DargonZine
Volume 19, Number 4 |
Distributed: 4/17/2006
Circulation: 651 |
 |
DargonZine is the publication vehicle of The
Dargon Project, Inc., a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the
Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the
project. Please address all correspondence to
<dargon@dargonzine.org>
or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at
ftp://ftp.dargonzine.org/.
Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup
rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 19-4, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright April, 2006
by The Dargon Project, Inc. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@rcn.com>,
Assistant Editor: Liam Donahue
<bdonahue@fuse.net>.
DargonZine is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial
License. This license allows you to make and distribute
unaltered copies of DargonZine, complete with the original attributions
of authorship, so long as it is not used for commercial purposes.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
To view a detailed copy of this license, please visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0 or send a letter to
Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford CA, 94305 USA.
|
Editorial
elcome. It is with immense joy and satisfaction that I announce
that in this extra special super-sized issue, we reach the climax --
although not quite the end -- of DargonZine's long-running Black Idol
story arc.
This effort began exactly three years ago: in late April of 2003
our contributors gathered in Austin, Texas for our annual Writers'
Summit. For the first time, we devoted an extra two days to
brainstorming, outlining, and beginning to write an expansive single
storyline that everyone would contribute to: a story about an ambitious
nobleman, an arrogant wizard, an ancient cursed stone idol, a questing
bard, and a supporting cast of hundreds.
Today's issue caps that achievement and provides a moment when we
can celebrate what we've accomplished. It is the culmination of three
years of dedicated, hard work by our writers. When the remaining three
chapters are printed, the Black Idol will have filled fourteen issues of
DargonZine over the course of 18 months. Its 27 chapters have been
authored by ten contributing writers. And its final length is a
staggering 175 thousand words.
Over the years, DargonZine has attempted several collaborative
efforts. By far the biggest -- and most difficult -- was the
Baranur-Beinison War, which fell apart and dragged on for years when the
two people driving that storyline left the group. Our Comet Contest and
the Night of Souls stories were unqualified successes, but far smaller
in scope and required very little coordination between writers. The
Black Idol is the biggest, most tightly-coordinated effort we've ever
attempted. And, happily, it has been our successful collaboration. It
has also demonstrated how much more interesting and coherent DargonZine
can be when we all work together to create something that truly is
greater than any one of us could have done alone.
For most of our history, our writers have mostly written their own,
separate stories. While one story might relate to another, most stories
didn't contribute to any larger storyline, and our "shared world" was
mostly limited to using common characters and locations. Because every
work stood largely on its own, our readers had no real sense of place or
events that spanned all the Dargon stories they read.
With the Black Idol, that changed. Suddenly, every story we printed
dealt with the characters, locations, and events of a common storyline.
That gave our readers a feeling for Dargon as a place, and a sense of
what's going on there at a particular point in time. That, in turn,
makes reading our stories easier, more interesting, and more satisfying.
Writing related stories also has a number of benefits for our
writers. In the Black Idol, we worked together more closely than ever
before, and each writer was inspired by the feeling that their work was
more integrated with everything else, a vital part of what was going on
in Dargon. At the same time, because they were in near constant contact,
our writers felt more camaraderie and received more support from one
another, which motivated them to come through for everyone else who was
depending on them.
But perhaps the biggest benefit was sharing the ideation and
planning phase. Historically, our writers have come up with their own
story ideas and only interacted with one another by way of peer
critiques, long after the first draft was written. Because of that, we
haven't talked very much about how one comes up with a story idea, and
how it goes from idea to the printed page. How do you decide what plot
complications to throw at the protagonist? How do you pick which scenes
to show? How do you decide whose point of view the story will be told
from? During the Black Idol, we learned a tremendous amount from one
another about this crucial phase of the writing process.
With so many benefits for both our readers as well as our
contributors, there will definitely be more large, multi-writer story
arcs in the future, although right now we're taking our time and trying
to learn from the difficulties we had writing the Black Idol. In the
meantime, our writers have agreed to set all new stories within Dargon
proper, which will promote more sharing of characters and events. In
addition, the groundwork has already been laid for the next major event
in Dargon's history, which will be one of the topics of this year's
upcoming Writers' Summit. So yes, more common storylines will begin to
appear, although there will always be standalone singleton stories
interspersed within our pages, as well.
As it nears its completion, the Black Idol represents a tremendous
success. Not only is it the biggest collaboration we've ever produced,
but it also showed that closely-related stories are more memorable for
our readers and a more inspirational and rewarding experience for our
writers, which will shape what DargonZine looks like in the future.
From its beginning to end, our writers devoted over three years to
the Black Idol, but it generated 27 stories that filled 14 entire
issues. It is the collective achievement of ten fine writers, who
deserve copious thanks and congratulations for the titanic effort it
took to bring this epic to you.
This one time, I would like to acknowledge each of them by name.
They are (in word-count order): Rena Deutsch, Liam Donahue, Dafydd
Cyhoeddwr, Jon Evans, Ornoth Liscomb, Rich Niro, P. Atchley, Rich
Durbin, Dave Fallon, and Jim Owens, with noteworthy assistance from Nick
Wansbutter, Rhonda Gomez, Stuart Whitby, and Victor Cardoso. You've read
about the exploits of Parris and Tyrus Vage, Anarr and Edmond, Simona
and Kal, and the rest, but these writers are the real heroes and
heroines of the story of the Black Idol.
If you had to sum it up in a word, the Black Idol was DargonZine's
first real team effort. That's why, looking back over more than 21 years
of wonderful stories by dozens of exceptional writers in FSFnet and
DargonZine, this moment -- the climax of the immense Black Idol story
arc -- is by far my proudest moment of them all.
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