November is nigh, and scores of creatives are gearing up for National Novel Writing Month, or ‘nanowrimo’ to the initiated. Right now fingers are twitching, minds are rolling, ideas percolate with coffee. Find the website at nanowrimo.org to get more information and to sign up.
This year my husband and I are signing on to do a collaborative project! I don’t know if this will actually help me finish a complete first draft or if we are about to create a literary hell in our happy home. I don’t know, but I don’t care, I’m just too excited! And if it does blow up in our faces I can just lay the blame on him, it was his idea.
We have nothing concrete as of yet, but the general idea is that I will write a character, and he will write a character. It’s an exciting idea! But how do we implement it? How can we write the same story when we’re writing, in essence, separately?
I suggested we write several random ideas and drop them in a box. Several boxes actually, labeled maybe Characters, Settings, Situations, and Actions. Fill each box with examples and then pick a random scrap of paper from each so that you might end up with a sentence that could look like this…
‘A Ninja Penguin, in Mazatlan, loses the incriminating photos, and enters a motocross competition.’
That would give us an interesting jumping off point, don’t you think? And since we are planning on writing at least two characters we’ll probably draw a second character from the ‘charater’ box so the original sentence will now read…
‘A Ninja Penguin and a Coroner, in Mazatlan, lose the incriminating photos, and enter a motocross competition.’
We have already agreed that our book will take the form of journal entries. If you’ve ever read the book ‘Dracula’ you’ll have a clearer picture of what we’re thinking about. The entirety of the action documented by the characters, each narrating an individual piece and doing their part to forward the story.
The way we envision it, Jason will write the first portion and hand it off to me to read. After which I get to work on the next part. It’ll be a challenge for me to forward the story and keeping it interesting while at the same time finding a way to, ultimately, bring about a satisfying conclusion.
Such are our plans; we’re excited to share with you what we come up with!
