Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors Review discussion
Writing Technique
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Open source book development?
Mod
As you can see, it was a fun way to blow off steam and hone skills, but that's about all.
The other way is called traditional publishing. Some of the big names that you always see on the supermarket shelves are really just the idea makers. They come up with a plot and then a team writes the story, another edits for cohesiveness, and so on.
The biggest difference of course, is the mindset. I am not a programmer. I barely know enough html to make my posts here look pretty anymore. But the majority of the software I use is open source because it is free. Free software is great for those of us running a business on a shoestring budget. Free is not a good business model for those of us trying to live on that shoestring business as well.
Richard wrote: "I've never heard of a collaboration between more than two writers..."There are a lot of them out there. Philip K. Dick published at least two collaborative works (with Roger Zelazny and Ray Nelson).
More recently, there's James S.A. Corey (Leviathan Wakes), which is a writing collaboration between Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.
And then there is the collaborative, transmedia project The Mongaloid by Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear.
Not to mention the Orion's Arm Universe Project (http://www.orionsarm.com), a collaborative shared universe.
I'm sure there many other such collaborative works out there.
The big difference, though is that most of these collaborations are between two writers without external input, or are a collection of writers who work independently on a pre-defined universe, each creating works within the bounds of the universe's rules/history.
But I think you're right that indie publishing isn't much of a group effort. Indie publishing runs the gamut from completely self-published to small press publishing. The former is a lonely DIY community, disconnected except for online forums such as this. The latter can be anything from publishers who provide a minimal amount of promotion and distribution to full-fledged traditional publishing style services (handling all the editing, formatting, printing, cover art, distribution, etc.).
I think the big difference is that in the open source software world what's being developed isn't so much content as tools for creating content, or for enhancing/augmenting a software tool. As such there is a sense of common ownership.Now, in the video game industry there's a huge community of "open source" modders who do create content as well as tool enhancement. But this is basically a form of fandom. People do game mods because they love the game. And they're not the ones who built the game engine and game world in the first place. So again, it's more of a community-owned type of thing. Modders don't expect to earn a living off modding, just as fan fiction writers don't expect to earn a living from their work.
Writing as a profession, though, is a lot different. It involves much more "putting one's self into" the work, so it's a lot more ego-driven. It's also a "this is my idea" kind of activity. In other words, like it or not, a writer's livelihood is based on the monetization of their intellectual property.
As such, it would be more difficult to set up, manage, and maintain a commercial-oriented open source writing project. Who gets editorial authority? Who does the editing? Who chooses the cover art, the distribution channels? Who manages the royalty distributions?
Even a non-commercial venture would require a significant amount of organization for someone.
Now...I can imagine setting up a small collective of sorts, a small business similar to a video game company with project leads, a world creation team, a story-boarding group, scene developers, character developers, and actual writers...graphic artists if you want (or just hire out)...a marketing and legal team. It would probably work for doing serialized stories, but might be prone to "story by committee" issues, like Hollywood films do.
Let me know when you set it up. I'd like to be involved in all but the marketing and legal crap. ];P
Mod
Oh don't be so sure of that. Kindle Worlds is a thing and thanks to the baffling popularity of a certain fan fiction that was just made into a movie, I think many fan fiction writers do honestly think that they can and should make money off of something someone else created.
Christina wrote: "Oh don't be so sure of that. Kindle Worlds is a thing and thanks to the baffling popularity of a certain fan fiction that was just made into a movie, I think many fan fiction writers do honestly think that they can and should make money off of something someone else created. "The two things the fan-fiction writers should do is 1) check the copyright wording of the work they wish to emulate and 2) check with the author when there is reasonable doubt on whether or not the author approves of derivative works.
Some authors don't mind derivatives while others do. In the instance where derivative works are allowed it's a case of no harm no foul as long as the derivative isn't plagiarized, otherwise it's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
What could be a group effort is the advertising, a place where most get lost in a flurry of documents that are launched like a sky rocket, leaving a visual trail for a short time and then sinking into an ocean of billions of other documents launched the previous day, now slowly settling into the rest of the public sentiment accessible only by diligent searchers.The newspaper format used to be the complete picture of a community, covering everything from birth to death. Be fun watching a million people trying to publish one newspaper every week. It would probably have an ad for every text character in it.
Christina wrote: "...I think many fan fiction writers do honestly think that they can and should make money off of something someone else created..."Well, maybe. But still those kinds of works aren't really collaborative. They're still individual writers riffing off prefabricated worlds/histories. And the vast majority of fan fiction is (or was) done for fun out of love of the source material, and for the kudos of other fans, rather than cash.
Just found this about less than rosy view of Kindle Worlds, written last August: https://gigaom.com/2014/08/17/amazons...
Quote: "...Add it all up, and the fields of imagination and community in Kindle Worlds feel barren next to the rollicking, ribald world of the purely fan universes. The sanctioned space, it turns out, is just not as much fun as the unofficial ones. One fan fiction enthusiast cited by the paper likens Kindle Worlds to a playground of “five quiet, clean, polite children carefully playing together while helicopter parents hovered overhead … Whatever Amazon has created there is no life in it.”
Mod
I don't like the concept of profiting off of someone else's work. That being said, I'll know I've made it as a successful author one day when I find someone has decided to arbitrarily pair up my characters and write them into dubious sex scenes.
Profiting off someone else's work is illegal if it's without their permission (though that's not stopped people, of course). And the worlds on Kindle Worlds are all under contract, so those are perfectly legal as long as you stay within the restricted world rules.However, I've never been much of a fan. I can't think of many things more dread inducing than spending time writing in someone else's pre-generated world. Even pro writers like Greg Bear, who has written in many non-originating author series like Star Trek and Halo...I just can't see doing that. I guess the $$ must be good. But, dang, I think I'd feel so depressed doing that.
I'd love to see someone write other books in my world, but I doubt it'll happen. The fanfic world feeds off the free publicity provided by popular authors, not just their ideas. I don't think people would put a lot of work into sharing my "fan base."
Fan fiction often doesn't put much work in preserving the original world/characters either. You'd be likely to get vampires and superheros slammed into your tiny little space colonies. ];P
Now if the 'vampirism' in question was a genetic disease where the afflicted tended to deteriorate physically without a regular cocktail made up of human blood, liver and some muscle tissue like the heart, that would be believable.
Yeah, I can't imagine anyone else willing to stick to the discipline of the original concept. But hey, who knows?
Richard wrote: "Yeah, I can't imagine anyone else willing to stick to the discipline of the original concept. But hey, who knows?"Odds are you can find them.
Rob wrote: "I think that at least in theory it should create superior quality fiction much better than any single one of us could hope to achieve. "Rob, I think you've hit on the difference between software and writing. Software has a defined goal with objective specs and metrics. Even so, open-source software rapidly becomes bloated and chaotic.
What you are describing is not really writing at all, but something like game building. The notion that fiction is a process that can be improved by doing it be committee, I don't think stands scrutiny. Would a committee produce Shakespeare? Not any committee I know of.
A writer of genius will produce better fiction than a mediocre writer, or any number of them. No group that lacks a writer of genius will produce great fiction. No writer of genius needs a group.
Rob, the issue is "amazing for who"? This assumed that amazing can be defined. In my view, my co-author is capable producing prose that would make God weep over its beauty, and I think my world-building ain't bad and that I do snark well when called for. So what? Who agrees? Does it strike a nerve? I think the assumption that there are tasks that can be broken down and assigned to the "most qualified" is dubious, because in general "most qualified" lacks reliable metrics to define it.
That said, I know where you are coming from, because I conceived a character who needed to speak and I couldn't give her the voice that made her truly alive. Not by another’s judgment, but by my own. So I found another writer who bring her alive in way I never could. (I handle the grumpy old men just fine on my own.) Our partnership works very well, as the best artistic partnership do. But it’s a very personal thing. I doubt that can be successfully as a methodology to a larger group.
Micah wrote: "I think the big difference is that in the open source software world what's being developed isn't so much content as tools for creating content, or for enhancing/augmenting a software tool."Also Wordpress does not compete with several million different versions of Wordpress. A book is a book. Why should a book written by a committee outsell any other book? Most likely, you just end up dividing the average income it makes 6, or 8, or 10 ways.
The problem for me would be my writerly ego. I can concieve of others writing stories in the world I've created, and I could certainly provide an insane amount of detail for them to work from, even character names and life histories. But. Right now, I'm an omnipotent deity in this world, able to smite anyone who steps out of line. Do omnipotent deities like to stand aside and let newbies act like gods? I don't think so. And would any writer be willing to take on the minion role, writing stories subject to my god-like veto? I doubt it.
Richard wrote: "The problem for me would be my writerly ego. I can concieve of others writing stories in the world I've created, and I could certainly provide an insane amount of detail for them to work from, even..."You just have to put on a different hat. What I was reminded of while reading your comment are the role playing games I've been involved in since the late 70s. You know...Dungeons and Dragons and all that.
In those games you have an omnipotent deity, the Game (or Dungeon) Master. They do all the world building, all the history and back story. But the people who actually "write" the story are the player characters. And their process of "writing" the story is to react to what the GM gives them.
So in those terms, the people who are actually determining the plot, the story arch, are not themselves omnipotent deities, but rather just pawns in the GM's world.
Obviously no analogy or metaphor is perfect, but if you change your head around a bit, you could conceive of yourself as the omnipotent deity of your world creation, while fan writers would be the pawns, the kids playing around in the sandbox you created. As long as they stick to your rules, they're not treading on your ego-space.
;D
Owen wrote: "What you are describing is not really writing at all, but something like game building. The notion that fiction is a process that can be improved by doing it be committee, I don't think stands scrutiny..."Except that by invoking game development you kind of argue against yourself. Some games (Dishonored, The Last of Us, To the Moon, Mass Effect 2, The Walking Dead, Halo, Portal 2...etc.) are built very heavily around good narrative.
I think it's a bit unfair to lump these kinds of group-developed products into "story by committee" because the development teams are segmented into well defined silos and staffed with professionals. You'll have world builders, character developers, dialog writers, etc. There are very often one or two chief writers who do all the plotting, while the specialists are then tasked to flesh out that story.
I see no reason why a group couldn't write engaging stories as well as most single writers, but it would have to be a focused and organized effort. Not the Hollywood model where one screenwriter comes up with the original draft, which then gets re-written a dozen times by other writers, then picked apart by the producer and director, then fiddled with by the marketing execs to make it as "safe" as possible.
Game development is actually the perfect model for this kind of collaborative effort. I can't see it being viable for writing one-off books or brilliant high literature, but for doing a series of books of the highly entertaining, mass market variety, I think it would work well. (Which is not necessarily to say lucrative.)
Surely in a way, this is what you get as a published author. You get an editor who'll go through all your prose and suggest improvements, an agent who'll tell you the main character needs to be a different ethnicity or it won't sell, etc. etc. I've never had the experience, so I don't know, but some reports suggest same. Not "open source" of course.
Micah wrote: "Except that by invoking game development you kind of argue against yourself. Some games (Dishonored, The Last of Us, To the Moon, Mass Effect 2, The Walking Dead, Halo, Portal 2...etc.) are built very heavily around good narrative."Many things are based around a good narrative, but they are different mediums. Without getting too deeply into a semantics, a game (or a movie, or a TV show, or a comedy sketch) and literature are different things with a different purpose that are amenable to be created to different ways.
What I’m looking for from each of these things is different. A book that reads like it was produced like a game will not hold my interest. That is not to say others would not like it or that it is not viable.
But that was not to proposition. The proposition is that this methodology would result in superior literature, which I dispute.
Richard wrote: "Surely in a way, this is what you get as a published author. You get an editor who'll go through all your prose and suggest improvements, an agent who'll tell you the main character needs to be a d..."Richard, that is marketing advice and technical matters to clean up of prose. A good editor will not change your voice or your intent. An agent will provide opinions (which are no more valid than yours or mine -- indeed, almost certainly less so) on how various factors that will attract readers. But it remains your story. (Unless you choose otherwise.)
Thanks, Owen. I doubt if I'll have the experience in any case :-)
Richard wrote: "Thanks, Owen. I doubt if I'll have the experience in any case :-)"Of course, you can always hire an editor (which we did) and a marketing consultant (which we didn't) if you want that experience. ;-)
But it is definitely a trade-off. The relationship between these things and sales is complex. We have our books professionally edited as a point of pride. It gets us nice comments in reviews, but I have no evidence it improves marketability (by comparison to books with many fairly ghastly errors that sell as well or better than ours).
it is complex. I've satisfied myself through peer reviews, etc. that I don't make ghastly errors, and I'm OK with that. It comes down to why you write, and what kinds of interactions you like to have. I don't think I'd hire an editor or a designer even if I could afford to. But I'm not expecting to make a living from my sales, either.
Richard wrote: "it is complex. I've satisfied myself through peer reviews, etc. that I don't make ghastly errors, and I'm OK with that. It comes down to why you write, and what kinds of interactions you like to ha..."Quite so. We edited and proofed our own first book, and we did a decent job. But I dislike editing and proofreading, and I'm not great at it anyway (especially my own work), so it's worth it to us to pay someone to find the half dozen words we leave out on every page. So it saves me aggravation.
The main sales benefit though is that it allows us to get books out there faster. A professional editor can turn around one of our books in a week or two. It takes me a month or more (sometimes a lot more) to produce something that isn't embarrassing.
I'm going to stick my nose in here, especially from the DnD perspective. I've game mastered and played in a LOT of games with a small group (4 - 6 people, depending on if our extra guests showed up or not).When I first started playing, I was content to be a mere player. I had to learn the rules, how the game mechanics worked for this group, and prove that I could adapt to new (and often interesting) settings.
Once I had that much down, I started pushing on the rules. Kind of had to, since the group were either rules lawyers or power players. Within a few months, I got saddled with leading the games. I say saddled, because our old GM just up and dumped the campaign we were in the middle of on me. They did it because I was more creative, and I kept leading the campaign into unknown territory.
Wrangling the group was about like trying to wrangle a herd of cats. Possible, but very exhausting.
I have also done class assignments in high school that were group story efforts. To be honest, that was even worse. Too many times one or two people did 99% of the work, yet everyone got equal credit for the final outcome.
I use both of these scenarios for a reason - the one with the DM, proves it's possible to write a story. The one from high school shows how committee based stories tend to wind up happening.
A more recent experience also is back in the role play arena - I watched my ex work with a team to develop their story. In fact, the transcripts were pulled, name tags removed, and the thing was published (according to him, but I haven't found it yet.) However, creative as he was, he was not satisfied with what he could actually say/do within the environment. So, I'm not sure just exactly how many could be brought together and kept in the project as it started to actually develop fully.
The flip side to that is what I did for the cast of characters I've got in my current series. The small group that I worked with knew (and approved of) my intentions of using the concepts from their characters. However, there have been times I've had to go back to the creators and double check my interpretations. I'm writing the book solo, but am also constrained by our agreement. It's frustrating, to say the least when the characters try to develop in unexpected directions to be forced to prune that development back to another's mold.
Overall, I'm not sure that a group effort can work in writing a story, unless the writers are very, very good friends. Richard mentioned ego, and I'm not sure that's the right term. I think flat out creative genius is where the issues would be. Working with a group constrains you to the lowest denominator of the group, and if you have a flash of brilliance, you can't chase it down to explore.
In the long run, that would weaken a book, not strengthen it.
That at least is my own opinion.
I think the best way to do this would be an open source short story compilation. Everyone gets to do their own take on a concept or original world.Even more difficult, but more interesting, would be to divide the book and assign chapters, where one is written after the previous is finished, again, short story style, because you would want each chapter to be self-contained to a certain extent. But to get a group of people that are dependable enough to do that? I'm not sure.
As far as the non-linear SS open source compilation goes though, I believe that would be very doable.
Owen wrote: "A book that reads like it was produced like a game will not hold my interest." I have no idea what "reads like it was produced like a game" means. How would that manifest itself? Well done games--story or no--don't feel like they were created by a team. You can't play Halo, Divinity: Original Sin, and the indie Banished and tell that one was created by a huge team, one was done by less than a dozen, and one was created completely (music, graphics, game mechanics, etc.) by one single person.
Well written fiction by one or many will be well written fiction.
I think your statement pre-supposes a quality that is unproven to exist.
Owen: But that was not to proposition. The proposition is that this methodology would result in superior literature, which I dispute."
True, the OP did make that assertation, but the conversation has (inevetably) moved in it's own direction. I would never make that claim. But I would never make the opposite claim that you make, that a team-produced piece of literature is by default inferior to a single-athor product.
After all, aren't your own works collaboration?
I believe one of the best collaborations I've read was "Lucifer's Hammer", tough that only involved Pournelle and Niven working together on their parts.A larger collaboration might work for a long novel or related set of novels if the writers involved had the storyline DM K. mentioned as well as clearly defined areas each was responsible for.
A certain amount of order in the chaos.
Wouldn't that wind up being a kind of impossible Rock-Paper-Scissors thing? He he.
I read about the Niven-Pournelle collaboration, I think it was JP who wrote about it. The impression I got is that JP was the workmanlike professional and LN was the creative genius, and they got on because (JP at least) recognised the difference. I also vaguely remember they swore they'd never do it again. Great result though.K, you're right. The term isn't ego, though I certainly wouldn't claim creative genius. But it's creative pride. If the reward of doing the work is the pride you take in the result, then collaboration has the potential of denting that.
For me, it comes down to this. Western corporate culture says you succeed by buckling down and being a team player. I think people generally write because they don't accept that. That they want to be personally responsible for the product. But of course, others may feel differently.
Rob,Sometime if you want to see how I do at dialogue, let me know and I'll send you an e-copy of "Mono-Earth: The War of the Egg".
If you did read that you'd put me in the position of Imp-Assistant Wordsmith as well. :)
Richard wrote: "Western corporate culture says you succeed by buckling down and being a team player..."Uh...actually that's only what the people making the real money tell those doing the real work. But, maybe that's a bit to close to political to expound upon!
Mod
In all seriousness, I do have to hand it to you, Owen, and others like you who can cowrite with someone else. I've had a couple of friends do the whole "We should write a book!" thing and I'm actually rather grateful that none of them ever pursued it further than that. I'm an author because it affords me the ability to spend my days as an antisocial hermit and not feel bad about that fact.
Going along with what K said about the group project, there's another side to that as well. Back in my last job, I would put forth proposals on how to streamline certain processes. Initially, management would send me a thumbs up, I would draft my changes, send them off, and not hear anything for months. By the time they were ready to implement the changes, they would no longer be my ideas, typically they would do the opposite of streamlining our processes, and no one would be happy with the changes. Of course, management being fair, they would always make sure that *every* disgruntled employee was aware that the changes were my idea.
What I'm saying is, sometimes you don't want to have your name attached to a project if it strays too far from your vision.
Christina,Some of the best novels involve worlds having a rough time of it.
Seriously, who wants to live in a world where nothing happens, and a purple dinosaur rules?
R.F.G. wrote: "...who wants to live in a world where nothing happens, and a purple dinosaur rules?"I don't know about the purple dinosaur, but I do know that Talking Heads once sang: "Heaven is a place, a place where nothing ever happens."
Christina wrote: "I've had a couple of friends do the whole "We should write a book!" thing and I'm actually rather grateful that none of them ever pursued it further than that."Me too. Only I've been glad it didn't go much further because I've seen their writing. We'd be enemies before a week of work was done...The red pen is a cruel and merciless tyrant.
That and I know how long it takes me to finish a project. Me, who has actually written a handful of novels and novellas. They? Yeah, beyond emails, not so much.
The chaos and quality control issues are what would make me shy away from any truly open source project.I really think this kind of effort would require a high level of focus and demarcation of duties. Not to mention profit/cost contracts.
Micah wrote: "I don't know about the purple dinosaur, but I do know that Talking Heads once sang: "Heaven is a place, a place where nothing ever happens." "The difference between being people or sheeple lies in dealing with challenges, therefore where there are no challenges there are no real people.
R.F.G. wrote: "The difference between being people or sheeple lies in dealing with challenges, therefore where there are no challenges there are no real people."This phenominal universe is an illusion (possibly a simulation). Therefore, there are no people. There are no sheeple. There is no difference.
Micah wrote: "This phenominal universe is an illusion (possibly a simulation). Therefore, there are no people. There are no sheeple. There is no difference. "Whatever it is we reside within, as long as the illusion or simulation is our objective reality, therein lies the difference. As much as I may care to believe belief can alter what is considered to be objective reality, said belief does not alter the challenges I face.
When the internal observer cannot distinguish between the actual nature of the setting, whether it be illusion or reality, then for that observer it is by default a reality.
If I am but a simulated virtual cockroach running around basking in the cheerful glow of a hypothetical microwave oven or an illusory relative of the rodentia with an overdeveloped brain doesn't matter, because I am stuck within a framework I cannot escape I have no choice but to see my surroundings as the real universe (for the current context).
As for the idea of my working on a shared universe, perhaps one day someone will see my input as a good idea, and I'll explore the idea from there.
Mod
Some of the best novels involve worlds having a rough time of it.
Seriously, who wants to live in a world where nothing happens, and a purple dinosaur rules?"
I merely meant that plot is my weakest link. Give me world building, character development, pacing, or voice, but don't put me in charge of the plot unless you want to play a fun game of fill in the gaps.
Micah wrote: "I have no idea what "reads like it was produced like a game" means. How would that manifest itself?"It would most likely manifest itself in voice and style, which are what I primarily read for. These things get watered down in a committee project, and things get homogenized. If they don’t get homogenized, you don’t really have a committee anymore. You have an author with a staff (which I GRRM does, for example) keeping things straight, chasing down creative leads, editing etc.
But they are staff, and that is not the open-source model.
That is not to it is impossible to write a decent story this way. As Christina mentioned there are authors (or maybe imprints is more accurate?) out there that are essentially write-by-number industries. At one point, I was told this is was pretty common in romance fiction. That is the closest thing I can think of to the open-source idea proposed here. And it clearly meets a demand.
I also agree with your statement that game development is good and likely viable model for writing entertaining, mass-market series. If that is what people want to do, they should certainly pursue it. And I also agree it that would not necessarily be lucrative -- or more lucrative.
Micah wrote: "But I would never make the opposite claim that you make, that a team-produced piece of literature is by default inferior to a single-athor product.
After all, aren't your own works collaboration?
Given what is considered inferior and superior are subjective, that is a dicey subject. In terms of my original assertion it comes to this: does one believe in the concept of artistic genius or not? Now, it happens I do. And I believe, based on experience, that an open-source committee approach is incapable of artistic genius. That is not to say it can’t produce a work as good or better than the common run of writers, but (and yes, the thread has evolved) that is different point than I was addressing.
Creating a story has costs. In the single-author model, the costs manifest in the weaknesses of the author in particular aspects of process. In the open-source model, the costs manifest in friction and entropy. Now, a gifted writer can correct for her/his weaknesses in any number of ways, and they do, but a committee will experience friction and entropy in irreducible amounts, and attempts to reduce them move the committee towards being staff, which is why (as pointed out above) such efforts typically reduce to one or two people doing 95%+ of the work.
So, in the end, it depends one what the goal is, and matching the costs to that goal, and thus the method.
That said, allow me to say that collaboration and the open-source are not the same thing. Typically, when two author collaborate, one acts as the principle writer and one adds mostly creative concepts. In such works, it pretty clear who did the writing (as it is with Niven and Pournelle). This is done to maintain a consistency of voice.
In our case, (and for the specific reasons we decided to write together, see #19 above), my co-author and I share a deep personal bond that allows us to meld our storytelling in a way that maybe other collaborators cannot. I think we are very lucky that way, and I think it makes our work more than the sum or its parts.
Working on large committee projects (be they software development, collaborative reports, or D&D) I have not had that experience myself, or otherwise observed it.
Christina wrote: "In all seriousness, I do have to hand it to you, Owen, a..."Thanks Christina. I think it takes a special kind of relationship to pull this off -- not the same as the relationship we have, but something that gives a shared sense of purpose, and dedication to the story above all else. That probably sounds corny, and maybe the fact that it sounds corny is part of what makes it hard to achieve.
And yes, I'm fully aware of what you describe. we had a parable about it prominently posted in our office. It began with something like: "It is fertilizer and it is very strong…"
Christina wrote: "I merely meant that plot is my weakest link..."Are you sure? We are consistently praised (by people who should know what they are talking about) for the aspects of our book that we least like writing and don't think we do a good job at. Maybe our judgment just sucks there, and others see more clearly. (It is nice to hear, but when people praise you for the "iffy" parts, it makes it hard to tell what you're doing right so you can do it better.)
Rob,The concept sounds similar to the "Man-Kzin Wars" series where there was a basic set of guidelines which various authors ran with.
Such a project would require that set of basic assumptions / premises each writer started with but could prove interesting.
I'm a reformed coder too, so I know what you mean. I don't really agree that indie writing is collaborative - the promotion end of things, yes, but not the writing. I've never heard of a collaboration between more than two writers. I guess the most famous in scifi is Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The latter has written about the process they went through, all done by early email as I recall. In theory, it would make sense for me to collaborate, I'm mostly into world-building and space engineering, treating characters and plot as a vehicle for conveying those ideas. But in reality, I don't think I'd enjoy it. Schedules and deadlines, and making changes to other peoples' tastes, wouldn't suit me. Might result in better books, mind. There are interactive fictional environments, basically games in which each 'move' is a short fragment of a story. There's one (or used to be) set in the Pern environment of Anne McCaffrey's novels. I don't know if the resulting stories get published or read, though.
As for 'open source' - the concept is foreign to the writerly world. We all put copyright notices inside our books, with All Rights Reserved. The only exception for me is illustrations. Because I use background images which are CC-BY, the terms dictate I should make the resulting work CC-by. I doubt if most authors know that. I can't imagine anyone wanting to copy my art in any case.
Interesting thoughts, though.