You summed it up pretty well. Personally I have little interest in a novel or story. I would be happy to simply write about the theory until I ran out of things to talk about. I have multiple outlines and countless essays dealing with aspects of this. I see the story or screenplay as the only real way to introduce the concept to the public for what I feel it is really worth. One of my personality quirks that has been with me since early childhood deals with watching how people change as circumstances change. I have a particular fascination with what motivates people and what happens to them once they become motivated. As an adult I had the benefits of running truck shops for the past 40 years, usually shops with from 20 to 40 mechanics. Small enough where I could be up close and personal yet large enough to get a good sampling to build my data on. I think these things have added to my experience that I am basing my novel on.
Aha. I think a social structure lends itself far better to being described in a novel than a tool does, since a part of novels is the interaction of the characters - and you can show that in a new way.
I don’t know enough to have an opinion on your method. But good novels can be build around dumb ideas, and bad novels can be built around good ones. Given that your idea is a good one, I’m trying to help you build a good novel around it.
Maybe you could set up a team of people trying to do something, and slowly finding their way to interacting based on your collaborative method. I think that would be more dramatic than if they started with it. Make your characters sympathetic, and the reader will root for them to build the collaboration.
Of course put in setbacks, hurdles, and some opposing forces. That keeps readers reading.
If you have no interest in your story, neither will anyone else.
I didn’t mention Rand because I hope he does better than she did.
Shut up and write is usually good advice - but in this case he can’t let the story take itself where it wants to go, since he has a goal for it. I also don’t have the sense that he has a good grasp of the basics of a novel. In this case, some prep work might pay off, I think. So maybe it should be shut up and outline.
Ditto this. Make sure the characters have souls and aren’t just keyboard monkeys. One of them could be a single mother struggling to provide for her family. Another could be a veteran who returned from a war but couldn’t find work until now. Another could be from high school, a nerd who doesn’t fit in with anybody except this group. And so on.
I second this. Off the top of my head, a novel needs at least one of these: compelling characters, fascinating setting, interesting conflict. If you don’t have the patience to create these, I believe your and your readers’ time would be better spent on essays.
There’s no shame in writing a non-fiction book. “How to get people involved in collaboration” sounds like a worthy topic for a business and/or self-help book, and both those genres have huge readerships. Don’t tie yourself to the novel format if it doesn’t suit the purpose of getting your message out.
I actually have these same characters, the only difference is the vet is an older alcoholic suffering from PTSD and can’t seem to hold down a job. The big challenge in real life is attracting collaborators. I am thinking that a small group as you mention here just stumbles across a formula by accident and they never actually knew what they did until it had already developed quite a bit of steam.
It follows the philosophy of " Do what you love the money will follow" No specific goals, no trend setters, no in crowd, just collaborating because it has become an enjoyable past time. It eventually mushrooms into a powerful force and starts to attract all sorts of greedy types. This is where I am to build some conflict and temptation.
Here’s a serious question. Have you ever read a novel that did what you want your novel to do? If so, study that book and see how it managed the feat. Don’t try to reinvent the process.
If not, you should investigate to see if anyone has ever had success doing this. Not just writing up ideas in novel form - many people have done that - but successfully building a movement upon that novel.
Dr. Strangelove mentioned Ayn Rand. She may or may not be a model. She was a working writer and political activist for a decade before *The Fountainhead *appeared. And various flavors of what became called libertarianism were already well established; she merely provided her own, which became more a small cult than a mass movement. Novels like Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land generated followers of a sort, but they never even amounted to a cult let alone a movement. Edward Bellamy is perhaps the prime example. Looking Backward, 2000-1887 did become a mass movement - and lasted only a year or two with no results. If you hate yourself you can try studying it, but that style of fiction is unreadable today. There just aren’t many other models out there.
You really need to think whether this lack of examples is a sign you should examine a different approach.
I understand what you are saying. I know a lot of products never make it to market simply because they require too much customer education. As a retired senior I have nothing to loose and keep myself entertained albeit a bit frustrated at times. I admit I have been less than encouraged when reviewing my own work here., at the same time I always find a few jewels that seem to spur me on.