The year is 1811, and Jacob Grimm has an idea for a story. Various elements flow through his head. An evil queen, who wants to be the fairest one of all. A princess, who happens to be the fairest one of all. A magic mirror, that can not only talk, but is also a fashion expert, and is able to judge exactly who's the fairest one of all. An excellent idea for an excellent story. The only problem is, Jacob really cannot get himself motivated to write.
Letting your creative juices flow by writing your own story can be a lot of fun. Keeping yourself motivated when writing however, whether it be a short story or a novel, can be difficult. Especially if you’re writing a novel. So how can you do it? Fortunately, there are two very easy ways to motivate yourself. If you know anything about how Jacob Grimm wrote, you should be able to work out the first one quite easily.
Jacob Grimm had a brother, Wilhelm Grimm. His brother was also an aspiring writer, but also suffered from motivational problems. And as he could not afford a psychologist to tell him how best to get himself to continue to write, he got his brother to help. And of course, his brother realised in an instant the best way for someone to motivate themselves to write.
1. Write with someone else. It’s simple. Find somebody who you get on well with, whether it be a face-to-face friend or an online friend, think up a good idea, and start writing. Try doing it online; Google Docs, for example, is a free way to allow you to both work on a story together. Perhaps you could plan out the story to start out with, and alternate paragraph by paragraph/chapter by chapter. Or perhaps you could take it in turns to write chapters, with not much idea where the story is going at all. Either way, with another person working with you, you’ll feel much more motivated to keep writing. I call it “Collaborative Fiction”. A grand idea deserves a grand name, after all.
Unfortunately, it would be another 200 years before Google Docs came, which made Jacob and Wilhelm’s job rather more difficult. The only internet they could get their hands on was tying two paper cups together with a long piece of string, and talking through it. As this was a rather inefficient way of writing a story, they decided to sit there face to face, (...Freaky! Face to face!...) typing on a keyboard known as “the quill”, and motivating each other as they went. As a result, not only did they stop procrastinating but they were able to choose the best ideas out of their separate heads. This meant that Jacob’s brilliant idea to have Dwarfs was included, and his rather silly idea to have the queen turning into a dragon was laughed at by Wilhelm, and was dumped into the trash can. (A real, physical trash can. To Wilhelm's disgust, there wasn't any pixel trash can yet on his non-existent computer.) It also meant that Wilhelm’s idea of a poisoned apple was kept, but his dangerous idea of having a detailed description of how the apple was infused with rhubarb leaves to make it poisonous was excluded. “After all,” reasoned Jacob, “we don’t want to be sued for teaching rubbish children how to poison their nasty old rubbish step-mums.”
2. Write with a whole group of people. Okay, this second Collaborative Fiction idea won’t be getting you any literature prizes. But it’s probably the most enjoyable way to write. Basically, a whole bunch of people get together, and take it in turns to write a paragraph. Nobody has any idea where the story is going, making it very unpredictable, and meaning it’ll have lots of twists. There are all sorts of versions; it can be done online, or perhaps in person, where a bunch of people pass around a sheet of paper and add to it. Another variation that you may have done at school is where a class sits around and each person speaks out a couple of sentences, and other people have to continue the story. The result of this is often very confusing, and very amusing.
“I have a wonderful idea!” announced Wilhelm without warning, causing Jacob to spill his tea all over his desk.
“What rubbish is it this time?” grumbled Jacob, trying to mop up the tea before it reached the Snow White Word Document (which was really just an old fashioned thing known as a piece of paper).
“Well, you see how much better we’re writing with two of us working together?” asked Wilhelm.
“Rubbish,” replied Jacob. “If it weren’t for rubbishy-old-you I would have had Snow White cutting herself rubbishly out of a dragon by rubbish now.”
“If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t have written one line,” retorted Wilhelm. “So why don’t we expand on this way of writing? Why not get more of our friends in here, and we can all work on our story together!”
“Rubbish idea,” wheezed Jacob. “That’d mean I’d have to share the rubbish profits with a whole rubbish group of people. As it happens I really don’t think you deserve your rubbish share, what with silly rubbish like rhubarb leaves. Rubbish!”
If you're doubtful about whether writing collaboratively can actually work, then I'm happy to remind you that Pencil Rubbings is a good example of it! This very blog thrives because of the way its multiple author setup works. If Pencil Rubbings only had one author, I'd be quite confident in saying that it would likely have crawled to a halt months ago. The additional enthusiasm of a number of people has kept it going strong.
This post wouldn’t be complete without an example of a Collaborative Fiction story. So, here’s the Pencil Rubbings Collaborative Story. I’ll start it off in the comments section below. Then, anyone that wants to can contribute by writing the next paragraph, or at least the next sentence or two. Nothing inappropriate, or your contribution will be deleted! To keep the story flowing nicely down the page it would be best if you only comment if you’re continuing our story. So take the plunge, and add a twist by writing at least a sentence or two!
(And by the way, all the italics in this post are, to quote Jacob Grimm, “rubbish.” I made it up. The Brothers Grimm didn’t actually write their fairy tales, they compiled them. So someone else wrote Snow White. Probably without collaboration. But you never know…)
Here it is then.
