Crowd-Sourcing Gone Wild: The Internet Creates A Novel
Want to write a novel but too lazy to come up with, you know, words and stuff? Just buy your way into one. Twenty-two people already have via the IndieGoGo fundraising page for Daniel Perlmutter's new book.
The Toronto-based writer and filmmaker is crowd-sourcing a novel, piece by piece. "I’ll publish it. I’ll get it into bookstores. I’ll do all the hard stuff. You just tell me what you want to see in it." Pay $15 to write a sentence, $20 to create a place, $30 for a character, $50 for a chapter title, $100 for a plot point, $250 for the main character, $500 for the first sentence, $750 for the genre, $900 for the book title, or $1,000 for the ending.
Despite its title, Unwritten Masterpiece, the book is much more likely to be an unwritten Mad Libs-style disaster. Perlmutter promises to include every one of the 200 characters, 200 places, 100 chapter names, and 100 plot points that he sells. Listen to him discuss the project in this video (which is more interesting if you pretend he actually is a young Woody Allen).
As of this writing, Perlmutter has raised $1,115 toward his $6,000 goal. He says, “Authors are always stealing ideas from all over the place. This is just going to be a little more explicitly done.”
The ridiculousness of it makes me wonder if he's serious or out to mock the crowd-sourcing and crowd-funding trend. After all, "Will you contribute to my Kickstarter?" is the new "Will you like my band's Facebook page?" What do you think?
News by Kimberly Turner
Kimberly Turner is an internet entrepreneur, DJ, editor, beekeeper, linguist, traveler, and writer. This either makes her exceptionally well-rounded or slightly crazy; it’s hard to say which. She spent a decade as a journalist and magazine editor in Australia and the U.S. and is now working (very, very slowly) on her first novel. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Applied Linguistics and lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband, two cats, ten fish, and roughly 60,000 bees.
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After looking at a kickstarter for a homeless guy's biopic and leg-up, this seems like a stupid pretentious waste of money. Not to mention he's basically admitting to being a hack. I guess it could be some sort of satire.
I read this as satire. And an attention grab.
Its sounds like the 1,000 monkeys on 1,000 typewriters style of producing a novel. Kickstarter is one thing, this is a question mark all on its own.
It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times!
We'll finally know if it is true about monkeys and Shakespeare!
As someone trying to work out the structure and plot of a novel in the hopes of actually writing one, this just feels insulting. Not only does it seem like hackwork, I think this is the same as hanging a crowd sourced paint-by-numbers in MOMA. Anyone who actually toils with the honest real work of writing should be outraged, but I bet you money it sells better than six grand. They'll put it in Urban Outfitters and people will go "Huh." and pick it up.
I'm sure it can be done. Anything can be done, given enough incentive, time, and effort.
That doesn't change the fact that I bent over my keyboard and laughed.
"When they had war... then peace? Imagine if you could tell somebody that was your idea."