[This story is not complete and follows the rules of the previous post. It is also the first thing I write since a really long time, so be indulgent.]
Only two or maybe three hundreds yards separated him from the summit of the mountain. Eventually, after several hours of ascension and suffering under the summer sun, his efforts were quite finished.
Why did he undertake this trip? He didn’t know for sure. The routine of his daily life wore him out and stripped him of every peculiarity, every difference from the other human beings. He was just a gearwheel of a great machine that had no purpose beyond survival.
The mountain he was climbing was his redemption, a way to give the meaning of his life back. He decided to reach its summit, even if it were the last thing of his life… And now it was finished. No more looking out of the window of his flat and waiting for the good time to flee from the city, no more goals that would be worth living for.
He stood on the top in front of the precipice, his long hair wavering in the wind, staring at the whole world he left behind himself. It would be easy to make another step forward, to finish his life after a great deal, instead of dying a bit every day and resemble more and more the majority of the human beings. It would be easy for the muscles to move and the body to lose balance, but something in his mind stopped him.
Behind him, near the horizon, there was another mountain, with the slopes covered with snow and a steep path leading to the summit…
[There are no continuations of this story so far.]
I tried many times to write a novel, but because of many time constraints and a lack of imagination, I never managed to finish one. Hence I’ll try another approach: I’ll write the beginning of a story on my blog and leave it unfinished. Another blogger could post the continuation on his blog and either finish the story or allow others to continue it. The result would be a chain (or better a tree, since there could be more continuations of the same story) of blog posts around the Web.
The idea isn’t surely original. Among the forums of the ENS there is one dedicated to the creation of an interactive story with a much more complicated structure (topology) and on the blog of David Madore you regularly find his “Fragments littéraires”.
This game should have some rules in order not to write several unrelated pieces of the story:
- You should link your story to its father. You should do it both ways: write a two line preface to your story with a link to the father story’s post and write a comment or send a trackback to the ancestor with a link to your story. Many blogging utilities send a trackback to all links in your post, thus saving you some work
.
- You should try to smoothen the edges between stories. Even if you don’t like the style of the ancestor, you should try to change it smoothly.
- There is no real restriction on the human language used in your posts. A part in French, a part in English, etc.. could be interesting, but I’d say that avoiding too many changes is better.
- You should ignore these rules if you don’t agree with them.
If you don’t own a blog and don’t want to get one, you can send it to me at piotr DOT karwasz AT iecn DOT u-nancy DOT fr and I’ll post it with the correct recognitions.
I’ll post right after this entry the first part of a story you can continue if you wish. There are other stories that could be continued like:
