Collaborative Book Writing Assignment! (Patreon)

(This is the email that we just sent out to everyone who expressed interest in our collaborative writing project. It is too late to get involved now. Just posting it here for sake of redundancy and discussion!) 

It’s finally time to write a book! With a little help from our friend Kevin Murphy, we’ve written four “chapters” of what will hopefully become only a moderately incoherent novel. Now we just need 184 of you folks to help us complete it!

Here’s how it’s going to work:

1. Here is a link to a spreadsheet with all the names and the page of the book you are assigned. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wO52mBBEJO3nWYX-A-zQXHJqcaU5DGBv9eYU58nqfUQ/edit?usp=sharing
2. We’ve provided you with Pages #s 1, 64, 127, and 188 right here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_IN9QGKPbRi9frV4nyjBZKnsMXMZex0saKNf_ggiB0A/edit?usp=sharing
3. It’s up to you to figure out where your page will fit into the narrative we’ve already established. You can talk with other writers (Encouraged!) or you can just write your own thing and hope it fits in (It won’t, but that’s OK!)

Here are some rules and advice. First the rules.

1. Don’t email us! We get enough emails for the podcast and need this to be as hands off as possible.
2. Submit your finished entry using this google form. Do not email us your finished entry. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1K9IQOX_9KDPOhB_AhAdl6lctPTXi889-rFlSqGA67KM/edit
3. 300 words. Don’t write more than 300 words! 300 times 188 is over 56,000 words! That’s the length of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This book doesn’t need to be any longer!
4. The Due Date is May 26th. That should be plenty of time. That is less than ten words a day, which is shorter than this sentence.
5. Don’t flake on this! We have your names and will publicize them if you do!
6. Your section should not just be a list of all the books and movies you have memorized!
7. Don’t troll the group. If you submit some garbage, we just won’t include it and nobody will ever see it.
8. On that note, send your erotic fiction somewhere else. You can probably find a place or two on the internet! We don’t want anything that’s on the level of The Mister.
9. Don’t email us!

Advice

1. Collaborate with the people whose pages come before/after yours! 
   1. We’ve set up a special channel in the 372 discord in order to do this. Let people know what your page number is and start talking out ideas or a timeline! https://discordapp.com/channels/638076996257054760/700401656738742353
2. If you don’t want to or aren’t able to collaborate, start and finish your section as an isolated scene. This will make the transitions less jarring. Think tiny Dan Brown chapters, but better!
3. Take into account where your position is! If you have page three, you shouldn’t lead directly into what you know takes place on page 64!
4. We’ve seeded characters, events, and themes in all of our pre-written sections. These should probably come up at other points in the book if we want it to make sense!
   1. But they don’t need to be the only things that happen. Let your imagination run wild!
5. Go easy on the podcast inside jokes and references? If you want to? At least that would be our advice. But hell, it’s your section, you can do whatever you want.
6. We’re not going to edit these submissions AT ALL, unless there’s obvious trolling or horrible stuff. What you submit is what’s going in.
7. Have fun!