Response from Trent

I don't know who else has committed yet so I'll keep everyone copied in.

I've got a couple of different ideas of how we could get the ball
rolling, many of which admittedly stem from my role-play-gaming past
fused with concepts from the restrictions/obstructions class:

-- Anyone remember the "Thieves' World" series?
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thieves%27_World) These was a fantasy
series co-authored by a number of the biggest names in f/sf back in
the late 70's early 80's. I haven't been able to find the original
rules the authors were bound to, but I believe they were allowed to
create a certain number of characters in the same setting. The authors
then wrote short stories where I believe the only thing they weren't
allowed to do was kill another author's character, but they fucked
with them mercilessly. To quote from one of the founding authors "You
write your first Thieves' World story for fun and the rest for
revenge."

-- Another idea: we start with Act 1, some seminal event in Lane's
World (something major on par with 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination)
and we all write a scene about characters who are impacted by this. In
Act 2, perhaps by random pairings, some of these groups must meet or
interact while others must *not* meet. In Act 3, by more random
selection, different groups must interact or not interact. We could
mix in other "events," such as a wild card that states someone in
Pairing B must be utterly humiliated, and a character in Pairing C
must have a stroke of unbelievable luck. And so on. The could easily
be expandable/adaptable for the number of users in a given round. For
instance, no new characters introduced until a new author introduces
them.

-- Another way would be to write towards some event, sort of like a
Larry David "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode. There's some wire frame
holding the thing together, but there's a whole lot of ad-libbing
going on. Yet everything somehow comes together, or perhaps weaves
back and forth.

Lane, do any of these sound appealing or am I off track? I think what
I'm envisioning is having authors grappling with some specific set
rules, but also being encouraged in pushing the narrative further,
even if "further" means just discovering new parts of this world, or
new rules about it--which are then "in play" for subsequent authors!
The ever-evolving rules and facts could be collected on a wiki that
later authors would need to reference before writing. I could also see
a story map evolving, where you could track developing plots amongst
more random entries.

Or is this more restrictive than what you had imagined? The way I'm
describing would almost be game-like, in that you'd need a referee
holding things together somewhat, but I think I'd be more intrigued by
clusters of cohesive storytelling rather than completely disparate
chunks.

I'll stop here. If you're not careful I'll try and usurp the whole
damn project! Also, I would be tempted to invite some non-UWM
colleagues at some point. Lots of talented writer folks I know are
very interested in alternate and ficto- histories, pseudoscience and
the like. This kind of stuff is very popular in science fiction and
fantasy.

Looking forward to more input!

--Trent