The Most Novel Blog Novel

Feel like flexing those literary abs of yours?

According to a survey done by the Jenkins Group (No, not the Leeroy one.), roughly 80% of the United States population wants to author a book. The general problem, however, apart from confidence-issues, is most likely dedication. Even a comparatively simple novel is quite the challenge to tackle, demanding months of hard work and promising very little in return, apart from relationship issues and the obvious noodle-exclusive diet.

So let’s write one together!

The concept is terribly simple. An average novel tends to span between 80,000 and 120,000 words, or somewhere around 300-400 pages. The norm seems to be around 250 words per page [answers.google.com], so that is what each of us should bring to the table.

250 words would hardly seem like a challenge to any half-serious blogger now, would it? Perhaps even the contrary is true; can you fit your ideas into one tiny page, while still keeping the story and flow consistent with the rest of the work? That might perhaps be the real challenge of this task.

Great! So how do we do this?

I’m happy you feel that way! As you might already have noted, if we are to write one single page each, we are going to need up to 400 contributing authors. As this might be a steep number, passionate contributers will be welcome to contribute additional pages should the work stagnate.

The pages, while the work is in progress, will be hosted on the respective authors’ blogs, websites or otherwise preferred online media. I will do my best to gather links to each page on a separate post on this blog, and when the work is finished I will compile the joint work – each page with its author’s name and blog URL – into a .pdf-file, ready to distribute wide and far. Perhaps some creative soul will even contribute with a fancy-looking cover? Who knows?

In case you want to contribute but don’t have a way to publish your page, you are more than welcome to mail your page to me and I will make sure it finds its proper place.

Proceedings

It goes without saying that one must read the story before being able to write the following page. Thus, I suggest that would-be authors “sign up” for writing a page by simply posting a comment on the project page. Once the pages before yours has been written, read through them and add your contribution.

Authors are welcome to add minor changes, such as re-formulating an existing passage or fixing typos, to their already contributed page(s), however the actual story content must naturally remain unchanged for consistency.

Although we certainly are a collection of civilized authors-to-be, it would no no harm stating the obvious; feedback on others’ contributions should be given in an entirely positive, friendly and constructive manner.

Proposed guidelines

• All submissions must be written in English.
• Existing storyline and character portrayal must be respected – no sudden irrational changes of personalities halfway through the story.
• Proposals are initially limited to one page per author, or roughly around 250 words.
• Proposals found by “the community” at large to be of non-serious character may be refuted. The official and included pages will be listed on the project page.
• All authors will be duly credited in a uniform fashion, the footer of the contributed page containing the author’s name and URL/other preferred means of contact.

Licencing

Don’t let the boring subtitle scare you away. As this is a work created by “everybody,” it makes sense to distribute it as a work for everybody as well. Thus I propose the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License for the work, meaning that it will be free to read and share in non-commercial manners, and that it may be modified given that the new work will be shared under the same licence.

Resources

Some things that might come in handy for the collaborative author.

Simple page template

Here’s a rough-cut template of what information your page could should (?) contain:

The One Page Per Person ProjectChapter I, Page 1

"The cookie monster" yet again. Lorem Ipsum shrugged as he read the newspaper, his fingers sooted by the printing ink.

...

Written yyyy/mm/dd by Your Name Here of Your Blog Here.
Distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA licence.

Feel free to add in information such as links to the following (and perhaps previous?) page, ideas the author of the following page might find interesting, etcetera. Do not, however, dictate the entire story as you see fit.

Information box

Feel free to add the following information-box (code below) to the post with your contribution, letting your visitors know more about the project.

<div style="border: 1px dotted #aaa; margin: 5px; padding: 10px; font-size: 11px;">
   <p>The following material is part of a community project in which we collaborate in writing a novel - page by page, author by author.</p>
   <p>Piqued your interest? <a href="http://cbsmth.se/misc/one-page-per-person/">Read the full story</a> and <a href="http://cbsmth.se/misc/the-most-novel-blog-novel/">learn how to contribute a page of your own</a>!</p>
</div>

Fancy badges?

“What’s a community project without fancy badges to post on your blog?”

As much as I’d like to offer some right off the bat, yours truly is admittedly not graced with any mentionable skills when it comes to graphics. If you are, however, and feel like contributing with some creativeness, it would be most welcome!

Summary

• One page per person (for starters).
• Anybody is free and most welcome to contributeNon-serious, obscene or otherwise improper content may be vetoed by the community.
• The finished work will be compiled and distributed freely – naturally with references to all contributing authors.
• Participate in a community activity, earn some blog links, and above all – have fun writing!

Are you ready to start writing your page? Head over to the project page and sign yourself up through the comments!