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The Great TBF Novel

direstraits

direstraits

Well-Known Member
Okie... this is inspired by Gizmo who proposed something everyone can participate in.

Many years ago, Malaysia had this writing thingee called "The Great Malaysian Novel", I believe sponsored by one of our national newspapers. Now what happened was the basic premise/setting and characters of the story is laid out as the story's foundation. Then readers were invited to write up to one paragraph of this big ongoing novel. Anybody could write anything, and basically, the story was entirely in everyone's hand.

The novel made its rounds around the country, placed in a venue (typically a shopping mall) for a duration at a time. Lines of people are seen queueing for their turn at writing. And the whole thing was serialized every week. I can't remember how long it took for the Novel to be completed - the details are fuzzy because it happened so long ago.

Again, I don't rightly remember, but I believe there were editors who oversaw the whole thing, to edit out crazy stuff.

There are plenty of writers here, and lots of enthusiastic members. Wanna try it for The Book Forum? :)

ds
 
There's a reason why professional writers don't do that kind of project--the result is typically monstrous and unreadable.

However, the kind of project that often has a good, readable, even engaging result is a collection of poems or very short pieces on one subject, e.g., what you did today, love, nature, inspired by a particular subject (writing, a painting, a building) etc. That can show many facets of one possibility.
 
if you really want, you can write something great here and post in showcase, such as how conflicts happen, and develop in the bookforum. :p i can be a loyal reader.
 
So sorry, Ice... I guess I should've searched first! :) Thanks for the links... I'm reading the thread now, gosh it's great! It's everything I had imagined it would be, with Wabbit's infectious enthusiasm, willing participants, and generally good fun. I'm sorry I missed it...

novella... I agree with you there about many people chipping in to do a project, but the point isn't to produce great stuff... it's just to have great fun... It could be at turns dramatic and thrilling, but I'd hope it'll take a turn to comedy and make us all laugh. :)

watercrystal, i'd like to write, but then my writing is terribly unfocused and I tend to ramble... :eek:

ds
 
Yeah, it was really good. :)

Shame it fizzled out. Maybe we could try it again. I think we need a very small group of devoted people doing it. Before it was too large a group and some of the participants were not around enough or interested enough to keep it going.
 
I thought you had it organized pretty well, set with an order of writers to follow. I also thought that the number of people was good - you don't want too few, or the fun will only be limited to those who'd write.

What we'd need is a better way of 'passing the baton', so that people who couldn't write it in time could pass it to another who could.

ds
 
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