This project is now live. You can find it here - Collaborative Writing Project 2016 and its new discussion thread is here - 2016 Collab Discussion Thread. Thanks again to everyone that has contributed so far.
UPDATE: Here is the chosen theme:
Entry 5 (by Elliot C.) - Story set in a small town. Each section of the story could be a diary entry or an account of a resident who lived in this one specific town. The town could be the "most haunted in the country" or maybe the most murders occurred there. Over the years, the town has seen a LOT of horrible occurrences. Hauntings. Murders. Sightings of witches/hags/strange creatures etc. Maybe even alien encounters. Of course that's up to the writer to decide what horrible thing occurred and when. There can be a lot of flexibility for the writers. Every story could build up to some sort of bigger picture that's revealed at the end.
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A few users have shown interest in another collaborative project, so we're opening this thread to discuss possible ideas for the story. Try to keep your descriptions as concise as possible. When we get a reasonable number of ideas we'll have a vote. The plan is to have this part of the process be finished by August first so the project can go live after Whitix's contest has concluded.
Please make sure your idea will work as an anthology.
Since I'm sure there will be some back and forth on this thread, please put "Official Entry" at the beginning of your comment when you put forward your idea. And please, no quote stacking. It just makes the thread harder to navigate for everyone. If you want to respond to someone or something specifically, just use "@DBag - blah blah blah". I will only be creating this page, the project page, and monitoring quality - the rest of this process will be left up to those of you who have shown interest in getting this started (you know who you are). That being said, if you need any assistance, always feel free to ask. Now get to work!
P.S. Although they were recently linked on Elliot's blog discussing this topic, I will link the two previous collabs here for anyone that isn't familiar with the topic:
UPDATE
Here are the possible themes for the project. Feel free to read over the whole thread to get a better idea of what the plans are for each. The author of the chosen theme will write the introduction (if they decline, we'll figure something out).
Entry 1 (by Ruckus) - The Door Under the Bridge - Revolves around a homeless man finding a blue door under the bridge he lives in; the door teleports him to different alternate dimensions, which are completely different from the real world ones... and are twisted and mad in many different ways.
Entry 2 (by Christian) - The overarching story would follow an investigation where a dead body turns up in a small town in the US. The body acts as a vector for supernatural karma so that each person who comes into contact with the body is killed by something appropriate to their greatest sin. Each author would cover one person who had come into contact with the body. A rough outline of these people would be the hiker who finds the body, the first-response police, the ambulance EMT's, the coroner who performs the autopsy, the sheriff who leads the investigation, the town lawyer, etc.
Entry 3 (by Thomas O.) - The idea I was working on involves a haunted hotel room. The hotel is over over a hundred years old, and as guests have checked in throughout the decades, mysterious things have happened to them. Some never checked out. (Think of the film/short story 1408.)
Entry 4 (by Shadowswimmer) - We collaboratively make an OC (oh god he said OC). I'm thinking similar to the rake or slenderman how there are various accounts from different people and locations over a broad period of time. The overarching story could be someone investigating the various reports and trying to piece them together as they hunt for the creature. We'd need to establish the general appearance and modus operandi of the being as a group but beyond that could be free to add elements to the lore as we saw fit.
Entry 5 (by Elliot C.) - Story set in a small town. Each section of the story could be a diary entry or an account of a resident who lived in this one specific town. The town could be the "most haunted in the country" or maybe the most murders occurred there. Over the years, the town has seen a LOT of horrible occurrences. Hauntings. Murders. Sightings of witches/hags/strange creatures etc. Maybe even alien encounters. Of course that's up to the writer to decide what horrible thing occurred and when. There can be a lot of flexibility for the writers. Every story could build up to some sort of bigger picture that's revealed at the end.
Entry 6 (by A.O.) - I had an Idea that might work. It would be like an anthology set in a mental hospital for the criminally insane. Each Author can write a separate piece about how their character found themselves to be in this mental institution, and perhaps even what their lives are like now that they are in the hospital. Whilst that kind-of has a fixed location, it allows for endless possibility. I'm not sure, but maybe somebody could even work in an overarching story? But I think the best way would be to have it as an anthology, where each character's story can act as a 'chapter'. It would work well as an entire story, and also as individual stories on the same article.