Are you a writer? Maybe you'll like this

[shen-an-doah]

First things first, I wasn't quite sure where to put this, so mods can feel free to move it to wherever they think it should go.

Right, I'm looking for a bit of help from the Ubuntu community. I'm currently doing a master's degree and my major project is based on building a creative writing website and an associated community. It's intended to be based on ideas of openness and collaboration, so obviously Ubuntu users are the exact kind of people I'd like as members! :)

Various information about the project can be found over at the development blog (http://openwordsdevelopment.blogspot.com/). Feel free to leave any feedback/ideas/whatever there. Currently, the only "live" part of the site is the forum (http://congelical.com/forum/), where you can feel free to discuss whatever you like. Basically I'm just looking for any writers who want to participate and help me make the site as good as I can. It doesn't matter what you write or how you write or whether you're a professional or just an enthusiastic amateur, everyone's input matters!

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope some of you will be willing to help me out on this project!

-Andy/Shen

[Barrucadu]

Ooh, interesting. You may have spurred me to write my first poetry for over half a year :)
Now, if only I could think of a topic...

[shen-an-doah]

Ooh, interesting. You may have spurred me to write my first poetry for over half a year :)
Now, if only I could think of a topic...

Hey, thanks for joining! I look forward to reading whatever you come up with :D

[songshu]

just some critical note here!

do you have a business plan? who is the target audience, the writers, the viewers.
literature, recipes, porn, technical docs?
i think it might help to find and specify a niche market.

just an idea here,

openness and collaboration you say, do you remember those stories on the radio where each caller who got on the air could make the next few sentences of the story?

in free software the mantra is, "release early, release often"

the writer could start his story wiki style, as fast as he likes but it would be immediately on-line.
combine that with a good commenting system so people can comment on it right away, sort of creating a live-on-stage writing experience leaving the writer the option in how far he would like to interact with his audience.

you definitely need some sort of recognition thing (like the beans here) so you can see which member is making the most contributions (writers and commenters)


p.s.

this business concept idea is registered under the following license.

/*
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
* "THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
* <songshu@songsu.org> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you
* can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think
* this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return
songshu
* ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
*/

[shen-an-doah]

Hey songshu, thanks for the comments. I think I've already managed to cover most of that in my initial ideas (which should be on the blog). It's mostly for amateaur writers so they can get comments on their work (whatever that may be, though I may have to draw the line at porn) in order to help themselves improve.

A reputation system is a definite must for the site. As for the wiki idea, it could be done as the site should have a wiki element (at least for documentation). Also, a wiki novel has already been done on A million penguins (www.amillionpenguins.com) (which was actually run by people from my department at uni).

[songshu]

no porn?
i was just starting to feel creative and felt the urge to type coming up with my fingers in an unstoppable motion passionately stroking the keyboard in an ever increasing pace till i was pounding the keys faster and faster and faster......

ppffff, too bad!

[shen-an-doah]

no porn?
i was just starting to feel creative and felt the urge to type coming up with my fingers in an unstoppable motion passionately stroking the keyboard in an ever increasing pace till i was pounding the keys faster and faster and faster......

ppffff, too bad!

Haha! Well, if you wanted to write some erotic fiction, that'd be fine, it just needs to be well written (or at least open to criticism!).

[Dixon Bainbridge]

First things first, I wasn't quite sure where to put this, so mods can feel free to move it to wherever they think it should go.

Right, I'm looking for a bit of help from the Ubuntu community. I'm currently doing a master's degree and my major project is based on building a creative writing website and an associated community. It's intended to be based on ideas of openness and collaboration, so obviously Ubuntu users are the exact kind of people I'd like as members! :)

Various information about the project can be found over at the development blog (http://openwordsdevelopment.blogspot.com/). Feel free to leave any feedback/ideas/whatever there. Currently, the only "live" part of the site is the forum (http://congelical.com/forum/), where you can feel free to discuss whatever you like. Basically I'm just looking for any writers who want to participate and help me make the site as good as I can. It doesn't matter what you write or how you write or whether you're a professional or just an enthusiastic amateur, everyone's input matters!

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope some of you will be willing to help me out on this project!

-Andy/Shen

Tbh, there are already millions of these things on the internet already, and most of them are full of very amateur, very lame writing. Those that can get published get published, for everyone else there is the internet. I don't want to put what you are doing down, but there is just so much of this thing and its all pretty much a talking circle for the average.

Hope yours fares better.

[jomiolto]

Have you taken a look at the already existing sites with at least somewhat similar function? There's at least http://www.fictionpress.com/ for original fiction and then plenty of sites for fan fiction -- such as http://www.fanfiction.com, http://www.portkey.org and http://www.phoenixsong.net, to name but a few (the last two are Harry Potter fan fiction only :p).

All of those sites have some kind of forums, reader submitted reviews and some other nifty features. But from what I understand, you want to make something where the community is much more tightly knit, and perhaps there will be features to support co-authoring stories with a group of people? (That might be interesting.)

One of the features I've always missed on sites like these, is a good rating system -- especially if there are thousands of stories -- because finding the better ones can be a pain. Also, it would be good to have some kind of support for downloading chapters/whole stories for off-line reading, so you can read the stuff with your laptop/netbook even when not connected to the web (even a simplified "print view" is much better than trying to save whole webpages with images and all).

It certainly sounds like an interesting project, and if I have any spare time, I'll see if there's anything I can contribute. Cheers :)

(Sigh. If only the days weren't limited to a measly 24 hours, I might actually have time to dig up all the plans and notes I've made over the years, and I could start writing down the stories my imagination has come up with. :( )

[shen-an-doah]

Yeh, there's definitely a lot of stuff already out there, but I've found a lot of them don't have the functions I want. Or you end up with a load of people just going "Here's stuff I wrote! Read it now and tell me I'm wonderful!" rather than actually participating and helping each other out. I might not get the site to do everything I want, but it's more about the investigation into how to do it, rather than producing some crazy groundbreaking site that's hugely successful.

[t0p]

I may have to draw the line at porn

Huh?! No pr0n?! You can't have a ban on pr0n on the internet!! Pr0n is the internet genre!! I know people whose sole interest on the internet is pr0n!! ;)

[jharadie]

One of the features I've always missed on sites like these, is a good rating system -- especially if there are thousands of stories -- because finding the better ones can be a pain. Also, it would be good to have some kind of support for downloading chapters/whole stories for off-line reading, so you can read the stuff with your laptop/netbook even when not connected to the web (even a simplified "print view" is much better than trying to save whole webpages with images and all).

That's what I'd like to see. I've written some stuff on fanfiction.net (http://www.fanfiction.net/~chorus), and while I don't do explicit porn, I like to tantalize. A rating system would be nice, especially if in addition to x number of stars, a short comment would be required (e.g., The ending will surprise you! or something like that). I, too, would like a way to download as described above. I like your idea, though, and look forward to participating.

[shen-an-doah]

So, it's about time I bumped this. I've now got the main site up and working over at http://congelical.com/openwords

Obviously it hasn't got every feature I would like to have but it'd be great if people could sign up and give it a try and let me know your opinions.

Thanks for your interest!

[Tomosaur]

Wow - this is kind of scary - I had pretty much the exact same idea as this about a year or two ago, but apart from a very limited prototype page I never took it anywhere (overloaded with uni work).

Good luck with it, I'll be keeping my eye on this one!

[shen-an-doah]

Wow - this is kind of scary - I had pretty much the exact same idea as this about a year or two ago, but apart from a very limited prototype page I never took it anywhere (overloaded with uni work).

Good luck with it, I'll be keeping my eye on this one!

Ah, I did the cunning thing and made it my uni work :)