeling.

Which of these is true:

A. The chapters ARE sequential and we each have to wait until ALL those before us on the list have submitted their chapters BEFORE we submit ours.

or

B. The chapters are NOT sequential and as soon as anyone is done with their bit, they can submit it to be appended to the ongoing saga.

Both actually.

As I understand the format for this chain story, each chapter is a flashback to some sexual adventure in Erica's life. Each author is assigned a time slot for their segment to be posted and each author needs to remain consistent with all of the previously posted segments.

However, because the story is a collection of flashbacks, and memory is actually pretty unreliable. Each segment couldbe posted out of it's assigned sequence if there is a dropout or laggard and any inconsistencies can be written off as inaccurate memories.

 

[Whispersecret]

Well, I sort of wanted to have some closure at the end. My personal preference is for it to be sequential so we can see Erica grow and develop into the woman she is at the time of her writing the memoirs, which would be impossible if we all write without regard for what the other authors are contributing. I think part of the challenge is trying to make it all cohesive. Hell, it's easy to just write some unrelated sexual incidents involving one single character, slap it together and call it a chain. That's not a chain, though. That's separate links that look alike.

I was hoping to be part of something more flowing.

But, I will certainly accede to what the majority of the participants wants. Judging from the responses on this and the other more recent threads about the chain, that will be me, Gaucho, KM, and Cymbidia. Where's everyone else?

 

[Whispersecret]

Re: Re: Clarification please!

However, because the story is a collection of flashbacks, and memory is actually pretty unreliable. Each segment couldbe posted out of it's assigned sequence if there is a dropout or laggard and any inconsistencies can be written off as inaccurate memories.

Bah. For shame, WH. That sounds to me like an excuse for us to be lazy. If we get enough inconsistencies, she'll sound like she's got Alzheimers.



[Edited by whispersecret on 05-01-2001 at 10:26 PM]

 

[cymbidia]

Judging from the responses on this and the other more recent threads about the chain, that will be me, Gaucho, KM, and Cymbidia. Where's everyone else?

Let's all think for a moment, boys and girls. Who's out of her league? Can anyone tell me?

~wondering if it was some kind of splashily public humiliation i was after to even begin to think i could be a part of this kinda thing in the first place~

Think i'll go send this link to everyone on the Chain list...

 

[Weird Harold]

Re: Re: Re: Clarification please!

Bah. For shame, WH. That sounds to me like an excuse for us to be lazy. If we get enough inconsistencies, she'll sound like she's got Alzheimers.

Not an excuse for being lazy, rather a rational for the inconsistancies that are bound to crop up.

My personal preference is for it to be sequential so we can see Erica grow and develop into the woman she is at the time of her writing the memoirs, which would be impossible if we all write without regard for what the other authors are contributing. I think part of the challenge is trying to make it all cohesive.

In order for the memoirs to be truly sequential would require that KM take her virginity, You get to expand her horizons with a new partner, the next gets to introduce her to threesomes, etc. I think that limits the author's options too much.

It should be sequential in the sense that only one author can take her hymen, and only one can detail her first orgy. The order the authors are scheduled determines who gets to choose which point in her sexuality to detail. The early authors just have a wider choice of "firsts" to claim for their story.

I suppose you could think of the sequence of stories as being the answers to questions from a biographer. An earlier episode might be asked about because of something said in an asnwer.

"So that's when you were introduced to orgies?"

"No, that was several years before the one I just told you about. My first orgy wasn't nearly as much fun as I thought it would be. ..."

 

[KillerMuffin]

This reminds me.

WS thought it would give the story some closure it I wrote a very short epilogue since I wrote the prologue. I don't want to steal anyone's thunder here or be above anyone. However, talking about closure, that would do it. What do ya'll think? The one I submitted has two parts to it already, I just whacked them together, the Prologue and the First Chapter.

Comments? Laurel?

By the way, WS, I agree with WH on this one after thinking about it. If someone doesn't get their in in time, then it really won't matter since it's a series of vignettes not a connected story.

 

[Samuari]

thanks cym

I most certinally would have missed this discussion with out your email.

Personally, I would like to see the chapters build one on the other, so that we can see Ericka's character develop and grow as her senuallity blossoms. This would, I think, require chapters to build on each other. An allternitive would be to have one or more of the very tallented editors that we have involved in the project work on mainaining flow and consistency. If nessisary, the chapters would not have to be presented in the final work as written, but could be rearranged with even, as a last resort, short interchapters thrown in to aid the the flow in rough spots. (How's that for a run on sentence with at least three subjects?)

A short epilog may be nessary, to bring closure, but I think that we should reserve judgement on that untill we get there. There is no reason to comit one way or the other when most of us have not seen the first chapter.

By the way, if we are not posting the Chain untill it is compleated, can we have the chapters emailed to us, as they are done so we know where we are at?

It's been a busy week and fixen to get busyer, so I miss a discussion on the boards, but email will get my attention. Thanks again, cym.

[Edited by Samuari on 05-02-2001 at 02:43 AM]

 

[Ulyssa]

Superego

I know that Freud has been terribly out of vogue for the last 50 or so years--however his term "superego" may be accurate in terms of "The Memoirs Of A Lady." A single author may have an overall scope about Erica's life that's a bit more on the button than the rest of us---this could be KM or it could be a team of KM and WS or KM,WS and "X".

I'm noticing a care in craft here that doesn't allow the thin structure of the original "party" feeling--i.e.
1. Here's Erica by herself
2. Erica with her first man
3. Erica with her first woman
4. Erica with her first radioactive vampire...etc.
What I am seeing is a character developing that transcends her libidinous adventures.

What I've been reading shows that we all care a great deal about the quality of the work. Maybe with Laurel's permission and of course each other's permission we should allow a person or persons to go in to edit/re-edit chapters--as long as the person diddling with the chapter can assure us that it's for the good of the piece.
I am more than willing to submit my next to finished draft to the "Book editor," if the rest of you agree--Lyss

 

[cymbidia]

Last night i sent the link to this thread to everyone on the Chain Story list except SuziSurfin, i think, and that's only because i couldn't find her addy).

Let's see who's still interested in being a part of this thing.

My vote on the chapters would be to allow each of us to write our own piece of Erica's Travails but not necessarily in any particular order from a chronological perspective. If someone before us has written about a memorable orgy and we wanted to do that, too, we shouldn't feel constrained against doing so as long as we add something new to Erica's character in the doing.

I'd like to think that each chapter would be submitted to Lit for public viewing in roughly the same order they were assigned at roughly the same intervals. However, as an almost-green-as-grass newbie, i'm not privy to whether the attainment of this ideal is an impossibly Herculean task.

 

[KillerMuffin]

My votes!

Vote 1: Post away as each one is finished (Sorry WS)
Vote 2: This isn't done chronologically.
Vote 3: Please do have someone edit, if only for typos!

I never thought of this as one long choronological story. I thought of this as a series of stories in no particular order. In the intial remarks I made some suggests that are very vague, but no one needs to take them.

I didn't write about her loss of virginity. In fact, she didn't even have sex in mine. *grins impishly* However, I don't see why someone else couldn't write about her loss of virginity. This is a woman who is writing for herself, not for anyone else. Heck, I even stuck it in there so it can be a letter from a lover (male or female) or it could be the inclusion of prose or poetry that had been written about her by someone else.

The only true consistency that I think needs to be carried through is that it's a woman telling of her past and ought to be in first person. If someone decides to write a story about her from another person's perspective, there should be a short inclusion at the beginning from her POV explaining why she's including a story a lover wrote about her.

 

[Mickie]

Thanks, Cym, for the message. As the final chapter, I guess I should have an opinion here. First, I'd vote for completion before posting. It would give us all time to wrangle out the storyline and get it as put together as a group of widely different people can get it. We are, however, going to have to know when to call it quits and submit it. I suggest a disinterested party, who isn't writing a chapter, should have the final vote of when to end editing. Laurel, perhaps?

The idea of sequential is good, but it doesn't have to be a fuck by fuck list of her experiences. I don't agree that it MUST start with Erica's loss of virginity. It should start when her life becomes that of the girl in the picture. That could be at any point, and probably wouldn't be her first sexual experience. Her decision to experience sex in a full and sensual manner is the turning point of her life, not the first time someone poked her.

The chapters don't have to be arranged in an order of first times, but in an order of experiences from which she explored her decision. We should have a theme to tie them all together. Something simple and easy to portray. Such as -- Sexual experimentation can be fulfilling and rewarding. Each chapter then is proving the theme. It would be a series of adventures that demonstrate how fulfilling and rewarding sexual experimentation can be, whether the first time or the hundredth.

That limits the authors to only one thing -- proving the theme. We can build on each chapter, if it's appropriate to the chapter's story, but the chapter's story doesn't HAVE to build on the previous. It's up to the author of each chapter.

As the ending, I would use the theme and tie it up. Perhaps it would be best if we all submitted our ideas for our chapters, and we could all get an idea of the differences in experiences Erica will have. A single sentence idea to keep us from going on and on about it. My idea for the last chapter is to use a letter from a man she's already had an experience with, detailing that experience and telling her that his life is, indeed, richer for the time they spent together.

I hope this helps us out. I hear a lot of frustration and disagreement in the posts. It's a story, you know, and not the end-all of our lives. If we can't have fun writing it, then why do it? All of us have a gifted contribution to make. It's the differences in style and thought that will make it interesting to read. Agree only on basics, and go on from there or we'll get lost in a muddle of details and never get it written.

Over to the rest of you now.

Mickie

 

[bluntforcemama]

Memiors of a Lady

If you decide to wait... I'm going to die! I... must... read.... I've been looking forward to this all dang winter! Anyway, you guys are well worth the wait. And I can wait... just barely.

 

[MunchinMark]

Well, I for one would rather that this did develope into a story and not a ramshackle collection of encounters with no real connection.

Erica is one person and so will have a personality, although to some extent it will change, these are memoirs and young women rarely act just like older ones. I think that later thread writers, myself included will have to keep the earlier threads in mind. Characters may be remembered, or turn up again and so on.

I don't think this is going to be "I fucked this, then this then this, then this." More like "Oh, do you know? I remember..."

I guess this means that I do have ideas (of course I do), but I want to see Erica's character develope before I can say anything for certain. Maybe her memory is a bit messy anyway, so effect comes before cause and then she goes, "how did that happen? Oh yes..."

Time will tell, although I think that there should be a loose editorial hand on things. Since we are obviously all interested we can thrash out ideas or problems on the Author's Board. We are, after all, authors.

 

[KillerMuffin]

Personally, I think the biggest problem we're going to have is "voice."

We chose (mostly) a diary format, which essentially puts it into first person. This is where the different "voices" the authors have is going to really muck things up. No one is going to sound the same.

I set a tone that I probably shouldn't have, but that was the vision I had of the character. In all fairness to myself, I did post the first bits of the story for all to see and object to. I would have been more than happy to accomodate others as far as her "voice" went and how the story ought to have begun.

Already from mine to what little I've seen from WS there is a marked difference in the entire tone. I set mine from what I call as "selfish" perspective. She is thinking about herself, how she changed, how she felt, what was going on with her. She really didn't notice what the guy was feeling or thinking about, only how she reacted to what she perceived. My watchword for this story was introspection.

WS's vision of her has her being more open to the world around her. She's more concerned about the people around her and what's going on. I also think she's a bit softer and more feminine in WS's "voice."

WS and I worked through mine, she edited and told me what she wanted to do. I altered my chapter for the purpose of alluding to hers. I understand she's doing the same for Gaucho who follows her. However, despite how my story flows into hers, they still stand completely alone. They are separate and distinct. Two different voices, two different visions of the same character. Just because each part can stand alone doesn't mean it isn't the better for being a piece of the whole. A vignette isn't a story, it's a slice of a story.

Personally, I think we're fashing ourselves over what's going to amount to nothing. The story will be just fine because it's easy to work together. I did my best to set it up so that everyone could play off of #1 in about any way they wanted to. The "voice" I used is probably about impossible to duplicate, but that's about the size of it. If you work with the author before you and after you, then pay attention to whats already happened, there shouldn't be any problem.

 

[Whispersecret]

Okay, let me clarify something. I never intended for the chapters to be presented in strict chronological order, the events in her life in the exact order in which she lived them.

KM told the story of how the professor lures Erica into being trained as a Companion. Muff skips the loss of her virginity and leads us up to where my story takes off. I'm writing about her first Benefactor. As far as I'm concerned, someone later in the chain can go back and write about her losing her cherry later as a flashback.

HOWEVER, what I'd like to see is that we pay attention to what has been told before. For example, I saw that KM made Erica an art history buff who has a keen interest in sculpture, so I included that in my chapter. This is what I meant by keeping it sequential (which was a poor choice of words). Each author looks at what has been done before and BUILDS on it. In my chapter she starts to learn to speak Italian, and maybe someone else can take that little tidbit of info and run with it. Am I being clearer now?

Also, I already took care of including the fact that she's the girl in the picture. I'll explain in the thread I'm going to start in which we all post our chapter ideas/plot outlines.

WH, I still say inconsistencies should be avoided at all costs. For instance, I have her speaking Italian in my chapter. If later someone else says she speaks nothing but English, the readers are going to think "author error" rather than "faulty character memory."

Muff made some excellent points about the "voice" of Erica. Erica has a sophisticated and antiquated tone. The picture I get of her is an elegant, world-wise woman who speaks slowly and methodically. When she drinks tea, she uses the cup and the saucer.

I've been trying my damnedest to get her voice right, but I can't seem to do it. I'm willing to send the part I have written so far to any of the rest of you if you want to try to find places where I can make it more like Muff's. Or, perhaps I'm fighting a losing battle, and it's an impossible task. I'm open to input on this problem.

 

[Whispersecret]

Chain Story Authors Look Here

Let's tally our responses here. Cut and paste this and add your name where appropriate.

Post it when the entire chain is complete: WS

Post it as parts are finished, but in the order the chapters were assigned:

Post it as parts are finished, whenever authors get them done, not necessarily in the order chapters were assigned:


Develop the character gradually: WS

Connect the chapters, each author building on what was written before: WS

Allow the chapters to be separate and distinct from the others, allowing authors more freedom:

 

[Weird Harold]

WH, I still say inconsistencies should be avoided at all costs. For instance, I have her speaking Italian in my chapter. If later someone else says she speaks nothing but English, the readers are going to think "author error" rather than "faulty character memory."

I agree with your thinking on building on the previous postings to build her character. If an author writes an epsiode that occurs AFTER the events in your segment, then she should of course know Italian at that point. If the author doesn't specify the time frame, and she doesn't understand Italian, then the reader would think "OK this happened before the bit WS wrote about."

Any inconsistency which directly contradicts a segment that was both written sooner, and takes place after the point in Erica's life depicted in the prior epsiode should be avoided.

The non-linear format does however allow more latitude for resolving inconsistencies than a strictly linear approach to a chain story would.

Re the voice problem:
A person's "voice" changes over the years. That would lead me to expect that in the introduction to a flashback a character would "speak" in the mature voice of the present, while inside the flashback she would speak with a voice appropriate to that period of her life.

For example, Liza (from My Fair Lady) would speak in the cultured phrases taught to her by Mr. Higgins at any point after she learned to speak properly. Yet in a flashback her younger, pre-culture, self would still have the cockney accent and streetwise mannerisms. Under great stress, she might find her language and mannerisms backsliding as well.

The following authors should certainly strive to maintain KM's "voice" where possible, and possibly even attempt to show how she evolved into the mature voice from much different beginnings. However, the voice of the main part of each segment should be appropriate to the particular phase of her life rather than the mature woman looking back.

 

[Guest]

I am here now

Will I be notified when it is my turn. This is my first time (be gentle and guide me)!

 

[cymbidia]

I don't know anyfuckingthing about Italian. ~scowling through my migraine~ KM and WS, i'll have to rely on you heavily for this unless you want me to lean on the net instead.

I'll never get the "voice" that KM built for Erica, the one that WS claims she can't even get. Impossible and i'm not going to even begin beating myself up over it. I'll just do the best i can. I can handle world-weary, sophisticated, and art history, though. (Believe it or not.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I just sent another letter out to *every* Chain Story Author on the original list (http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=28659). Every one. Double checked the names list a couple times in deference to my migraine and how it screws with my thinking processes. If everyone one of us doesn't get back to this thread then we should send the missing a get well card because they must in the hospital passing kidney stones or something, hmmm?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chain Story Authors Look Here

Post it when the entire chain is complete: WS

Post it as parts are finished, but in the order the chapters were assigned: cym

Post it as parts are finished, whenever authors get them done, not necessarily in the order chapters were assigned:


Develop the character gradually: WS, cym

Connect the chapters, each author building on what was written before: WS, cym

Allow the chapters to be separate and distinct from the others, allowing authors more freedom: