Mythopoesis:

Tell Me a Story.

Nicholas Dyer, Ben Fuller & Nathan Neri

January 6, 2015
Stories are perhaps the oldest form of art. We are interested in the idea of
stories as a form of creative expression distinct from the usual forms of creative
writing. Because of this, we want to gather interest in a project aimed at simulating the formation of myth through the collective creation of a body of stories.
Our vision could be summarized in these ideals:
Authorless: Nobody has a series of notes of backstory or character
canon. Rather, each storyteller seeks to tell a story about Pre-existing
characters and settings. People should also come and go with the project,
incorporating new insight and viewpoints.
Inconsistent: As each storyteller embellishes the mythos with new ideas,
the story becomes difficult to reconcile together. There is no one chronology of stories which has to be the correct order, and some stories might
even contradict each other (making room for even more stories to explain
these discrepancies).
Evolving: In the chaos that ensues, each storytellers twists and ideas
build and destroy our understanding of characters and events.
Distinct: The stories should be distinct from various real world sources.
That is to say, we do not want to copy or rehash previously existing myths,
but rather to conceive of a new mythos.
This project would involve five phases, each of which would last three weeks.
In each phase, participants would write short1 stories to add to a growing
mythology. These would be used as inspiration for later phases, approximating
the slow introduction and rise of new stories and twists.
In the first phase, we would start with a minimally defined setting2 . Each
author would come up with two named characters3 and write a story about at
least one of them. In subsequent phases, authors would write new stories (using
1 In order to maintain the authorless quality, as well as reduce the workload on any particular contributer, 500-1,000 words would be a good guideline over three week phases.

any combination of the original characters) - possibly even rehashing old stories
from different angles.
The final phase would be from the simulated perspective of future writers
piecing together the mythology - we would like to have a few of the writers
compile the tales (structuring them, deciding which interpretations to take,
etc.) in a story form (much like the first people writing down oral traditions).
Would you be interested in:
Hearing more about this project as we continue?
Participating or helping us find people to participate?
Any assistance and feedback is appreciated. We will be writing guidelines for
phase one storytellers in the coming week, as well as a recruitment flyer to
promote the project.

2 To achieve internal consistency (no stone spears in one story with laser guns in another),
without biasing or controlling the way the legends evolves too much.
3 In order to avoid having the legend get bloated with too many characters (since we dont
have the hundreds of years for extraneous characters to become obscure and ignored), we felt
we should limit the number of named characters (set in this first phase - after this phase, no
more named characters could be made). There can still be other major characters, but they
must be such that can be referred to as the
or a
. We feel this restriction will
help storytellers focus on building up existing characters rather than focusing on their own
characters.