I have mentioned here before that for the past few years I have been working on a novel. It is not going well but for some reason I am locked on this thing and just can’t quit. I feel like I need to change my strategy but have reached a point that I feel I am running out of options.
Here is my dilemma. I am not writing a novel for the sake of a novel, I am attempting to introduce a concept to the general public that I have believed in for some time now. So just making a novel entertaining and a good read would be a waste of time if it did not properly convey the message I am attempting to convey. I have identified several basic elements that need to be established and the story must develop around these elements or I have failed.
I actually started on this project over 10 years ago, it went through several years of evolving and morphing and reverse engineering until about 3 years ago when it started to closely resemble its current form. I had a few game stopping issues I needed to deal with and with some help here from the SDMB I feel like I have worked through those problems and that I am finally ready to move forward.
The project involves developing a culture of collaboration through social media at a level that most anyone could find themselves involved with. I have found I am in good company with my theories and in a bit of a race to unlock the formula that would allow a program such as this to gain a foothold. Some very good collaboration programs have been written and are doing fairly well in their own right but have still failed to reach the general public. This has actually worked in my favor as I saw the program writing aspect as nothing more than a major technical hurdle that would support this yet to exist sub culture of collaborators.
I think my original strategy has the most potential for success but has turned out to be much harder than I had anticipated. I had planned on developing a solid theory and then going out and finding a writer who could relate to this philosophy and between the two of us put together a story or screenplay. The infrastructure is already in place to a great degree and I am really feeling more and more encouraged as to the viability of this project. My big problem as of the last several months is that I have managed to locate about 2 dozen individuals who to one degree or another I felt may have some interest in the project. I have sent letters out to about 1/2 of them but have yet to receive a response. I know it has to be because the letters I am composing are lacking in substance or something that would grab their interest.
That said… I apologize for coming off more dismissive than I should have. That was rude, and not conducive to the giving of good advice.
The real secret is whatever works for you. If you get results out of what you describe, then…yay!
Some people write with music in the background; others need silence. Some can use a keyboard; others need a pen and paper. There aren’t really any wrong ways to write.
It is my opinion that you should tell a good story first, and attach a message to it only as a secondary effect. Don’t try to create a documentary; tell us a bedtime story. Attach “meaning” to it, but don’t let that be the principal drive behind the writing.
Again, just one jasper’s opinion, and I apologize again for being snarkier than I wanted. (A writing failure!)
I didn’t think you were rude at all. I am not thin skinned like that. I actually chuckled when I read you response because the truth is nobody really knows what I am talking about on this one. That’s the reason for a story, use an interesting story to introduce a concept. If a book were written on the entire concept it would never be read. A lot of big players are looking into this concept and have been for several years. They are all missing the same piece of the puzzle. I am convinced I have a good part of that puzzle solved and I really want to get it right on the first shot if I ever put it out there.
Jack Warner, I believe, said “want to send a message? Use Western Union.” (It was a long time ago.)
A novel has to include characters, plot, a world, and conflict. Do you have any conflict - real conflict? Or is the shiny new collaboration tool going to solve everything neatly.
I think a novel like yours would be very hard to write. Are your characters in jeopardy? Who stands against them? Is the tool being developed or does it exist? Are you going to show flaws and problems with the tool? Are your characters in the tool, or just users of the tool.
By in the tool I mean something like Neuromancer, which Gibson did very well thanks in no small part to his total lack of understanding of computers. If he wanted to describe real security or even predict the web in some sort of realistic way, it would not have been nearly as good.
The collaboration tools already exist, some very neat programs out there that are actually doing fairly well. What's lacking is the mass appeal for a number or reasons that are not technical but involve sociological dynamics. The novel doesn't deal much with technical aspects but with personalities and the conflicts that arise when fighting for acceptance of something new, no hardcore enemies per say.
The basic theory is that contributing through collaboration actually improves the quality of our lives. We find value in our selves when our thoughts and ideas are valued by others. We start to like who we are and what we have become. Once we reach this level we also become highly motivated and our overall performance levels quickly climb to new highs, we have more energy, concentration and greatly enhanced comprehension. I have heard that when we fall in love we actually fall in love with the way we feel about ourselves when in the company of that special person. You could describe passion the same way, when we become passionate about something it simply means we feel very good about ourselves while we are participating in that special endeavor whatever it might be. Once we have established an identity that we really like we become fiercely loyal and protective of it.
The purpose of the novel is to create a pathway that will expose more people to more opportunities to contribute to something and find value in themselves. Many of the challenges involved identifying value. Having good ideas, recognizing good ideas, advocating ideas, technical skills, creative skills etc. the list could go on forever.
Most of the currently operating web sights end up operating not so much unlike a corporate entity might put together a team to develop something. They never really get any momentum going and from a people standpoint don’t offer much. My novel would showcase the benefits of collaborating purely for the sake of collaborating and the benefits would come but would be more like icing on the cake.
The big secret formula is that which motivates these people to find each other and want to work together to start with.
Some of the sub titles and chapters I have been playing with " The meek inherit the earth" " the Dunbar number" " Fertile grounds" plenty of drama and struggles.
There is a world, nay an entire universe, of difference between collaboration and communism.
HoneyBadgerDC, I understand that you need to be somewhat circumspect about your project but is there any chance we can see at least a part of the letter? It’s difficult to critique/tweak something that we can’t see.
I’ve reread your posts several times and I’m afraid I’m still confused. Is the novel about a new form of collaboration, or are you attempting to find co-writers so that the work can be collaborative? Or both?
I know this might go over as well as a Mac fan posting in a PC thread, but have you considered interactive fiction instead of a straight novel? There are online tools that would let people read your story, choose branches they’d like to explore, and (the part I think is key to your endeavor), contribute to the story. Twine or Storium might be of interest.
• You have a concept that involves collaborative communication.
• You have the idea that a cool way to introduce people to the concept is to illustrate it in a novel. Hence you have written (or are in the process of writing) a novel that happens to have, as a backdrop to the characters and plot and subplots and dialog and all that shit, this collaborative network going on, and presumably some of the characters are participants in it.
• You’re stuck.
How’m I doin’?
If I’m on track, do you wish to describe your stuckness? Your OP sort of wandered off into the [del]cornfield[/del] specifics of the collaborative environment itself. Do you feel that you need a clearer vision of the collaborative communication system and how it functions in order to embed it properly in your tale?
So you’re writing about problems with communication and experiencing it at the same time?
This sounds similar to a plotline in The Magician King. The character Julia flunks out of magic school, and she eventually comes across a secret online society known as Free Trader Beowulf. After corresponding with them for some time, she gets together with them in Murs France. For the most part, they keep their real lives secret from each other until they know each other better in the flesh. It’s not nearly as technical as what you’ve described, but is this kinda along the lines of what you’re developing?
One of my favorite authors Isaac Asimov had a way of writing that was like layers of an onion. He’d start off with a simple concept, then add extra layers of detail until he made his final, much more complicated point. He was able to take the reader on an entertaining journey of discovery. Are you doing anything like that?
People have been struggling with ways of improving collaboration for a long time. Not just tools, but Bell Labs Reading was designed to have places for people to meet accidentally and thus collaborate. I’ve collaborated with people I never met in the flesh for months after we started. You don’t have to convince us. And it isn’t Communism.
You do have to convince me that you have a novel here, and not an essay. Do yiyr characters have a problem which gets magically solved by the collaboration tool? Not a novel. Do your characters move through their work using the tool and finish with no issues. Not a novel. Do your characters (the meek?) become collaboration superheroes through use of the tool. Maybe a novel, but not much of one.
Maybe you can show some characters who are good at this and some who are not. Not everyone is a collaborator. I don’t J. D. Salinger would have been a customer. Some people are working with others all the time.
If you are viewing this book as a way of enlightening the masses, you will find that most of the masses don’t want to be enlightened. If you are telling a great story which by the way shows the tool and how great it is, you’ll do a lot better.
The Times has a few pages of ads from what we used to call vanity presses, and the books there seem to be full of stuff the author thinks is horribly interesting but which no one else cares about. You don’t want your book to end up there.
Here is a thought. If you have the characters and plot, maybe much of the story can be told through the collaboration tool. Kind of like the old epistolary fiction. But you still need a plot, and a way of characterizing through what the characters write. Like I said, tricky business.
Great questions, I actually don’t mind giving up any of my so called secrets here because I doubt anything will ever come of it anyway. If I said tool in my original post I miss spoke. It is more of a social structure that could involve collaborating. I want the novel to showcase the good things and changes that take place in people when they find something they love. I also want to demonstrate how contributing and value can come in a lot of different ways not often thought about as valuable. The characters I refer to as advocates and talent scouts play a key role in the book.
Most of the existing collaboration sights have put together a series of links that allow collaborators to form teams. This is great and we would surely make use of it but the real problem is opening up the world of collaborating to a large segment of the population who would have never given it a thought. It is basically just one more source of exposure to new things where hopefully more people can find their niche in life.
I have to run now but will be back in about an hour and talk about how I think it could work.
I got back sooner than I thought. This thread is actually working out to be a perfect example of what I was trying to demonstrate. It is pretty obvious I lack communication skills. I do have confidence in my thought processes because I have a long history of thinking outside the box with good results. A few people here so far have picked up on what I was trying to say, now suppose ( fiction) one or two of those people said to themselves that this program I speak of might be worth hearing more about, these people would be scouts, non judgmental types who can see through the fog and find the jewels. Taking this a step further one of these scouts would either offer or refer this theory to someone else who could do a better job of expressing it. This person would be a writer advocate. This might be hard to believe but as bad as I am at expressing myself I am still actually better than most, this means there are millions of people walking around with great ideas and no hope of ever getting them heard. A system of advocacy is a key ingredient toward creating a fertile ground.
The big secret is here, nothing complicated and simple as can be. Mass free source collaboration sights will always be limited by the type of people they attract, this will always be a tiny portion of the general population. Places like facebook attract a very significant portion of the population. Places like the straight dope have large followings but still relatively small percentage wise. If social media sights big and small started adding collaboration forums that had the ability to link up with actual collaboration sights if a project advanced to certain degree you have right off the bat increased potential contributors by a multiple of possibly as high as 1000. This is where a lot of the conflict plays in trying to convince sites to adapt the program. The simplicity of everything makes for easy to write characters who under go dramatic changes in their lives. Obviously there is a lot more to it but everything is very basic.
It wouldn’t be the first time this strategy has been taken. Ayn Rand’s books are basically her philosophy in novel form. Knuth wrote a novelette (Surreal Numbers: How Two Ex-Students Turned on to Pure Mathematics and Found Total Happiness) as an introduction to the surreal number system.
Books like this are not generally that great as novels. It can be hard to avoid long monologues, etc. But they may be entertaining enough to keep the reader’s interest in a concept they may not otherwise think they care about.
No real advice to the OP other than “shut up and write.” You built bows for a long time. In all likelihood, almost all of those were failures–only a handful ever broke a record or led you down an entirely new path. But the remainder still taught you what not to do, and helped refine your craft. Same principle here. So just go out and do it, and expect to throw away almost everything you write.
I think the main problem with your idea is that people already do this, and have for a long time. Results of their collaborations include (among many, many others) Linux, Wikipedia, and the World Wide Web (and other things I made in an earlier response to you on this.) Fans of things network together and collaborate on things, and have been doing so back when collaboration was done by letters in the mail. The difference is–it seems–that you want to try to convince people to participate in crowdsourcing for issues that they aren’t actually interested in in the first place? It still seems like you are attempting to teach your internet grandmother how to suck eggs.
First you need to decide if you have a story to tell or if you want to talk about the collaborative communication concept that you are working on. Once you decide that, you can move on. A story is one type of book, but the second option is something different and may be closer to what you really want to do. When you’re forcing yourself to write against your instincts (or gut) it can be very difficult to build any momentum. So, decide: is this fiction or a non-fiction discussion of a new paradigm? There is no wrong answer.
Once you have that answer, sit down and start. Different people have different processes. You’ll often find writers broadly broken down into those who outline and those who write by the seat of their pants (with no clear plan). Which are you? Do you find that having an outline is helpful? I like having one myself. If you fall into this group, you also have to realize that the outline is where you start, but it’s almost certainly not where you’ll end up. You’ll find that writing itself gives you new ideas as you go, or that you realize something that you thought would be great isn’t once you’ve written it out.
Most of all, you need to just start. Remember, it’s a draft. It doesn’t matter if it’s not fantastic right away. Just keep writing and you can edit later. Write regularly, whether you want to or not. I always find that more words are better at the draft stage, because than I can be brutal later when I edit. That’s just me. Some people like to get each page perfect before they move to the next. You will hate this book at some point and be convinced it’s garbage of the worst order. Every author, ever, has thought this. Just keep going.
Not so much convince people as much as make it more available and easier for people to see themselves participating in some way, more like adding a new dimension for a lot of people. Myself and many people I know have been active collaborators for decades now. I have talked with others about this and there feelings are similar to mine in that it added a substantial element of quality to their lives.
