Forum: Author Hangout

I love do-over stories. I think I have either read or attempted to read every story on SOL with the do-over tag, and I have even reread several.
I came up with what I think is a unique first chapter of a story, but I could not decide which way the story should go after the MC returned.
Because of the scenario sending him back, there could be at least three completely unique stories, even if they were all written by the same author.
Then I had an idea, what if I published the first chapter and asked other authors to write their version of the rest of the story?

First, will that be doable or will it just be criticized?
Second, would enough authors get involved to make it feasible?
Would it be set up as a universe, a writing event, or a chain story? To allow the stories to stay together.

Looking for thoughts or suggestions.

Thanks

Interesting idea.

If other authors liked your story premise, then they might complete the story.

I wouldn't count on a large number of authors being involved for several reasons; but, it may be more popular than I think it would be.

It's hard to answer your questions without more information.

Criticized is likely, but others may take it up and do it. For something experimental like that you probably need a fairly thick skin to deal with naysayers.

Probably a universe to keep everything together.

So ... absolutely 'doable,' but as others have pointed out, buy-in is the problem. It feels to me like you would need a really compelling first chapter to get any buy-in at all.

I might suggest picking a path, writing more chapters, but acknowledging right from the start that the path you're taking is 'non-canonical' and other paths are equally valid. That might get you more room for buy-in.

I also feel like I might need more information. The problem is, nearly any story with any complexity has innumerable branching points where you can get an entirely different story. I'm not at all saying anything about your setup - it may be that you've got a really unique way of sending a story down different paths - but branching points aren't unique, so it's hard to guess if they're compelling.

Just from my own story (summarizing for people who have not read it; I am assuming you have, GATA_Wolf_84, given reading all of the do-overs :) ) we have:

MC killed in a car crash, comes back in 1980 with a significant concussion. Goes to the hospital, recovers a bit, meets a sister he never had. They go on to become good friends and 'partners in crime'.

Now, imagine him paralyzed. Same guy, but in a wheelchair. Hugely different story!

Imagine the sister what he feared she might be: a drug-abuse-prone manipulative bitch. Hugely different story!

Imagine, instead of the parents he expected, his parents were, say, the loser parents of the first part of Back to the Future. Hugely different story!

That's within just a couple of chapters. And some of those might be absolutely fascinating to write and read, especially since the 'universe' is settled enough that characters from the 'mainline' story would be in the other ones, but their interactions might be wildly different.

I like the idea of shared universes and maybe chain stories. I just don't know how you get them started.

I think you should test the waters by posting the chapter with your forum post as a foreword and see what the response is.

ETA (mostly copied from another thread):

An aspirational example of this is 'Overboard', a story suggested by Oyster50. Oyster had an idea and wrote the first chapter, then couldn't figure out where to go from there. He let others write their own stories using his first chapter, which resulted in Overboard Too by brertuck and Overboard! by Handyman. Both are very good stories IMHO.

If it takes off, I think a shared universe would be the way to go.

AJ

What about if you made your story interactive? Write the first chapter and then offer it up to other writers to see which way they take it. Their take on the story, could then be added as a branch and the reader can then decide which branch they want to take.

I went ahead and posted the first part. Now we will see how it goes.