Society for Aesthetic Deletions

Letter Games

Trolling the net netted the above link, which is a good sum-up of what Letter Games are all about.

The book mentioned, Sorcery and Cecelia, was published as a result of a Letter Game between Caroline Stevermer and Patricia Wrede. It's out of print and hard to find, but will be reprinted next Spring.

The basics are this, however: Two (or more, but two is probably good to start) authors write letters from one character's perspective to the other character. A setting is established, and a general world-type view is agreed-upon. And lastly, the characters must never, ever meet up.

Then, through these letters back and forth, each writer works on their own character's plot, sometimes providing advice or help for the other characters, even on occasion adding a bit of background to the other character (something along the lines of -- "Remember when you fell in the pond when you were 8? I tried to pull you out, you pulled me in instead, and we were both in bed for weeks? They thought you were going to die, but I was certain you would pull through, and you did. Has that cough ever cleared up?"). As you can see, there does have to be a certain amount of trust between the authors.

Using the blog interface, one can have multiple authors in one blog working on their own Letter Game. Or, two people who have their own blogs could write letters in their own, and link to their co-author's page for the next in the series. It seemed a wonderful extension of the Letter Game, making it public for all to watch and comment on.

I think Anne and I may start using the children of characters from the original fantasy game Lou ran. Anne got to play Kit for a brief time in the sequel to the original game (before pregnancy and child-caring for pulled her away), but I haven't done anything with Brianna's child. I'm not even sure what sex it'll be (I'm leaning toward male at this point).

Or we'll decide to do something altogether new. Probably not Amber-style, though. Anne has only played in one ADRPG game, and hasn't read the books. :)

So, any takers? Meera looks like she got some of her own already. I'm willing to give folks logins to my Whitespace blog, or set up another one. Want to be the hostess with the mostess, that's me.