Idea for collaborative blog

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Normally about now I'd be plugging Transplanted Life, which just hit its third anniversery, but I won't kid you - I don't have the time to update it nearly often enough to really tell a good story right now, and don't see me getting back up to that level in the near future. Serial fiction thrives on consistent new installments, and I don't know how well I'll be doing at that for a while.

(See, this is what happens when you start something when you're unemployed, and then get a full-time job. You just don't have the *time*.)

Anyway, one of my other projects is a new captioned picture a day on a series of SmartGroups, and along with new ones, I've been re-posting the stuff I did on Lycos Groups (remember those?) at the same rate. The current "summer" group is here. Recently, I hit a "beach house" series with the following premise: Because of a sort of curse, a beach house rented out by the month transforms its guests into the people who stayed there the previous month (who had been transformed into the people who came two months back, and so on back to a horrible accident). This month, a group of recent high-school grads finds themselves transformed into a group of sorority girls. (Here's the first picture; hit "next" to step through the 8-picture story).

Anyway, I think this has great potential for a TL-style blog, only less likely to get completely bogged down: If six (or four, or eight, or whatever) of us each take a different character, we can have regular updates without any of us getting too overloaded. If we have each of the characters going their separate ways at the end of the month, we don't have to worry too much about stepping on each other's toes unless some of us decide we WANT to work closely together for a while.

If anyone's interested in going along with it, drop me an email with your idea for a character, with before-and-after-change situations; if there are any takers, I'll see which ones we can fit together, set up the blog on Blogger, and see what we can come up with.

Sounds interesting

erin's picture

Lainie Lee did something similar years ago with a project called "Invasion of the Hooters", half a dozen writers each writing the adventures of one person during an invasion of aliens. :)

Keep us posted.

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

A couple clarifications, based on responses

(1) "Transplanted Life" is not ending; I'm just not crowing about anniverserys and such because, hey, I've done a crappy job of giving it regular updates. That'll change as soon as I've finished the current batch of movie reviews for eFilmCritic (I figure that when you get a media pass, you owe both the festival and the outlet your writing priority, even if you're not getting paid).

(2) I'm not looking to "assign" characters for the Beach House blog; I figure potential writers would want to build a character that they feel comfortable writing. Just as Martina Hart lives in Boston, works as a programmer and likes movies because that's background I can write believably, potential parcticipants should bring their own expertise and fantasies to bear, so we have a diverse and interesting world.

"Transplanted Life" is fun but demanding; I kind of hope that this can be more fun for the people involved, while being less overwhelming and still giving the reader something new every day.

Slot(s) still available

So far, we've got five writers (including myself) lined up for the "Beach House Blog" that will start up later this month. It will be something like "Transplated Life", only instead of one character, there will be six to eight, each with a different voice and way of dealing with their transformation because of the different writers. And, practically, this will also make it much more likely to be updated every day (unlike TL) because we probably won't all be busy at once.

The premise is this: 6-8 men rent a beach house for a few weeks toward the end of the summer, unaware of the curse upon it. After the first night that they're all there, they wake up having turned into the women who had rented it previous to them, and are unable to change back before their rental ends and they have to "return" to their new lives.

If you've got an idea for a character and would like to participate, drop me a line with your idea (pre-change life, post-change situation, maybe a direction you'd like to take him/her), and we'll sign you up, work on melding the characters together, and be up and running later this month.

Set-up?

Okay, I finally got the links to work. I have to say you've got TOO MUCH story already there for me to want to get involved. Unless I'm misunderstanding the set up?