h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Planning for February...

OK, so the theme is 'travel guides' with an emphasis on 'an insider's guide to...'

Any ideas?

This topic should lend itself to personal accounts too - journals, Alternative Writing Workshop or pushing the boundries of the first person singular in the Guide?

Reviews of things like restaurants would be good too.

So. I was thinking that if we did a fiction challenge, we should make it shorter and more collaborative if possible, and therefore use one of TC's ideas:

Broadly, people sign up to provide not the whole story but part of it. Installments. 30 (31) people sign up and each provide one instalment a day (the beginning could be provided). As you finish your instalment, you choose from the list who should continue.

It doesn't have to be 30, although if it were fewer there would be more writing, because you'dneed to contribute more than once.

I did also wonder if perhaps making each person's contribution a paragraph only might be fun.

TC tells me this has been done before with great success, and I remember the Atelier doing it line by line too. Any enthusiasm?

And a photo challenge involving local landmarks/ sights? I don;t know enough about photography to know how to make that one interesting. But it would be nice to hook some text to each picture too.

Would anyone be up for trying to write a description/ into to the sight they choose in 200-250 words? A potted Guide entry sort of thing.

I drive or cycle past the Forth Bridges on a regular basis. It would be nice to take a photo of them at dawn on a daily basis. Can we have a challenge that it would fit in to.

I like that idea. I used to snap St Basil's on a regular basis, until I reckoned I ad it in all seasons and weather conditions. Real film though, no good here.

So a local landmark of some description snapped either at the same time each day or on some other schedule, or perhaps just whenever you go past it?

If we had one landmark, with various photos, different times of the day and weather conditions, eg Z's bridges, we could choose a dozen or so and let people choose to write a different story of the people who were crossing, who they were, where they were going, why, some dialogue ( hard for me, I am useless at that) maybe some connections between some of the travellers?

Maybe some could be going to the same destination, or had set out from the same event.

Stop me if you think I am rambling, or that this has little to do with the theme.

I thought of another idea.. also linked to me taking photos of the Forth Bridge.

What about something entitled 'local landmarks'.

Many of us live near landmarks that are famous, but that we don't notice because we go past every day. Some of us might live near landmarks that are important to local people but aren't nationally famous.

It could be an exhibition - of work any sort, poetry, guide entries, or photos about local landmarks, or all.

It doesn't have to be 30 if we are talking about February as there are only 29 days in February this year. Usually 28 but 2012 is a Leap Year.

I'd forgotten February is the short month! A better idea to do it this month perhaps?

I like Lanza's idea of the deconstruction of the people in a snapshot thing. People could do it for each others' snapshots too. Mind you, it would be easier if the pics wee actually on h2g2. The text would be quite divorced from the visuals, at least while the challenge wasin progress.

But...

I rather fancy the idea of having one open challenge this month as per Z's suggestion. We haven't tried that yet.

As a Guide Editor, I have the permission to upload images to h2g2 - if this would help in any way?

They wouldn't need input from the Artists as they're not destined for Edited Entries or as part of the overall design on h2g2. It would help if any photo submitted was reduced to the size required as I don't have photo manipulation software.

And we are live! A87739780