Fic relays

[vvioletplottin]

Mod post

I'm not too familiar with fic relays, so if you're interested comment here and discuss projects - I'll give mod status to whoever volunteers to handle this.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Oh gods, my time has come.

Okay, so. In my time I've taken part and organized a couple of fic relays. The idea is simple:
1) the basic premise of the fic is announced; that "premise info" usually consists of saying what kind of a fic is it (romance, crack etc.) and what character and/or elements have to appear in the first part
2) people sign up; a posting schedule is created
3) someone writes the first part (might be the organiser, might be someone chosen from the signups) and ends that part on a cliffhanger
4) alongside the first part a poll is posted; the poll has three-to-five options of how to resolve the cliffhanger; the readers vote
5) the next poster is bound by the poll results and has to start their part by resolving the cliffhanger in the voted way; the rest, however, is up to them: they can kill characters, bring in new ones, complicate the plot, what have you
6) rinse and repeat the part-poll-write cycle until everyone from the schedule has written and posted their part

The parts are usually short, up to 2,5k words long, but that's because there isn't much time to write - about a week between the end of the poll voting and the posting of next part.

Fic relays are amazing fun. They work best with cracky premises because then you can let yourself go wild in your cliffhangers. But I've done a Very Serious Original Fiction relay once as well, so it always works.