Storytellers sought
World record up for grabs at Comic Con...
Everyone has got a creative mind set and I’m excited to see what they put into this story. It’s the first audience where we believe everyone who comes past us will be excited about adding a sentence.” Andrew Aitken
This is a story about a story written by a thousand authors or more — well hopefully.
A Niagara Falls man and independent publisher, Andrew Aitken, aims to break a Guinness world record this June at Niagara Falls Comic Con.
The record? The most people to write a story in 24 hours. The rules are fairly simple. Each participant has to write one sentence after getting a brief buffer of what is happening in the story.
Aitken, a passionate writer and advocate for other writers, has been trying to spread a love for writing for years with projects like his #becreative literacy tour for years and this has been a part of his adventure.
“We [writtenrock.ca] want to make literacy and literature fun and entertaining for people who wouldn’t normally think of it as something fun and entertaining,” says Aitken.
“My hope is that this could actually spark a career in writing for those people who think ‘wow, I want to write more.’”
“I’m going to be the person dealing with a large number of people at once, telling them what’s happened so far. And as one person comes up to us and makes a sentence we can quickly advise them of what is happening in the story. We won’t alter their sentence but we can influence them by what’s going on.”
Aitken says he is hopeful to meet his goal at Comic Con this year, with it being one of the city’s biggest events and attracting 27,000 people last year.
“I’m very interested to see where this goes because Comic Con is filled with people with imaginations for sci-fi and fantasy, so I can imagine the amazing story we are going to create. Everyone has got a creative mind set and I’m excited to see what they put into this story. It’s the first audience where we believe everyone who comes past us will be excited about adding a sentence.”
Aitken says he will write the first paragraph of the story and from there, “who knows where the story could go.”
The current Guinness record stands at 1,178 people, held by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press in Beijing, China, set in 2013.
Aitken plans to publish the book through his publishing company as an e-book when it’s all complete. He says he’ll be offering the book for free.
This isn’t Aitken’s first attempt at breaking the record. He says he’s tried about eight times so far, the most recent being at Niagara Buskerfest and the best so far being at Canal Days in 2013 where he gathered more than 500 participants in 12 hours.
The one hang up for Aitken is that he currently can’t bring down a Guinness adjudicator, meaning he will have to record a non-stop video of everything involved, collect head shots and signatures.
He has opened a Kickstarter page that aims to raise funds to bring down a proper Guinness adjudicator, with rewards for those who donate, such as a spot on their sponsor board, a personalized e-book of the story and bookmarks.
The record attempt will take place on the Saturday of Comic Con.
All of the previous attempts are available to read at Aitken’s website, writtenrock.ca.
Chris Dabrowski, co-founder of Niagara Falls Comic Con, says he thinks the record attempt is a great fit for the event.
He says they’ve got more than the numbers to make it happen.
On Saturday, their busiest day, he says there are thousands of people lined up outside before it even begins.
He says he’s excited to see the result, even if Aitken doesn’t end up breaking the record.
“The best writers who come through our lineup are children. They have the most imagination. They aren’t barred to a way of thinking — they just blurt it out of their mind.”