A Little Project
This is something I cooked up out of the blue last night. It was trigged by a small event and led to unleashing a great deal of pent up... experience in regard to group-writing (or online roleplaying). Really the trigger was the straw on the camel's back, but it got me writing something.
Common Faux Pas in Interactive Writing
--One-Upping: the tendency for each writer to main-stay their own character(s) by deliberately and specifically out-doing other writers' characters. This usually gets filed under 'god-moding' in combat-heavy stories.
--Plans Change: the randomly generated plots of most group-written stories tend to start overlapping and criss-crossing, especially in surges of writing activity. This leads to confusion, re-writes, and even more confusion was people trying to catch up get caught in the middle of a story that is being edited as they try to read it.
--Recluse: the writers who, when the story doesn't go their way, become dejected and lose interest. This is usually tied to one-upping, and the chastisement resulting from it.
--The Herd: there are usually 'lead' writers and 'catch-up' writers. The people who are eager to add more to the story and keep it going are the 'lead' writers, who tend to leave behind the 'catch-up' writers, who are only interested enough to post when they have free time rather than making time for posting their additions. As a result, the story becomes lop-sided, dominated by lead-writers' material, and alienating the 'catch-up' writers, usually to the point of their leaving the story entirely.
--Ownership: since a group story is created by multiple writers, there is no clear 'owner' of the material. However, human nature makes all of the writers possessive and defensive, leading to a default position that the more a given writer adds to the story, the more claim they have on it. When connected to the Herd issue, with lead-writers far outweighing the catch-up writers in volume of material added, the 'direction' of the story becomes more clearly under the jurisdiction of the lead writers.
--Character-Exchange: the use of another writers' characters becomes inevitable the longer a group-story narrative lasts. It eventually becomes impossible to move through a scene without one author writing for characters that are not his or her own creations. This leads to the next problem--
--No One Writes One Character the Same Way: No one will ever get someone else's character correct. They might get close, approximate to the point of many readers being confused as to who might've actually written it, but in a group-story the reader is the other author, and the other author will never be satisfied fully by another writer working with his or her material (i.e. characters). Most group writers learn to either tolerate a degree of 'inaccuracy', or end up leaving the story to protect their characters from gross-ineptitude on the part of other writers.
--Idealists: there are group-story writers who believe the best writing is group writing, and that the story is made better by the constant shift and flux of various writers influencing the same characters. They naturally conflict with--
--Purists: the writers who know exactly what they want to write, how, when, and why. These are the writers who protect their characters and plot-plans to the exclusion of all other priorities, and they usually end up leaving the story for that same reason.
--Conflict: A purist group-writer interacting with an idealist group-writer will always lead to a confrontation, usually one the idealist is confused by, and doesn't understand the purist's self-righteous fury.
--Roleplay is not Writing: The two types, purists and idealists, are generally so for one simple reason. Purists are writers. Idealists are role-players. Role-players are comfortable with the concept of not having control. They are used to a modicum of self-control within a larger system of guided direction, and thus react more positively to outside influences on their own characters and plot-ideas. Writers (purists) are comfortable only when they have full control, and understand the full parameters of a given scene before they even start to plan or interact with it. Any flexiblity they have for a fluid plot-plan is in spite of this nature, not because of it, and they will always feel the conflict.
--A Purist Leads: a purist group-writer tends to either be the lead-writer, one of the lead-writers, or a recluse. They are either calling the shots for the most part, or butt-heads with the rest of the writers as they try to control their own part of the story.
--Idealists Lead: Idealists rarely head-line a story, but they often become the bulk of the 'lead writers' around the main leader. They feed on the purists plans, and both use the restrictions, and bolster them with their own ideas. Most group stories are produced by a ring of idealists around one or very few purists.
--Purist Cult: If a group of purists manage to start a story together, it is probably going to seem highly unapproachable to most other writers, especially *other* purists, and the idealists that attempt to join will find themselves shunned, shut-down, or simply so restricted or focused that they lose interest and feel antagonized. The small cluster of purists who work well together would only learn so after extended periods of time, and wouldn't work well with new blood.
--Titling: naming schemes take two routes. Someone spontaneously derives a name for a new feature of the plot (a character, event, race, plot-device, etc.), and the rest of the writers run with it. Or, someone tries to name a plot-feature, but the original writer of the plot-feature rejects it (either for the sake of a title the original writer came up with, or simply because the original writer does not want the item titled). This generally leads to a conflict where most of the writers accept the spontaneous title for simplicity sake, while the original writer (with a default sense of ownership over the plot-feature) maintains the lack of use for the plot-feature's spontaneous title. In other words, the spontaneous title sticks, it's just never 'officially' recognized by the creator. This is one of the events that would generally result in a purist turning recluse and departing the story.
It may become an on-going project.
Common Faux Pas in Interactive Writing
--One-Upping: the tendency for each writer to main-stay their own character(s) by deliberately and specifically out-doing other writers' characters. This usually gets filed under 'god-moding' in combat-heavy stories.
--Plans Change: the randomly generated plots of most group-written stories tend to start overlapping and criss-crossing, especially in surges of writing activity. This leads to confusion, re-writes, and even more confusion was people trying to catch up get caught in the middle of a story that is being edited as they try to read it.
--Recluse: the writers who, when the story doesn't go their way, become dejected and lose interest. This is usually tied to one-upping, and the chastisement resulting from it.
--The Herd: there are usually 'lead' writers and 'catch-up' writers. The people who are eager to add more to the story and keep it going are the 'lead' writers, who tend to leave behind the 'catch-up' writers, who are only interested enough to post when they have free time rather than making time for posting their additions. As a result, the story becomes lop-sided, dominated by lead-writers' material, and alienating the 'catch-up' writers, usually to the point of their leaving the story entirely.
--Ownership: since a group story is created by multiple writers, there is no clear 'owner' of the material. However, human nature makes all of the writers possessive and defensive, leading to a default position that the more a given writer adds to the story, the more claim they have on it. When connected to the Herd issue, with lead-writers far outweighing the catch-up writers in volume of material added, the 'direction' of the story becomes more clearly under the jurisdiction of the lead writers.
--Character-Exchange: the use of another writers' characters becomes inevitable the longer a group-story narrative lasts. It eventually becomes impossible to move through a scene without one author writing for characters that are not his or her own creations. This leads to the next problem--
--No One Writes One Character the Same Way: No one will ever get someone else's character correct. They might get close, approximate to the point of many readers being confused as to who might've actually written it, but in a group-story the reader is the other author, and the other author will never be satisfied fully by another writer working with his or her material (i.e. characters). Most group writers learn to either tolerate a degree of 'inaccuracy', or end up leaving the story to protect their characters from gross-ineptitude on the part of other writers.
--Idealists: there are group-story writers who believe the best writing is group writing, and that the story is made better by the constant shift and flux of various writers influencing the same characters. They naturally conflict with--
--Purists: the writers who know exactly what they want to write, how, when, and why. These are the writers who protect their characters and plot-plans to the exclusion of all other priorities, and they usually end up leaving the story for that same reason.
--Conflict: A purist group-writer interacting with an idealist group-writer will always lead to a confrontation, usually one the idealist is confused by, and doesn't understand the purist's self-righteous fury.
--Roleplay is not Writing: The two types, purists and idealists, are generally so for one simple reason. Purists are writers. Idealists are role-players. Role-players are comfortable with the concept of not having control. They are used to a modicum of self-control within a larger system of guided direction, and thus react more positively to outside influences on their own characters and plot-ideas. Writers (purists) are comfortable only when they have full control, and understand the full parameters of a given scene before they even start to plan or interact with it. Any flexiblity they have for a fluid plot-plan is in spite of this nature, not because of it, and they will always feel the conflict.
--A Purist Leads: a purist group-writer tends to either be the lead-writer, one of the lead-writers, or a recluse. They are either calling the shots for the most part, or butt-heads with the rest of the writers as they try to control their own part of the story.
--Idealists Lead: Idealists rarely head-line a story, but they often become the bulk of the 'lead writers' around the main leader. They feed on the purists plans, and both use the restrictions, and bolster them with their own ideas. Most group stories are produced by a ring of idealists around one or very few purists.
--Purist Cult: If a group of purists manage to start a story together, it is probably going to seem highly unapproachable to most other writers, especially *other* purists, and the idealists that attempt to join will find themselves shunned, shut-down, or simply so restricted or focused that they lose interest and feel antagonized. The small cluster of purists who work well together would only learn so after extended periods of time, and wouldn't work well with new blood.
--Titling: naming schemes take two routes. Someone spontaneously derives a name for a new feature of the plot (a character, event, race, plot-device, etc.), and the rest of the writers run with it. Or, someone tries to name a plot-feature, but the original writer of the plot-feature rejects it (either for the sake of a title the original writer came up with, or simply because the original writer does not want the item titled). This generally leads to a conflict where most of the writers accept the spontaneous title for simplicity sake, while the original writer (with a default sense of ownership over the plot-feature) maintains the lack of use for the plot-feature's spontaneous title. In other words, the spontaneous title sticks, it's just never 'officially' recognized by the creator. This is one of the events that would generally result in a purist turning recluse and departing the story.
It may become an on-going project.