You can’t actually do it for a couple of weeks, but Saturday, April 4th, the website Literature & Latte (publishers of Scrivener) are hosting their next “Novel in a Day.”
It’s a bit hard to explain, but the organizer roughs out a plot line, divides it into chapters, and mails each one to a writer. The info packet includes the basic setup, the names etc. of the lead characters, and such. You also are told where the previous chapter leads off, and the situation you must have your lead character in at the end of your chapter.
For example, if the chosen genre this time was a crime novel (they’ve done this for eight or so years now, and the genres have been different each time) you might be told a bit about police detective John Brown, his partner Cassie Delaney, and that they were just sent out on a domestic violence call … and that at the end of your chapter they see criminals escaping from a bank.
You also don’t know where in the book your chapter comes. Is this the start of the book, with Brown and Delaney just starting out on an ordinary work day? Or is this just one incident along the plot? Or maybe it’s the very end, and the whole story was about efforts to foil that bank robbery and they’ve failed? Who knows? It’s up to you … and it isn’t.
The assignments go out, the writers have 24 hours to write their chapter and email it back to the organizer, who uses the magic of Scrivener to compile it into the final book. Or make that books: the last time I participated there were three complete books produced!
You don’t actually have to use Scrivener to write it (though you can get a beta of it for free), you can use any other wp that suits you, and simply send your text as some normal format.
Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, and writing and reading the result should kill a quarantine day very nicely.