Sunday, February 9, 2014
Matt sends a document to Chris outlining his thoughts on the book idea. Select excerpts from the document:
+ It’s a 20-chapter book and we alternate writing the chapters, one chapter per month.
+ We pass the same document back and forth. When providing a chapter, an Author’s Notes page precedes the chapter. The Author’s Notes provides an area where one can comment on the other’s work and share insight/thoughts on his own work. The huge caveat is that we restrict ourselves from discussing or alluding to the plot or anything about the characters that may impact plot. It’s basically us talking about writing the book without really talking about the book in detail. (Ex: “I thought that was a clever use of the toaster by Ralph. Nice touch. I thought you were going to use a box of crayons instead of a toaster, hearkening back to the [deleted name here] days. Glad you didn’t. Toaster was funnier.)
+ The Author’s Notes sections could be published as bonus material in a special edition or included on the book’s website – from a marketing perspective this is valuable content.
+ We will need to agree to a basic framework. This may be the hardest part (“the idea”), but for example:
Book opens with two boys fishing in a creek. The plot unfolds. Storyline must eventually arrive at the two boys once again fishing in the same creek by Chapter 18. No new characters of significance to be introduced after Chapter XX (to be determined). No characters of significance are killed or removed in a permanent way after Chapter XX (to be determined).
+ I can also envision a simple website/blog documenting our process in some way, possibly useful to pitch the idea to a publisher.
+ I don’t think we allow ourselves to go back and edit until the end or maybe not at all.
+ Maybe there is a 21st chapter that we somehow write together.
+ Maybe we don’t edit, but we have someone read the piece at regular intervals (every 5 chapters) and provide commentary. Pete would be good here.
+ I’m not worried about differences in style and voice between us – in fact, I think there should be differences. If we have a story that sounds and feels like a single author we lose some of the uniqueness. The reader will be expected to know how the book came to be and should be comfortable with some discordance.
+ Not concerned about the book’s title at this point, but we do need a name for the book project. For our own reference and marketing purposes. Haven’t really given this much thought. Quickly came up with FortyStory given our milestone birthdays this year. The URL is available. Also could be some cool graphic play 20 chapters x 2 authors = 40story.