Apologies for not cc:ing all before.
I was thinking about Lane's structure question (below). If we organized the site around specific characters or plot lines I think that might be too constraining (as a site architecture). I think people ought to have the permission/flexibility to create their own new pages (as well as edit in existing pages) so that when they add a chapter in the ficto-history their responsibility is to create a new page (or a new thread in an existing page) and to link to it wherever (and as many times as) it makes sense. That way the site architecture begins with a single page introduction and the threads just spin out innocuously from there. The 'turks' are simply responsible for stitching their pieces into what is already there with links etc..
I also think that there should be a site manager/editor who is empowered to make editorial and structural edits to the site and its structure as we go. This could be a rotating position.
Craig
Thursday, December 17, 2009
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
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
Response from Pete Sands
I've been playing with mind-mapping software, such as Cmap Tools, Mind
Manager, and Mindmapper.
I like the visual richness. But they're not *exactly* wikis (see, e.g.,
http://www.activityowner.com/2007/04/09/map2wiki/ and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki).
Manager, and Mindmapper.
I like the visual richness. But they're not *exactly* wikis (see, e.g.,
http://www.activityowner.com/2007/04/09/map2wiki/ and
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki).
Response from Craig
Hi
I am very interested and I could commit to uploading short pieces/new pages on a monthly if not bi-weekly schedule. Our sense of 'authorship' seems to disappear once we begin inviting others, so collective and/or ghost author don't really seem to capture the sense of boundlessness. If we have a sense that say, authors are limited to UWM, then maybe we could attribute the work to a place.
Craig
I am very interested and I could commit to uploading short pieces/new pages on a monthly if not bi-weekly schedule. Our sense of 'authorship' seems to disappear once we begin inviting others, so collective and/or ghost author don't really seem to capture the sense of boundlessness. If we have a sense that say, authors are limited to UWM, then maybe we could attribute the work to a place.
Craig
Set Piece (Flowage Rebellion)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The Flowage Rebellion ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Muratorian Fragment contains a list of the extant histories of the Midwestern Water Wars. The most interesting witness to the formative stages of the rebellions was a woman known only as Sister Pulcheria, who, in either tribute or “penance of the spectrum”, added mysteriously potent dye concentrations to water sources, inadvertently creating the first Flowage Rebellion according to the Chronologies of the Water Wars. Bright spectral coloration became synonymous with covert insurrection, which led to both the Forbidden Palette Act, and the sweeping Pigment Prohibition Laws of the mid-century. Color attacks, characterized by their vehemence and violence, were frequent, and their punishment swift and brutal. Words such as tone, green, yellow, hue, blush, crimson, blench, redden, color, colour, colorize, discolor, discolour, emblazon, people of color, people of colour, vividness, chromaticity and tinge were forbidden in public use, creating the Covert Lexical Movement, often subsequently associated with baroque and poetic syntactical style. “Lexical” thus became shorthand for “one who brings color-to-water” and has since been used as both rebuke and honorific.
The Muratorian Fragment contains a list of the extant histories of the Midwestern Water Wars. The most interesting witness to the formative stages of the rebellions was a woman known only as Sister Pulcheria, who, in either tribute or “penance of the spectrum”, added mysteriously potent dye concentrations to water sources, inadvertently creating the first Flowage Rebellion according to the Chronologies of the Water Wars. Bright spectral coloration became synonymous with covert insurrection, which led to both the Forbidden Palette Act, and the sweeping Pigment Prohibition Laws of the mid-century. Color attacks, characterized by their vehemence and violence, were frequent, and their punishment swift and brutal. Words such as tone, green, yellow, hue, blush, crimson, blench, redden, color, colour, colorize, discolor, discolour, emblazon, people of color, people of colour, vividness, chromaticity and tinge were forbidden in public use, creating the Covert Lexical Movement, often subsequently associated with baroque and poetic syntactical style. “Lexical” thus became shorthand for “one who brings color-to-water” and has since been used as both rebuke and honorific.
First Email Invitation from Lane
Craig, Trent and Mike,
I have been interested in experimenting with collaborative authorship, and wanted to run this idea by you for feedback. Inspired by Waxweb (multimedia project, kind of hermetic, that came from early muds), House of Leaves (allegedly began on a wiki), alt-history projects, and a lifetime of addiction to collaboration, I propose trying to develop a disjointed "novel" titled The Flowage Rebellion, centered upon the apocryphal histories of The Midwestern Water Wars. Below is the set-piece for the project, and I have no expectations other than 1) it deal with this history, 2) be open in form 3) inhabit an ethos of ecology, pseudo science and ficto-history.
Here are my first concerns:
1) do you perceive this as interesting?
2) would you have time to devote a bit of development to it as an ongoing piece (not too demanding, but needs to develop over duration)
3) how would authorship "product" be constructed? (a collective? a ghost-author?)
My concern is that I wouldn't want this to distract anyone from their primary work, but on the other hand, it might be an exciting exercises in creative authorship and form that could be useful in both pedagogical and formal arenas, and who knows, it might lead to an exciting piece!
If a core group of you signs on, I'd propose a viral structure (what's a little virus among friends!) where we then each invite participants based upon a collective invitational narrative that The Core develops. Off hand, I would certainly invite others from our Obstructions class, as well as various grads in the CW program. Because this is (would be) a ficto history, I see that form could easily be adapted, as different people would be interested in developing different modes, narratives, reviews, exerpts, tangeants. I would also expect a lot of genre cross-over.
I have been busy developing my website, (check out little embedded videos in recent posts -
Thoughts?
(be honest: if this is merely a distraction, or not an esthetic interest, please feel free to express!)
Lane
I have been interested in experimenting with collaborative authorship, and wanted to run this idea by you for feedback. Inspired by Waxweb (multimedia project, kind of hermetic, that came from early muds), House of Leaves (allegedly began on a wiki), alt-history projects, and a lifetime of addiction to collaboration, I propose trying to develop a disjointed "novel" titled The Flowage Rebellion, centered upon the apocryphal histories of The Midwestern Water Wars. Below is the set-piece for the project, and I have no expectations other than 1) it deal with this history, 2) be open in form 3) inhabit an ethos of ecology, pseudo science and ficto-history.
Here are my first concerns:
1) do you perceive this as interesting?
2) would you have time to devote a bit of development to it as an ongoing piece (not too demanding, but needs to develop over duration)
3) how would authorship "product" be constructed? (a collective? a ghost-author?)
My concern is that I wouldn't want this to distract anyone from their primary work, but on the other hand, it might be an exciting exercises in creative authorship and form that could be useful in both pedagogical and formal arenas, and who knows, it might lead to an exciting piece!
If a core group of you signs on, I'd propose a viral structure (what's a little virus among friends!) where we then each invite participants based upon a collective invitational narrative that The Core develops. Off hand, I would certainly invite others from our Obstructions class, as well as various grads in the CW program. Because this is (would be) a ficto history, I see that form could easily be adapted, as different people would be interested in developing different modes, narratives, reviews, exerpts, tangeants. I would also expect a lot of genre cross-over.
I have been busy developing my website, (check out little embedded videos in recent posts -
Thoughts?
(be honest: if this is merely a distraction, or not an esthetic interest, please feel free to express!)
Lane
Monday, March 9, 2009
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