Call for Entries part 3

We’re back! I still have a background process running in my brain about ‘places I want to commission a fiction writer’.

I’m keeping a running list of alternative fiction delivery methods that I’d like to experience. I’m not a writer, and I fundamentally do not have any interest in me personally inventing a fictional story for others.

BUT.

I love reading fiction. I love printed paper books first and foremost, but also I love digital media and the weird new things it affords for storytelling. And I’ve dipped my toe into publishing, helping make other people’s stories real.

So! Here’s a followup to previous Fiction RFP part one and part two, where I listed out some media formats I’d love to publish. And I’m serious - if you’re a writer and you want to put out a story in one of these ways, I would love to help. Call me.

12

Novella in a Playbill magazine. You know the playbill programs you get at the theater? What if you used all of it to tell a story? This has so much SPACE. Mimic the format of a Playbill program for a stage production (play? musical? opera?), and use it as a not-quite-linear template for telling different parts of the story. You’ve got natural space for the setting, about the work itself, cast bios, composer bios, and ADS. What a world you could build in that space. And the printing is totally foolproof.

13

Quarterback playbook wristband. Here’s the opposite. It’s sports instead of drama, it’s short instead of long. I want to commission a fiction piece that only gets published as an insert for these wristbands that football players wear. You’ve got about 3 or 6 pages. When we distribute the story, you get an actual wristband with it.

Airline pilots have a similar thing called a kneeboard too; it straps to your thigh.

14

Trade Magazine. I am a longtime subscriber to niche trade magazines like Pizza Today, Parking Today, National Nut Grower. These are pretty thinly edited, and one at least has a long-running fiction story that gets published each month. But it would be fun to make a spurious trade magazine and use the whole thing - articles, advertisements, letters to the editor, etc - to tell one story.

Easy expansion of this idea to a product catalog - seems like that has to have been done before, right?

15

In This House We Believe. Libraries and Parks Departments do these ‘story walks,’ where they make outdoor signage and place them along a pathway in a park. Sometimes they’re just printing out spreads from a picture book! I’d like to take this idea and tell a story in the form of those rainbow ‘In This House We Believe…’ signs. You can make them custom, and print one-offs! I envision a story that works by walking down a suburban block where each house has one of these. Perhaps the neighbors are in conversation with each other, or telling some Rashomon-esque take on some neighborhood disturbance. H/T to Trudy on this one.

Call me already

I love the format here, but I stall out on these because I’m not a writer. I don’t have a story to tell, and without that, what’s the point?

I’m not kidding. I have some modest budget prepared for these projects, and I’m really just cruising for a writer to work with that thinks these sound fun. If you are a writer, consider this your invitation to query me!