As you may know, for the past few months I’ve been taking part in a collaborative fiction project hosted by Joe Owens at his blog. The final chapter is up, and if you didn’t read the previous chapters they can also be accessed by clicking on this link and then on the individual chapters.
It’s been an interesting exercise. It’s fair to say that the resulting story is not the greatest piece of literature ever written – on all levels from plot arc down to typos, via point of view inconsistencies, implausibilities, and clichés galore, it would need a serious rewrite to be even a good story, but it has been an interesting challenge and it makes a fun read.
My chapter happened to fall right in the middle of the thirteen. As such, I had a lot to work with from those who went before, but was also in a position to open up new paths and leave a great deal unresolved. For David and especially for Joe, who wrote the last two chapters respectively, those options weren’t open and I applaud the great job they did of bringing things together to a conclusion.
Would I do it again? Definitely. It’s the kind of project that flexes very different writerly muscles from the short prompts I work on in this blog or the longer stories I craft myself. Sure, it’s not something I think is ever going to yield publishable results, but as an exercise, it’s well worth a try, and you get to meet and learn from other writers too.
If you’re interested in trying out a similar project in the future, I’m sure Joe will host one again, but I’m also considering doing something myself at the end of the summer, so let me know. In the mean time, head over and check out the adventures of Forrest and Angie by clicking on the link above, or the logo below.
elmowrites 