Novel Twists

May 17, 8.22am

The imaginative way in which people use the internet never ceases to amaze me. The latest item to catch my attention was Novel Twists, which I read about in the Guardian and checked out yesterday.

It is the brainchild of one Phil McArthur a former cancer suffered is raising funds for the very worthy Macmillan Cancer Support charity by asking people to pay to contribute - page by page - to a mystery novel. The pages are auctioned, one by one on eBay and the winner of each page has to contribute their 250 to 450 words within 24 hours.

It is a very interesting idea, and certainly a very clever way of raising money for charity.

The results - or at least those in the first 17 pages - are, perhaps predictably, mixed. Most mystery fans like their plots to move at a quick pace, but this is breaking-the-sound-barrier fast. Almost enough to make the reader feel queasy. One or two of the 17 contributors so far have tried to calm it down and add some characterisation, depth and context or just to allow the book to pause for air. But it's going to need a lot more of that in the 233 pages to come otherwise it's going to be messy and utterly unreadable.

It's all very well carping from the sidelines, but that's not really going to help anyone. So I've decided to have a go, and at some point in the next 10 pages, buy one and add to the mix.