Loading...A ‘relay book’ with numerous well-known contributors
Not sure if this idea exists already but… a famous author writes the first chapter and passes it on for his chosen author to write the next chapter, and so on.
It could even be non-fiction where a scientist or historian gets the ball rolling.
Another twist, ic could be online and paid subscribers could read each chapter as it goes live.
Think of the creatives that could add to the tale and where the journey could take you…
This – No Rest For The Dead – 26 authors. So this idea kind of exists. Great. Ain’t read it, I hate crime or scarey stuff in books, life’s hard enough.
Mike, I think that’s just a collaboration. The idea was that the author of each chapter, hands it on to someone else and nobody knows who else will be writing it. Or know how long it would be. Maybe it never ends like when new people come in to write on a team for a soap opera. Like a chain letter the fun is in setting something off and seeing how far it goes. If it was for charity and online, like a blog, you would just want the plot to get thicker and deeper like breaking bad or something. So, not like a regular book by multiple authors at all.
I like this idea, but better would be a choose your own adventure style non-fiction book where each author gets to write alternative reality versions of their own chapter. So in the below example about those brothers John would write a handful of chapter 1s and Hank would write a handful of chapter 2s, and so on. The trick would be in picking writers who would make sure the whole thing is consistent and the characters were believable – and that it “feels” like a single story, rather than a patchwork.
Ahh man, a patchwork could work too. Especially if the story was un-stuck in time, like Slaughterhouse five by Vonnegut.
Relay reading is a thing too, though not sure if that adds anything to the story. Love the idea that each author passes it on to one of their hero’s to see what they would do with the story. Do these actually exist anywhere though?
Goodreads list these books with multiple authors, but I can’t find anything where the story is passed on as a relay effort.
Ahh, John Green is in this list. I have linked to his latest best-seller here. He is the perfect guy to start a relay book, then send it to his brother Hank to twist the story up and send it off on a tangent. Who knows who Hank would hand it to, but this would be a great experiment as well as an interesting read.
Collaborative fiction is its name. I like the idea of passing the story on and seeing where it goes. Usually collabs are partnerships but a collaborative author may focus on a specific protagonist or character in the narrative thread, and then pass the story to another writer for further additions or a change in focus to a different protagonist.