The AGS chain story, detective theme, finished now for your reading pleasure!

[[Cameron]]

Hooray it's done! Reading now.
Edit: Oh my god.... I thought it got cleared up that the cop wasnt the killer, now he is again.... AHHH!

[auriond]

Wow, that was one heck of a trip reading that. XD

I felt sick in some places, but towards the end an awed kind of feeling came over me. This is either the world's worst piece of writing or an example of sheer twisted genius. And I think that with some polish and glue, it could well be the latter.

Thanks to Andail for starting this, and congrats to those that had the unenviable task of finishing the story! It was indeed in the spirit of the beginning. Well done everyone

[[Cameron]]

I got pretty darn confused, but most of that got resolved. I'm just glad I got to write some heart eating goodness. Thanks Andail, and everyone who participated.

[FSi++]

Wow, nice story. Even with the whole derailment business =) it still reads, er, nice?

P.S. I apologise for any inconvenience that my POV change trick may have inflicted. It all was Emerald's fault anyway

[TheJBurger]

Wow. Nice ending. It somehow senselessly makes sense to a senseless story.

[lo_res_man]

I shall take my share of that as a compliment 

[Andail]

Hehe, cheers everyone...interesting read. I wonder how many mental illnesses we have endowed our poor protagonist with.

Some nice quotes:

"Being crazy is a funny thing.  Once you know you're crazy, it's easy to keep being crazy."

"...it was soothing, like a bath in warm blood."

"The phone rang high and trill causing my heart to jump into my throat.
The one in my body, not in the jar."


So, hm...should we start pointing out apparent contradictions now?
Perhaps some people feel obliged to explain what they meant with their passages?

[[Cameron]]

That heart in the throat one was mine Although Vince did give the impetus for it.

[Vince Twelve]

Did I?

HAHAHA!  It actually turned out pretty damned great.  I agree with Auriond, with some editing and a facelift, this could be twisted genius.

This is full of story spoilers, which I assume are ok now.

It's interesting, I see three real sections of the story: 

The first part starts out as a normal detective story (and props to Candall, it was a great first 200 words).  I would include FSi's bit from the POV of the killer in this first part, even though keeping it in first person when switching POV was not a great choice, it was still standard detective fair with a psychotic killer to be caught. 

Then the second part starts.  The "What the hell is going on here" section.  Emerald had a misunderstanding and for a bit things were difficult to follow but eventually got smoothed out to all making sense, with a little detour into grotesque-ville. By the end of this section (counting words, I think around Andail) it had smoothed out (and been very nicely summarized) and was ready to turn back into a detective story.  For the record, the "detective" has still not done any actual detecting and should be immediately sacked.

Then came the third bit.  The "Holy hell it's all going nuts again" bit.  At first when I got there I was thinking "What the hell are you doing, this had finally settled down to become a real story again" but eventually, the Bears, the multiple personalities, the newspaper, it all started making a semblance of sense.  And the best part about it is, due to the writers not actually understanding what was going on, the complexities of the story were never explained, which to me is fantastic because it leaves it up to the reader to interpret.  What were the family issues behind the first organ killing?  How were Lane and Carmine connected to the parties involved?  There's enough in there to kind of guess, but it's up to you to imagine what all really went down.  I really like this, especially when compared to todays TV shows, movies, and books that feel the need to hold the viewer/reader's hand all the way through.  However, I should point out, that the detective has still not done any detecting and the people responsible for sacking him have been sacked.

The ending came about 400 words too early!  But the last couple people did a nice job of adding an epilogue.

Well done everyone!  It was twisted and bizarre and delicious!

If we do this activity again, we need to make sure that we first of all, keep the POV consistent throughout the piece.  The only POV change that I thought really was done well was the Carmine section (taken into third person, flowed well, and it was relevant to the story).  Also, making sure to read the whole thing through a few times to make sure you understand everything and then writing something that follows in the intention of the story so far, rather than taking control of the story to turn it in the direction you want.  I think most people were playing for the team and a few people were just seeing what kind of twist they could throw in.  Not that there's anything inherrently wrong with that, everyone was in the activity for their own reasons.  And the... three? four?... people who really threw in curves really added big challenges for everyone else and those challenges were met excellently.  The story wouldn't have been the same without those bizarre bits, that's for sure and I really loved them all in the end.

[lo_res_man]

I am sorry, but I really didn't like it. I guess what turned me off was eating the heart, and then the spider man and then the confusion and then...*runs away screaming*

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

It was like reading the work of an addled mind!  It seems pretty clear that some people were deliberately trying to derail the narrative to be jokey/idiotic while others were desperately trying to maintain some level of coherence, and the results are just...bad.  I definitely recommend some kind of quality control if this sort of thing is repeated, perhaps by having the person running the contest read each section before submitting it to the next person.

[tube]

I definitely recommend some kind of quality control if this sort of thing is repeated, perhaps by having the person running the contest read each section before submitting it to the next person.

A question: Is the purpose of this activity to create good literature or that the participants have fun writing? I was under the impression it was the latter.

[[Cameron]]

The idea is to have fun, but having someone oversea the continuity might be a good idea, thus making it easier for each writer, and also, you know, to prevent grumbling.

[Akatosh]

\o//

Yaay!

* Akatosh starts reading right away

/EDIT: Buh... wah?

[Vince Twelve]

I don't think there should be any kind of oversight or quality control, though I did email Emerald after getting the story from him and asked him if he would like to rewrite due to his misunderstanding.  That was probably counter to the purpose of the activity.  I didn't hear back from him though, so I just ran with it.

If we do another chain writing activity, I would throw out the suggestion that we have two teams of ten people instead of one giant team and start them both off with the same theme or even the same 200 word intro.  Then, the turnaround would be shorter and we could see how different the two stories turned out.

[Tuomas]

I guess I must raise my hat to everyone who seriously managed to read this text. I really am glad I wasn't one of the last, that would have meant that. But it is really... perhaps one day I'll force myself. It's not very good, not at all in fact

[[Cameron]]

I second Vinces idea for teams, that sounds pretty cool. Be interesting to see how the stories vary.

[Nikolas]

Oh, that, indeed is a very nice idea! Just as a suggestion wait until all interested members have "applied" and then simply divide by two... (Am I not an expert in management? Huh? HUH??!?!?)

[Andail]

Or why not have six groups? Halfway into the first two stories, they branch again. Four different endings, like a good adventure game.
Like this:

                    Theme (e.g. dadaist space opera)
                  /            \
                 /               \
           group 1       group 2
           John                  Abe
           Sam                  Dick
           Henry                Oscar
        /            \            /            \
      /               \          /               \
grp 3          grp 4      grp 5        grp6
Pat          Winston   Eric             Gabriel
Sonny      Alex         Graham       Thomas
Pat Jr.      Ron          Michael       Nigel

All names are fictive.
John and Abe both starts from scratch, on the same topic (or, instead of only a topic, there is a 200 words introduction). Henry sends their version of the story on to Pat and Winston, and Oscar sends their document to Eric and Gabriel.
Pat Jr, Ron, Michael and Nigel conclude their documents and publish them.
Of course, this requires some 18-20 people just to create stories comprising 1.2k words each, so we need plenty of committment.

We could even vote for the best version afterwards.

[[Cameron]]

That would be really interesting to see Andail, and obviously there's people that want to write. Maybe we should give it a shot, I'd put my name down.