Science fiction writer Neil
Gaiman started a new fairy tale using Twitter and BBC Audio books invited the
public to complete it. Submissions were reviewed and each new sentence
selected, for a period of eight days. There were about 10,000 tweets submitted,
of which 874 were used, from 124 contributors (the story is about 14,000 words
long).
Gaiman’s opening line was, “Sam
was brushing her hair when the girl in the mirror put down the hairbrush, smiled,
and said, “We don’t love you anymore.”
The resulting story is
called “Hearts, Keys and Puppetry” and you can get it as a free audio book from
the BBC or from iTunes. It’s narrated by Katherine Kellgren. I’ve listened to
only part of the first chapter and there are a couple of clunky sentences, but
overall it flows pretty well.
They plan to repeat the experiment, possibly in February, with a new story.
(If you're not planning to write your story with 124 others, you'll benefit from my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon and other online and offline retailers. It takes you all the way from original idea through to publication.)
