Fancy doing something fun? I’m looking for people who are able to help me initially populate Unknown Tales with starting chapters that the early users of the site can read and contribute to.

The chapters required for the site, however, are not the type you would find in regular fiction. Think Fighting Fantasy rather than The Da Vinci Code. In fact, Unknown Tales has a fairly unique way of working. As a result of this, any chapters submitted need to abide by a set of rules.

Character comes first

The first rule is that you need to start with a character. They can be pretty much anyone or anything you like: a robot from the future, a hobbit on a grand adventure, or the captain a ship bound for America in the 1700s. They will need a name, a physical description, and some background information on who they are, and how they got to where they are now (this doesn’t have to be a very long description/background, and can help if it’s open ended with a bit of mystery, but it needs to be there).

A little perspective

The second rule is that the chapter need to be written from a second-person perspective in the present tense. You are writing the chapter for your character, explaining what they are doing and what environment they are in – but remembering that the reader of the story is becoming the character in question. For example, rather than writing Captain Bloodbeard stepped up onto the deck and shot his pistol into the air, you would write You step up onto the deck and shoot your pistol into the air.

What happens next?

The third rule is that at the end of each chapter, you need to provide two paths for the reader to choose from to allow them to continue the story. These paths can be pretty much anything you like, so long as they’re suitably different from each other than it provides the reader with a meaningful choice. They should also be phrased in such a way as to let the reader know they need to make a choice, i.e. Run away from the bomb or Try to defuse the bomb.

Finally, you need to choose a suitable title for the story as a whole, and a title for the first chapter.

The chapters themselves should be about the length of an A4 page in Word (500 – 700 words), but can be longer.

Labour of love

Now for the bad news – I can’t afford to pay anyone for their work. As you may know, Unknown Tales is a student project, and while I am planning on continuing with it’s development once I’ve finished University – maybe taking it down a professional route – as it stands at the moment, it’s a labour of love, and one that I’m more interested in working on with people who share my passion for what it can become.

You, of course, will be given full credit for your work, and as a thank you to you – the early pioneers of the site – you will receive a free premium membership (once it become available). All work submitted for the site will be licences under a Creative Commons licence (probably the Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike one, but I’m not sure yet).

If you’re interested, please send an email to info AT unknowntales DOT net and we can have a chat.

So, what do you want to do next?

  • Have a fantastic idea for a starting chapter, write it for the site, and enjoy the warm feeling inside.
  • Have a tin of soup for dinner then go to bed, cold and alone.

Update

I’ve uploaded a couple of starting stories that were on the old site. Anyone interested in writing a starting story for me can look at them to get an idea of what I’m looking for:

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