So I thought it would be great idea to write a Buffy Season 8, maintaining the tone, pacing and format of the original show. But this is a project for more than one man - even Joss Whedon didn't write Buffy alone.

To be clear, this isn't script writing, this is fic writing. The idea is for season 8 to be a single story of 22 chapters, each chapter corresponding to an episode. The word count aim for each chapter will be around 10,000 words, with some flexibility.

The aim is to replicate Buffy's style as close as possible, in terms of how the scenes are set up and paced, the humour, the action, the twists, the pacing of the overarching season plot, the mythology, etc.

I was thinking a team of around 5 writers would work best (but if more than 5 people volunteer and I think they'd all be good, more than 5 can work). We'd plan the season together, then assign particular episodes to certain people to be the principal writers of those episodes. They write the first draft of each episode. The draft then goes round all the other writers to make input and edits.

We don't start posting the fic until it's all done. When it is, we release one episode a week, publishing to a dedicated FF.Net account for this purpose. The FF.Net account will have each of the contributing authors' profiles in its favourited authors, but no single author will have "ownership" of the joint account.

The timetable for writing is for each writer in the group to produce one episode per month. Under that timetable, with a group of five writers, the fic would be ready for posting in 5 months (allowing for editing time too).

You are eligible for selection if you meet the following criteria:

1. You have seen Buffy (and preferably Angel) and are an enthusiastic fan.

2. You are willing to take all Buffy (seasons 1-7) and Angel (seasons 1-4) episodes as canon, but not the comics. We're writing a season 8 of Buffy, and thus AU from the comics. The same goes for Angel season 5.

3. You have a proven ability to write decent prose.

4. You have at least one fic of at least 10,000 words. Proof that you have the ability to write at least a single episode to completion. Anthology entries also count here.

5. You agree that as awesome as characters like Willow and Faith are, Buffy is the main character. The story is primarily about her.

6. Similarly, you recognise that this is Buffy season 8, not an AU Angel season Five. While Angel characters can make cameos, the fic cannot go full crossover (remember, it's being written to be as close to the original as possible, and Buffy and Angel were always written to be understood independently of each other).

7. You agree that season 8 does not necessarily have to "top" season 7 in terms of "epicness". The kind of epicness inflation this would lead to would quickly make the plot ridiculous.

8. You're an active member of this community and not a lurker (that is, I know who you are).

9. You can commit to writing 10,000 words per month.

10. You're willing to have your work edited by the group and, should the group majority be in favour of a change, your creative control being overridden on the matter (this includes me).

From the people who express interest I will select a group of people. That said, I'm not the boss: once I've selected the group, all decisions will be made by vote (it thus being important to have an odd number of writers).

 

I can't contribute... but I really really really hope this takes off :3

 

I would like to help, but I'm not sure I could pull off 10k words a month. But I would gladly help out in any capacity I could.

How do we treat season 8 and 9, the comics? Completely ignore em?

 

Yup. Not going to lie: I really didn't like the direction Buffy took in the comics. Too... well, comic-y.

 

It was based on the Anthology, actually. My anthology entry was 7k and it was just under what I'd consider to be a fairly complete episode. And that had to introduce characters from scratch.

It's true that DLP writers tend to drift towards verbosity. In as much as this is a writing exercise, it will be an exercise for many in curbing that. A TV episode has different pacing to a novel and we're trying to keep the TV pacing. In TV everything is very purposeful, everything moves the plot along significantly. When you have to introduce and wrap up a story in 45 minutes you have to be concise.

Zeel: 10k/month isn't that much. It's 333 words a day, more or less.

Have made a Google Group with some initial ideas for the writers... once some people start volunteering.

Edit for Ched's edit: It's true it contains minimal description, but in prose form there'd probably be less dialogue to balance the increase in description. Prose is somewhat more efficient that scripts in exposition.

 

I'd like to contribute, if possible. I'm a huge Buffy fan and I'm not too fond of the comics, either. Fanfiction has always been an arrogant "I could do better" affair for me, although most times it was directed at other fanfictions. Anyway, count me in if you want.

 

I would volunteer, but I'll be too busy sunning it up in the States for the next month or so.

 

I thought the comics were good to about issue 18 or something. Once they went on the run, it went Full Retard, fast.

And Taure... I write quite a bit sometimes. Sometimes I can't do anything at all. Anyways. I'd love to help out plotting and discussing.

 

I'd probably help too, but like CheddarTrek, I've got too much on my plate writing-wise, and it's been so long since I last saw Buffy that I'm out of the mix. Still, good luck!

 

Seconded. I'd probably do one too, as I can't commit to more than that. And I'll have to rewatch a few episodes to get in the groove of things - because as of now I've forgotten a lot of the characters - it's been that long.

 

Goody. Assuming Taure is down with the one-story thing, I do some catching up with BtVS this weekend.

 

I'm not actually a writer, but I'll be really happy to see this happen. A lot of Buffy continuations in the past that I've seen have been bogged down in suck, or didn't finish, or both.

Handling the whole transition away from Sunnydale seems to me like the place things usually go wrong; it's been the backdrop for the whole series, so it's hard not to have the jone change jarringly with a change in scenery. On the other hand, the change in scale is also a big issue, with *at least* dozens of Slayers around and Willow powerful, not evil, and with her gloves now fingerless if not entirely off. The comics (and Angel Season 5's background information) ramped things up and went in the direction of a big world spanning organization, which made a certain amount of sense but was mostly a disaster from a story perspective. Putting a rewind on the mass slayerization is cheap, but having all these slayers hanging around can really detract from the "personal war" nature the series has established already.

I think the biggest decision that really has to be made is if you try to isolate the main cast in a specific location, and if so, how the hell do you do that. Shunting everyone off to Pylea or something of that nature is a crude measure, but the situation really is pretty disastrous from a story point of view at the end of S7 and you might need a crude measure to fix it.

 

I'm interested in seeing the results of this, but I'm sad to say I can't contribute, for personal reasons.

I wish you luck though, Taure - and I agree that the official comics' direction went to shit-town real fast.

 

With regards to writing just one episode, it depends on this crucial distinction:

1. I can only commit to writing one episode because I'm commitment-shy, but there is a realistic possibility that once I see that 10k words isn't so much, and once I realise how awesome the Buffy Season 8 writers group is, that I'll end up writing several more.

2. I absolutely can only write one episode.

If 1, welcome aboard. If 2, sorry. Having 22 writers each writing one episode just wouldn't work. It would be impossible to establish thematic and stylistic continuity, and decision making would take forever.

 

1) Can write multiple episodes

2) Anthology entry: 12k

3) Seen Buffy in its entirety (but not Angel). Read the comics (liked a few of them. Also, the art work in the recent comics is utterly atrocious.)

4) Would love to contribute.

 

The Compelled to Play series should be mandatory reading for anyone wanting to join in.

 

This is certainly the most enjoyable continuation of BtVS I've ever read (it was also the second Buffy fanfic I ever read), though the technical writing is less than stellar.

It's worth saying that it deviates pretty completely from most of the guidelines set out here though; Buffy isn't the central protagonist, the tone is completely changed, Angel is crossed in pretty much totally and completely, the divergence is arguably in the middle of S7, and it's closer in format to a megaensemble cast scene wraparound like Game of Thrones or True Blood than something with 22 distinct episodes (There were 4.5 "seasons" of Compelled with 96 largely independent scenes each, with 1.5k words or so per scene).

All and all, it's a great fanfic, but it's pretty much not all what Taure is trying to do here. This reminds me of the other thread about archetype definition, because there is no real genre defining BtVS continuation fanfic. Mostly they suck, are in script form, have egregious slash, completely lose the tone and feel, don't even have a full season completed before being abandoned, or are some combination of all those. Compelled is valued so highly by me because it commits only *one* of those sins.