[Writingworkshop] does this sound familiar to anyone?

[Daniel Peters]

My little brother does a form of improv where they practice scenes and scene
fragments with a series of different game rules that allow them to develop
as much as possible out of immediate dialouge and actions.  This is one of
his textbooks<http://improvencyclopedia.org/references//Truth_in_Comedy.html>,
anybody who has seen a pythons sketch will recognize rules like
'agreement'.  Some of the rules are also geared to keep the games fair so
that it stays as much of a group activity as possible and no one player can
dominate.  I've been trying to think of ways that similar games could be
developed for writing.  Obviously they can't be real time, even if you could
do something with a chat the end result is going to lose alot of the luster
of spontaniety.  I think I've finally hit on something that would draw
inspiration from the idea of a game but not attempt to mime improv to
closely.  I would love to know if anybody is doing something like this
already or if it sounds at all plausible.  The key to this is that I'm
thinking primarily science fiction writing.

The game has two kinds of players builders and interpreters.  A builder is
given a time frame, say, a week (purely arbitrary), to construct a
scenario/world/community.  Now the builder has the hardest job here, they
have to describe a set of new idea's or  reconfigure old ones but in such a
way as to allow the greatest room for improvisation.  I.E. no one is going
to out do Frank Herbert in a week and they shouldn't try because this is a
team sport.  So a builder could identify plot arcs or simply a state of
affairs for a specific locale or community or set of character types.
Leaving room for improvisation also means allowing new characters or
scientific constructs *as long as they look recognizably like something from
the original model.*  One of the hardest parts is going to be coming up with
models that will actually interest possible interpreters. I.E. space opera
will get pretty played, pretty quickly.
Now for the interpreters one of the cooler parts is going to be the second
order of interpretation, meaning the part where it becomes interpreters
playing on other interpreters moves.  Now an interesting part of this is
going to be the writers analouge of the fourth wall, i.e. it *will have to
be a special session for the game to get meta textual.* Refering to another
players move or an original model construct as construct would obviously end
normal play, it would get pedantic, everyone would be telling rather than
showing to use joe's terminology.  An analouge for this exact situation in
live improv is the training not to pull out a joke at another players
expense, it ruins the scene and is outside of the actual action scene in and
of itself.  The maxim of if doesn't move the plot along its a waste of the
readers time will be truest fro the interpreters.

This also removes the most pressing aspects of integrating info dumps into
the structure of the narrative(s).

This is a rough sketch and I actually have a few more direct idea's
pertaining to this but I would love some feed back.
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