I've started to write a book.
It's a fictional novel set about 100 years in the future. It's set in a world where the human race is nearing extinction. Global warming looked as though it was getting out of hand, until the melting ice-caps caused a release of cool fresh water into the oceans which altered the sea currents and caused a snap ice age... (look it up, apparently it could be possible although if it occurred it would mainly be in Europe and the Eastern coast of North America).
Anyway, we don't need to know how it's happened, just that it has. Characters have to contend with harsh conditions, scarce resources, a break-down of basic services and law and order and to top it all off; an deadly weaponised virus that attacks the digestive system and brings about an inability to process food, then in the late stages it causes madness so severe that the hungry person starts to try to eat other people.
Anyway, the purpose of my story is almost as much to establish the world in which it is set as it is to tell a story itself. You see, I imagine that if I somehow managed to publish my story, I could establish a website describing my 'setting' for which any writer can then go and write a story, (within given constraints) they then submit the story to me online and if I like it, I push to get it published (there'll have to be some kind of agreement with a publisher). For new and undiscovered writers it might be a way to get your work noticed, and for me it's a way to be creative, read new and interesting stories and develop my own 'brand'.
In addition, there's the added benefit that after this initial story (and there has to be a story line, it can't just be explaining the world, otherwise it would be mighty boring) people can write stories (or even TV shows or movies) without having to explain the world in which they are set, because that's already done for them.
Any constructive ideas anyone?
