IT’S A writing competition, but it’s no ordinary competition. It’s twelve books, but they’re not ordinary books. This is new media, embracing old-school serialised fiction and throwing it everything into the reality ring.
Sound confusing? It is to begin with but once you get the bug, a new form of web-based novella writing becomes quite addictive.
Twelve hopefuls are currently battling it out in cyberspace, facing regular writing challenges with the final hope of being a published author – both online and in print.
The project is the brainchild of a Cypriot writer, who describes his endeavour as the world’s first blog-based literary reality show. Entitled Fourth Fiction, every ten days the contestants present their latest piece of writing in a hope to win readers’ votes.
US-based Constantine Markides sets contenders regular challenges for each chapter. His first challenge was for writers to “Tweet” the first sentence of their stories. His second challenge was to write the opening paragraph of their novella, with a mandatory clause that it did not exceed300 words, did not include the opening sentence and involved ‘interactions that take place over the web’. And so the tests begin…
Drawing upon such popular reality TV shows as ‘Big Brother’ and ‘America’s Got Talent’, the show uses his blog to ‘broadcast’ the contestants’ micro-chapters.
At the end of each ten-day round, the public vote off their least favourite.
The winner of the competition will have completed a novella by December 4, when the 12 week ‘show’ ends and the identities of the authors will be revealed.
So far the competition has delivered on its promise to provide “manipulation, voyeurism, backstabbing, exhibitionism, sexual gratuitousness, pettiness and exploitation; in short, the stuff that makes reality shows a beloved staple of 21st century culture.”
Promisingly, most of this was seen during the “meet and greet” phases before they had started writing.
Markides says, “I made it very clear with all contestants in the beginning that this was a no-holds-barred style arena. And also that everyone should try to keep in mind that it’s going to be designed to create nasty kinds of conflict. It’s not pretty, but many things about our reality show culture are not pretty.”
All of the action takes place on Markides’ website, fourthnight.com, which has become an entertaining maelstrom of literary competitiveness, grammatical pedantry and gleeful malevolence. Contestant TUCK has attacked the host; while contributor TESS has been banned for a day, and accusations of foul-play and heavy handedness abound.
The anonymous contestants come from various backgrounds. Markides describes them as “a colourful and varying bunch, selected not so much for the eloquence or polish of their prose -some of them in fact have never written fiction – as for the idiosyncrasy of their voices, which should be sure to amuse, inspire, disturb and outrage.”
They are assigned a four-letter pseudonym, which is as much nom-de-geurre as nom-de-plume.
Notable writers in the group include the Gulf of Maine fisherman OLAF, who says of himself, “I date like I fish: further offshore than I should be and always looking for the one that got away.”
FIDO, the New York City bike messenger describes himself as a “Reformed pickpocket; unreformed hellion; poker con man; savvy dumpster diver” and UTAH writes: “I’m an organic farmer who is happiest when up to my forearms in dirt. The rest are details.”
Last week it was revealed to many readers’ surprise that UTAH was a woman.
To succeed, it seems, authors must tread a fine line between the clichéd and the bizarre, while always enticing readers to hear them out. The readers’ favourite so far is OLAF, who gained 20 per cent of the votes for his opening gambit
“Of all the women who had come and gone, and there’d been more than a couple, only one had ever netted him…”
Hot on his heels are ISIS (“California Flower Child-cum-Disciple of the Universe”) and RHAE who nabbed 15 per cent of the votes with the following apocalyptic opener:
“It was in the year of the monkey, a mordant omen for the impending eve of human life, when the mass failing of the human spirit, first known as World War III, and then simply as The Cataclysm, began.”
Trailing at the back is TESS, whose Sex and the City-esque opener about dating in Manhattan received tepid responses from the harshly critical online community. A likely hit among Cypriots will be COCO’s comma-less debut, which plunges readers into the sordid underbelly of the Limassol sex industry.
The show has already built up a fanbase around the globe, with newspaper articles in Russia, Brazil and throughout the Blogosphere.
At the end of the project, Markides intends to publish the winning story and is currently in talks with several publishers.
Asked about the implications of digital media for the novel, he says “It’s a matter of time before the novel adapts to the new web-based technologies, but I don’t see literature dying. It will just change with the times.
“As Palaeolithic art demonstrates, the desire to tell stories has been around for a long time and there’s no reason to suggest that it will end.”
The competition is open to outside participants – so far eight more aspiring authors have entered the fray. If you would like to follow the show – or take part -The website for the project is at http://www.fourthnight.com.
