Introducing Random Tales
This is our tale — the reason and the randomness behind it.
Hello readers of Medium!
I am Mohit — one of the two founders of Random Tales; the other one being Apurva. Right now, it is just the two of us. Look carefully, I have mentioned “right now” on purpose in the last sentence — because who knows what the randomness of the future holds in store for Random Tales. More on this later in the post.
That Random Conversation
The two of us love writing. Our journals are filled with scribbles. But something always kept holding us back when it came to developing it into a habit — a daily habit. Not any more.
Sometime last week, the same dreaded conversation clawed itself up again. We kept telling each other, “Some day, we will begin writing everyday.”
But this time, Apurva got an idea. She suggested, “Why don’t we start from now?”
“Now?” I asked.
“Now. Like, now now. From today itself.”
And we kept exploring the idea. And the Random Tales was founded.
Random Tales
Random Tales is founded on one core value — no writer will write a complete story by him/herself. A group of writers will collaborate on a single story in such a manner that:
- The group collaborating on a story can have only two writers. Not one. Not three. Just two.
- Every writer in the group writes a tale alternatively every day. Except the weekends. On weekends, we re-promote/re-share the tales written in the week that just ended. It also gives readers to catch up with the stories if they couldn’t follow along during the week.
- Each tale in the story must be between 400–1000 words long.
- Each tale must be complete in itself. Of course, it can have unrevealed mysteries, unanswered questions lingering, but it must be a complete scene in itself.
- Each tale has full creative freedom take the previous tale in any direction the writer wants. Thus, justifying the Random in Random Tales.
- A story must have at least 20 tales (no upper limit). Do not begin unless you intend to write at least 20.
- Keep the story interesting.
The rules/guidelines are useless if they cannot inspire the creativity to flourish. To test the waters, Apurva and I are collaborating on a story, called Candlelight. We plan to keep it 20 tales long.
Only when we will be finished with Candlelight (and actually love it), we will be accepting any new group of writers to write stories on Random Tales.
Why (we think) it would work?
Writing alone is a lonesome job. Writing alone without a readership is a loner-some (if that’s a word; but you get the gist) job.
But when there are multiple people writing together — alternatively and without planning the story ahead of writing, it turns out to be exciting — even without a readership.
Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.
- Eric Hoffer
What do you think? We’ll be delighted to have your suggestions and feedback about this experiment. Just respond to this story!
Thanks for joining us, and welcome to Random Tales.
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Cheers to the coin, dice and everything random,
Random Tales Editors
