Collaboration Bootcamp- 2021

[Airan]

Heyo everybody. With- spoilers- a new contest looming on the horizon- I thought it'd be a neat idea to create a sort of exercise to help people not only practice their writing, but also their collaborating, story plotting, and teamwork. The idea here is fairly simple. I'm going to be running a very short mock contest that will simulate the feel of what it's to participate as a contestant in a round of Redwall Survivor- minus the stakes of death and all that pressure. I want this to be fun and a learning exercise after all. Participants will work together to write a short story- from beginning to middle to end- over the course of about a week. I will give you all a basic prompt for the plot- which I will not say until we've started- and you will take it and bend it however you desire from that point, choosing the whats, whys, hows, and outcomes. You will discuss with your fellow writers how to push forward, what sort of events you'd like your POV character to cover, write character interactions between yourselves, etc. Just like Redwall Survivor. In the end, you will write a finished story, and for funsies, we'll post it to the forum so that everyone can read what you've come up with.

A lot of the information for this project has been posted on Discord already and the positions for application are already filled, but for the sake of keeping things organized and easy to reference, I'll be putting all the information here. So without further ado, here's the basic information for participants.

• First and foremost, if you haven't already, make an account on the forum, that way you can post your chapters here when the time comes.
• As there's no prologue for you to use as reference for the world, the story, for sake of simplicity, will take place within the realm of canon Redwall. Basically goodbeasts good, vermin bad, songs are sung, food is delicious, etc.
• As a result, your character will be a Redwaller or someone closely affiliated with Redwall. All participants will PM me a role within Redwall they'd like to have- such as Bellringer or Badgermum. This will act as your character's 'category' as if you'd applied to it and won the role. This step is complete now, but I just wanted to put it here for reference for latecomers who aren't participating.

Participants-
Normally in a Redwall Survivor, we try to keep our identities a secret for what characters we're writing- so as to not encourage bias in voting or other factors. Here however, there's no stakes, no winners, no losers, so none of that really matters. So here is the list of roles that have been chosen, along with their writers.

Foremole- Cobb
Skipper of Otters- Frost
Log-a-Log of the Guosim- Abrahem
Abbot/Abbess- Tibs
Redwall Recorder- Casterway
Abbey Friar- Jared Sandeye
Infirmary Keeper- Twyla
Cellarhog- Tiny Pest
Abbey Gardener- Dirgecallers
Beekeeper- The Grey Coincidence.

If you've come to second guess the role you've chosen and realize that maybe it's not for you, or you're having trouble writing a character for it- you are free to come back to me with a new one should you want to- but the cutoff for this will be Friday, June 18th at 11:59 PM EST.


What next?
Okay- so now that you have your role- I want you to go ahead and write an application for it just like you would for a regular Redwall Survivor. The reasoning for this is so that you and your fellow writers all have a reference point for who your character is and how they act when it comes time for character interaction. But before you begin, I want to outline specifically what I'm looking for in this application and the keyword is: simplicity.

As this project will be relatively short and you will be writing your characters for a max of about two small 1k or so word chapters- there will not be too much room for massive character arcs or complex backstories or anything like that. As a result, I'm genuinely looking for simple, throwaway characters for the most part, that maintain a certain feel of classic Redwall- basically easy to understand archetypes with distinct personalities and maybe a quirk or two to spice things up. Here's an example of precisely what I'm looking for.

Meet Jennabelle-
Jennabelle was an application I received during Mossflower Odyssey 5 for the Marksmen category. It is incredibly short- at 376 words in total- when the word limit for apps for that contest was 600. Jennabelle despite this massive limitation on her length, is able to have a short snappy fun scene, a distinct personality that is shown well through her dialogue, some pretty solid storytelling with its use of foreshadowing (Deadeye Darron loses an eye.), and a general character goal. The application isn't perfect- it lacks descriptive elements to really bring the reader into the scene for instance- but it serves as a pretty excellent example of what you can do with so little. The application is behind the Spoiler tag below, so please do read it so you understand what I mean.

[spoiler]Name: Jennabelle
Species: Fox
Gender: Female
Age: 25
THUNK!

Miss.

THUNK!

Miss again.

Jennabelle sighed, her hatchet nowhere near the bull's eye. In fact, it lay in the grass several feet away from the large oak the bull's eye was hastily carved into. Turning to her opponent, the vixen shrugged.

"Guess I'm not as good as I used to be."

Her opponent, a weasel, sneered as he readied his own hatchet. "Either you're tryin' to hustle me, or you're lyin. Nobeast can be this bad without tryin'."

"Hustle you?" Jennabelle laughed. "We have nothing up for grabs! This is merely a friendly contest between masters of their craft!"

THUNK!

Bull's eye.

The weasel chuckled. "This is boring. There's no contest here. I'm the clear winner."

Jennabelle nodded. "Indeed. They call you Deadeye Darron for a reason I see."

"And they must call you Jennabelle the Dangerous for no reason at all."

Jennabelle scoffed. "Oh, is that so? Well then, how about we shake things up? Instead of hatchets..."

The vixen paused, and like a magician unsheathing a deck of cards, she revealed one, two, then three knives of varying makes and quality from her sleeve with a flick of her paw.

"...we use knives?"

Darron grinned. "Aye. I think that would be a treat."

"Winner's first?" Jennabelle asked.

Darron nodded, and revealed his own throwing knife. Jennabelle's eyes shot immediately towards its blade as it glinted in the midday sun. It was beautifully crafted, its end tapering into a pointed promise Jennabelle believed only she could see. The knife was perfect. The knife was special. The knife deserved better.

"An absolute work of art you carry, Darron," Jennabelle whispered. "I heard you threw knives, not sculptures."

Darron rolled his eyes before taking aim at the tree. "It doesn't look any better than what you've got."

THUNK!

Bull's Eye.

"Oh, I disagree!" Jennabelle protested. "It's far better than ANY knife I have!"

"Alright then, Miss Dangerous. If you land a Bull's Eye too, you can have it."

Jennabelle raised her paw, readying her knife to throw, much to Darron's confusion.

"Hold on there, let me get it out of the target fir-"

THUNK!

"YAAAAAGGH!!!" Darron shrieked, Jennabelle's knife sunk deep into his right eye.

The vixen dashed to the tree, yanking out Dannon's knife and disappearing into the trees.
[/spoiler]

Jennabelle is the perfect example of what I'm looking for for your characters. Nothing too complex or complicated, but the groundworks for a character are there and easy to latch on to- and while I don't know how well Jennabelle would be carried in a story of 8 weeks- I think she would be perfectly fine in a shorter one. So with that in mind-

• Applications will have a word limit of 376 words, just like Jennabelle's. If she can do it, so can you. Just keep it simple and concise.
• Try to avoid having the character you've come up with interact with any of the roles above- so don't have them talk to the abbot of Redwall, because another writer is creating that character themselves.
• When you've finished writing your application, you can DM me the application either on the forum or on Discord. The deadline for submissions is Sunday, June 27th.

For now, that should be all the information about this that I'm able to share at the moment. If you've any questions, feel free to ask below and I'll answer to the best of my ability. On Monday, June 28th, we'll get started and I'll provide more information for the participants and readers. Until then, thanks.

[Mara the Wolf]

Airan, you do realize telling only the people on Discord about the categories was pretty unfair to anyone who isn't on Discord, right?

[Airan]

Airan, you do realize telling only the people on Discord about the categories was pretty unfair to anyone who isn't on Discord, right?

This project was a spur of the moment thing I decided to do on a whim. The rules were made up on the fly, and most of the reason why they were in Discord first is because I was creating them within it. That being said, the Survivor Forum doesn't have an active community of users, and nearly everyone who takes part in the forum is also in our Discord- which is much more active. I'll keep in mind to be more mindful in the future, but much of this is me just experimenting and seeing if this is something I want to do as a regular event on the forum. If I do it again, I'll announce it by forum post instead.