Writing a novel in a wiki?
By Marion Jensen
We’ve all heard of Wikipedia, and probably even played around with, or used some kind of wiki. Maybe you’ve planned a group project, or compiled information – wikis are a great tool for online collaboration.
But this guy took it one step further and wrote an entire novel in a wiki, and then got it published. It’s possible that this is the first published work of fiction that was written entirely in a wiki.
To me this is interesting for several reasons. Online collaboration has proven itself to be a very powerful thing. Wikipedia now boasts millions of articles in many languages. But fiction?
In English class we used to do the exercise where you start a story and then pass that story to the person sitting next to you. They wrote another paragraph and passed it to the next person, etc. The end result was a worthless piece of drivel that went nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Too confusing, too many voices. A mess. Kind of like what happened over at 1 million penguins. A lot of good ideas and writing, but no clear direction.
But where this wiki novel diverges is that the author says he is ultimately responsible for the content. If you make a change, and he doesn’t like it, then it’s out. End of story. Decisions aren’t made by the voice of the community, they are directed by the author. He compares it to how a movie is directed. You have one director, but that director doesn’t do everything. There are other ‘experts’ who take their small piece, and make it work. But ultimately, the entire project is driven by the director (theoretically).
I think this idea is powerful for the same reason Wikipedia is powerful – depth. Maybe the author is writing about a character who has an alcoholic father. The author may not have experienced an alcoholic father, but if I have, I can go and give more depth to that character. Maybe the ‘head author’ likes the depth I give so much that he even assign me to write the ‘voice’ of this character.
It would be interesting to see what other authors think of this kind of writing. Isn’t art an expression of a single person? If we add all of these other viewpoints, doesn’t that dilute the overall message?
At first glance it might seem that way, but in fact may types of ‘art’ come from a group, rather that a single individual. Think of a George Lucas film. Certainly the vision and direction comes from Lucas, but there are scores of behind the scenes people who take direction and make the end product a masterpiece. Television, architecture, even painting is often the work of many people, not just one.
Why can’t it be the same for writing? It will be interesting to see if this type of writing starts to find it's way into mainstream. People enjoy writing, especially when they are not in charge of EVERY aspect of the book. Check out the millions of stories written in fan fiction for proof of that.
Personally I like the idea. I think it could be a lot of fun to take part in a novel written by Orson Scott Card or Steven King.
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