Too Many Cooks

I've got *another* group writing blog going. This one's quite different from Sketch War and I would really appreciate it if y'all came on by and gave it a look. We've got five people writing and five stories going concurrently. This past week we started, each of us posting the first chapter - between 500 and 1000 words or so - of a story. One story for each weekday. This coming week, each of us rotates and writes chapter two of a different story. After five weeks, each of us will have written a chapter to five different short stories.

I expect we'll see a mix of ugly, awkward pieces that don't stitch together well and stories that become much better than the originator could have hoped. Regardless, I think it'll be interesting to watch. Either you see a trainwreck or a good story coming together, one chapter at a time. Here's the wrap up from the past week:

Five days and five stories started. I’m pretty pleased it all worked out, especially since we had to make some last minute schedule changes. But it will really start to get interesting this week coming up when we all switch to another person’s story.

• “Finkle, Out of Sorts” came from me, and starts off the story of a Walter Mittyesque character. I particularly like the short scene I set in the restaurant. Oledoc will be following up this Monday.
• “The Last Time I Saw Richard” was Oledoc’s entry on Tuesday. Paulos will be taking on the next chapter about an old friend who has fallen victim to extreme paranoid delusions. Or are they delusions?
• “The Letters of Rose Constance” from Paulos looks to be an epistolary short story about a woman whose lover has left her. Maria will be following up this Wednesday and maybe we’ll see why he left.
• “Night Vision” came from Maria and was our most popular story start. I think she did a great job of showing us Zoie’s personality through her actions and behavior; after the first three paragraphs, I had a very clear picture of her. Anaïs has some interesting choices to make for her followup on Thursday.
• “Limbs Akimbo” was our final chapter on Friday. Anaïs’s story about a vet with a dark secret gives me a lot of exciting avenues to explore when I write chapter two for this coming Friday.

Will Maria’s fans come back to see how Anaïs follows up? Will Paulos delve into Richard’s psychosis or show us a massive conspiracy involving cologne? Will we hate or love where our writing partners take our stories? Yup. This is when it starts to get interesting.