Today i was watching a documentary about how the modern day story of king arthur came around, being a mix of many peoples different accounts.
for example, the welsh monks came up with one idea about the knights and the round table, and then around france and scotland had their own myths, and over time the stories merged to become one big tale.
So i thought, "why can't something like this be done today?".
i want to set up an internet-based open-novel. a base story line is set up, and then people from all over the world submit their entries, for example, the story line could be about a king, born, battled, did a few things like dealing with a plague and a drought etc, and then died.
people would then write in, with a story about how the king was born, another person might write a few accounts of times such as the guy killing a bear with his bear hands, someone else might like to write about the lands he conquered, and so forth.
then it goes into a sub-level, where people might go into more detail, for example, not just how the king was born, but how the parents met, the background of the mother being some witch or something, and accoutns of how the battles were faught while the king was conquering the lands, and then a whole new sublevel again, going into account of individual soldiers who faught bravely in the battle, and did daring acts of heroism, while not nessecerily having anything to do with the story line, but would still make an interesting chapter.
during this whole process, lasting possibly a couple of years, the entries are moderated, and controlled to make sure people arent going out of line, or that not everyone is covering the same aspect of the story, leaving other aspects blank.
at the end of the project, the story will be compiled and re-drafted by one person (maybe me) to make sure everyone's work fits nicely together, and mathces the same style. the book is then published, maybe for free, maybe in bookshelves and the money going to some reading-related charity, or maybe not compiled at all so people can read the extracts online and build up their own story from what they prefer, thus having access to alternative endings and the like.
i'm basically writing this asking for peoples oppinions, im not an optemist or a realist, i want other people to assure me its a good idea before i go ahead with it and waste my time. I also need ideas on how the project could be moderated and judged.
what do you guys think?
edit: forgot to mention, im also looking for ideas about how the project could be spread, atm, im hoping word of mouth and minor press-releases will do the trick, since it's worksed for other internet projects such as million-dollar homepage. i was also thinking of maybe encouraging a few celebrity, or at least, well-known writers to particpate.
