REPOST: RAC Challenge! Annual #1

[Scott Eiler]

On 2016-01-13 18:30, Arthur Spitzer quoted Henry R. Broaddus:

> Lucius Seneca said that "the best ideas are common property," and I think
> the same is true of stories.  I'm sure that many of you remain
> unconvinced.  Dirk certainly does at the conclusion of our annual.  Is the
> RAC Challenge! a seamless story?  Not even close.  Is it still an
> enjoyable story that is worthwhile?  I think so.  Of course, what I said
> was that a common story is the best story.  Does the RAC Challenge!, most
> of the crap being produced at Marvel and DC, or the entirety of the James
> Bond epic rank among "the best stories"?
>
> That's unlikely, but consider the following examples.  Ralph Ellison's
> Invisible Man may not explicitly be Albert Camus' Stranger, but he*is*
> another interpretation of the same guy.  Shakespeare's Hamlet is another
> version of a Saxo Grammaticus tale that was written four hundred years
> earlier.  The Bible is a work of chain fiction.

Well, I can't argue with that.  But that matches the best I can say 
about "challenge" writing.  I skipped the "DC Challenge" comics in 1986, 
but it sure looked like fun for the writers.

This old challenge looks like it had a schedule (who wrote when), a goal 
(everyone gets to write), and a way to achieve it (apparently some 
Editor who got people to write).  And people got the story to work at 
the end.  That's admirable even if they may not have met the schedule. 
I'm glad the RACC-Con Challenge worked out as well.

-- 
(signed) Scott Eiler  8{D> -------- http://www.eilertech.com/ ---------

When you *are* the leader... whatever goes wrong... whether you did it
or not... *you* are held responsible. - Barack Obama

I know. - Archie Andrews

- from Archie #617, March 2011, scripted by Alex Simmons.