A chance to write a London murder mystery with leading novelists

I’ve heard of crowd-sourcing in terms of communal fund raising (I contributed recently to the publication of a graphic novel which should be coming out in the autumn) but this is the first time I’ve come across crowd sourced writing.
Exquisite Corpse: Or, How Not to Kill Your Neighbours is  a novel set in Lambeth, South London. It is being written on Twitter from June to August 2013 by anyone who wants to have a go, as part of Southbank Centre’s Festival of Neighbourhood.

The basic plot…
Loughborough Junction, summer 2013. A shopkeeper has gone missing and rumour is rife. What happened to him? Who has the motive and who the means to do him in? Has he been done in? And where will everyone get their fags, booze and lottery tickets without him? Local artist Elizabeth (Beth) Lamb sets out to investigate. But when you play detective in your own neighbourhood, things are bound to get complicated…

How to get involved…
At 11am every Monday the organisers brief a chapter, giving the starting point, end point and key moments to include, and YOU fill in details, dialogue and ideas. Tweeting halts at 1pm each Friday, and then a stellar team of authors take it in turns to transform the tweets into proper chapters.

This is a brilliantly simple idea that is similar to the kind of tag writing we sometimes do in creative writing classes but with an added flourish. I loved taking part last week when Lewes based novelist Vanessa Gebbe was in charge of chapter six. The end result will be published as a free ebook by Blackfriars, the new ebook-only imprint from Little, Brown, tto be released in September at a free celebratory event at The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall. Follow twitter.com/exquisitecopy  to keep up with the story as it unfolds and use the hashtag #exquisitecopy when you are adding to the story.

For more information click HERE

photo credit: ~FreeBirD®~ via photopin cc