In celebration or inspired by a recent event that just happened, I'm curious if anyone else has met this person before: After the launch of your story, they partake in writing and contributing to the greater scope plot or simply fill in those lonely chapters of multi-chapter stories like, say, Zig322's Sexual Scenarios where plenty of people had contributed it so far. Or rather, in a more plot-oriented story, they write paths that befit the greater scheme of things/have personalities stay cohesively more or less, and letting their own chapters expand the story's scope altogether. Granted, I have contributed to many public stories, but whether or not my contributions were welcomed is another story. I don't know if others are happy that a new chapter presented itself to be a part of the family, but I know that it does to me. I myself have a few lucky ones when I started out in this site, and I'd personally like to publically thank Onyxdragon100, rabbitjack, and interest from Darkstar239, who contributed to my Red Alert 3 story, wherever you all are. Apologies if I didn't spell out my thanks, but after publishing other public stories and getting no interest in return, I never understood just how much co-writers, or other interested/like-minded individuals meant to me. So in case I've derailed the topic, all I ask is this: Do you, owners of stories, like it when people contribute to your stories, and how common are they?
I mean I'm a bit mixed. It's always great to get additions to Dustbin and I definitely encourage anyone who wants to to contribute, but I do have some concerns occasionally about shifts in quality. I imagine it can be quite jarring if for instance a much much worse writer continues a specific path, I mean the majority of people on here are fine to average writers, but there are definitely some... Truly terrible writers on here and while obviously the option to just not approve a chapter is there, it does feel a bit bad doing so. Another problem I had in the past is a writer who included a fetish in their chapter that I was absolutely against and I ended up removing it, because I didn't want it in my story, but I feel bad about doing so, I mean my main reasoning is there's little to no way to specifically tag only a specific part of the story as far as I can tell, so to tag that chapter I'd have to have that tag on my story, which could turn away people uninterested in that tag from the rest of the story, or mislead people who are interested in that tag and would find the story mostly lacking in that content. In general though I am still very happy with anyone who wants to contribute and despite how this might have made me seem I'm not a perfectionist... If you want to write a chapter, all I ask is at least basic levels of grammar and I do require permission to proofread and edit your chapter for any obvious Spelling or Grammar mistakes before approval.
I thoroughly enjoyed my anthology story Break the 4th wall, which invited readers to introduce characters of their own and to write chapters on those left by others. Couldnt have worked without a lot of collaboration (including Warden's) . Genuinely felt a bit of community spirit on it with about 20 writers. Sometimes its a bit iffy though when you have an arc thought out and are a few chapters in and someone puts a different spin on it with the next chapter. I usually have to make a call. Can I rescue it and get it back to my intended arc or will I have to allow that as a separate branch and ignore it? As for quality, I'm aware that my own stuff feels the want of a good editor anyway, or at least I should proofread it more than I do.
If I cannot interact with them outside of cyberspace, then I refuse to work with them because I don't like collaborating with internet people (why that is will be somewhat explained in a bit). In the real world, I allow others (i.e. my brother and a tiny circle of loyal friends) to give input, but I don't let anyone touch my writing except me and a grammar checker. Although that inevitably means I get much less content out of my brain and onto a document, it also means that I have ultimate control over what will and will not be published. I am adamant about not working on my stories with internet strangers. Up until a few weeks ago, I used to help write a story with a good friend of mine (now sworn enemy, long story) and others (also enemies). I did not know her IRL (kind of a good thing since I'd give her a beatdown now if I know where she lives), but the experience was not fun. Now, the reason I now refuse to work with internet people has mostly to do with my own beliefs (which will have to stay confidential since I'll get banned for "hurting someone's feelings" or get canceled into oblivion), but was solidified when I revisited my time working with them (after I was kicked out, of course). I discovered that cooperation and having to work with another brain is more challenging and not worth it. Even though more work was being churned out in total, the fact that everything needed to be scrutinized and reviewed by everyone before publication led to plenty of disagreements, all of them heated and all of them against solely me. No one formally owned the story, so there was no real leader among us, everyone had different interpretations and wishes for the story. Because internet people are not real-life people with the ability to compromise like a civil human, it's impossible to get anything done when each paragraph could lead to an argument. To end this comment, ironically the event that broke my former friend and I apart permanently was not an argument over a fictional story, it was actually an argument over a certain group of "different" people that are regularly associated with certain government issues.
For me, it depends. I don't particularly enjoy when someone adds onto a branch I'm writing in the middle of it because I tend to have my own ideas about where I want to take it and they often have a different vision of the characters which clashes with mine. The one time that's happened to me I found it rather jarring because they did things with the characters that seemed just wrong to me and didn't make sense in my idea of the world and where it was going. I've kept my main story private because of that, since I've put a lot into the main character especially and I don't want someone else writing him and getting things wrong. However, I've been really happy with all the people adding their own branches to my moderated story the Fairer Sex, and there has been quite a lot of different authors who did so which is very nice. That story provides more of a setting into which people can then introduce their own stories and characters which I'm actually much more comfortable with then other people writing my characters. Fairly recently I've started a colllaboration with another author where we each write one chapter of the story, swapping after each one. It was planned as that from the beginning so I've felt comfortable doing that. It's an interesting experience especially since we just write our bits and don't really share with the other person what we're planning. We tend to discuss each chapter afterwards and what happened and we've had lots of cool discussion. So far I've actually enjoyed that a lot. My co-author has been really great about it and we have similar tastes which definitely helps so I almost always enjoy what they add.
