This is an idea that I came up with the other day. I caught Wes on AOL and we threw ideas around for a bit. He seemed keen so I'm going to open-source the whole thing and see what everyone thinks and if anyone else is interested.
The whole idea of Footnotes is this:
I was thinking that things on TRF are slowing down quite a lot lately. One possible reason for this is because everyone's focussing on writing long posts with a lot of meaning. This is great, of course, but it takes time and most people don't have much of that.
This will be (if it materialises) a series of threads that anyone can get involved in that will be based around the "small" things in the universe. By this I mean, for example, battles between groups of pirates, small political dealings, random bar brawls. Basically, 'unimportant' stuff where the outcome won't make a massive difference to the galaxy, however locally important it may be.
The deal would be that any Footnotes thread is a rapid-reply thread, so ideally no more than 24hrs per post, but only a paragraph or so is required. Short, fast, action-packed, and wrapped up inside 40 posts or so. Usual common-sense rules will apply, of course. For instance, a first post might need to be a little longer to set the scene.
The main point of the project is to allow people to stay active and practice writing without risking their main character storylines on quick posts that haven't been thought through. It allows one to create characters, develop them a little, keep them for multiple threads or kill them off as required. There's no massive pressure to win, so potentially it could allow for some good light-hearted writing.
This pretty much means that another 'rule' would have to be that no Footnotes thread can affect events in a major thread or affect any major character in any meaningful way.
Footnotes threads will be denoted by a title of the form,
"Footnotes: <name of thread>"
Wes and I will be running an thread of this form under the name "Footnotes: Honour Among Thieves", as an example, in the Battlegrounds.
If anyone has any comments on this idea, please go for it.
The whole idea of Footnotes is this:
I was thinking that things on TRF are slowing down quite a lot lately. One possible reason for this is because everyone's focussing on writing long posts with a lot of meaning. This is great, of course, but it takes time and most people don't have much of that.
This will be (if it materialises) a series of threads that anyone can get involved in that will be based around the "small" things in the universe. By this I mean, for example, battles between groups of pirates, small political dealings, random bar brawls. Basically, 'unimportant' stuff where the outcome won't make a massive difference to the galaxy, however locally important it may be.
The deal would be that any Footnotes thread is a rapid-reply thread, so ideally no more than 24hrs per post, but only a paragraph or so is required. Short, fast, action-packed, and wrapped up inside 40 posts or so. Usual common-sense rules will apply, of course. For instance, a first post might need to be a little longer to set the scene.
The main point of the project is to allow people to stay active and practice writing without risking their main character storylines on quick posts that haven't been thought through. It allows one to create characters, develop them a little, keep them for multiple threads or kill them off as required. There's no massive pressure to win, so potentially it could allow for some good light-hearted writing.
This pretty much means that another 'rule' would have to be that no Footnotes thread can affect events in a major thread or affect any major character in any meaningful way.
Footnotes threads will be denoted by a title of the form,
"Footnotes: <name of thread>"
Wes and I will be running an thread of this form under the name "Footnotes: Honour Among Thieves", as an example, in the Battlegrounds.
If anyone has any comments on this idea, please go for it.
