Collective.Invention.Contention

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He had worked out a mnemonic to keep the words close. The sheet would be gone before lunch, of course. Bastian imagined stacks of wrinkled messages lining the walls of a secret basement, a tangible polemic erected against the outside world.

He longed for a mirror, unsure if he had set his face in an expression of glazed indifference. Otherwise the other tenants might suspect he now knew the way out.

Somewhere near the ceiling the bell rang, a metallic grinding noise, and the door started to slide open behind him.

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How It All Went Down

Collective.Invention.Contention is a continual story project. A continual story is one in which a group of authors improvise a story through an online medium. One person starts and then the next person adds to it and so on.

Here are the rules.

1. --First and foremost, Don’t Be a Douche. This should be fun for everyone involved. If you take a moment to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and what you just wrote pisses you off, then chances are you are being a douche and you should try again.

2. --Improv rules are in effect. That means “yes, and” and “yes, but” and no outright vetoes. Put simply, you can add to or modify something another writer posts, but you can’t immediately dismiss or destroy it.

3. --Be consistent. Work with the characters, setting, and plot elements established in the previous posts. Introduce new elements as appropriate, but don’t create a new character to serve as “your guy,” a favored pawn you get to move around.

4. --Be concise. Don’t try to blow everyone away with your writing skills by writing overlong narratives. Keep it down to a few paragraphs, no more than a page.

5. --Set up the next moment. Give the person after you something to work with. Make it interesting. Make it a challenge. Make it funny. But don’t create dead ends. Example “Rutger realized the scratching was coming from behind the cellar door, a door that was always locked. He reached out to open it and…” is way more interesting than “Then he opened the door and found only an empty broom closet.”

6. --Assume nothing. If some element about the story has yet to be defined, it is totally fair to exploit it as long as you adhere to the previous rules. If the story seems to be about a gumshoe in Chicago, but no one has mentioned a year or confirmed the genre, you are free to set the story in post-apocalyptic Chicago.

7. --Have a plan. Remember Checkov’s gun. Have a purpose behind what you do with the characters and plot.

8. --Don’t be attached to your plan. Someone else will most likely unwittingly usurp your plans, so don’t be pissed when that happens. Regroup and think of a way to weave it back in or abandon it in favor of the new thing that is happening.

9. --There is a fixed posting order which you must observe. When the person before you posts, you will have 24 hours to write something. Otherwise the writer after you can go ahead and skip you. You will have to wait for your next turn.

-----Any comments, clarifications, or suggestions on individual submissions should be posted within the comments section of that specific post. New blog posts should only be created for new narrative.