Kalevala Project -response to Veijo

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!grebyn.com!lojbab>]

The people at LogFest I think disagree strongly with what you say in this
message.  The stories indeed stand on their own, but if we are to have
any cohesiveness to a set of stories written by a a variety of people, many
with no particular talent for literary writing, we need some common setting
that is well enough developed that the stories hang together.  Otherwise
we just have an anthology of random stories, which loses the joint-ness
of the project.

The effort of those who worked hard to come up with the scenario, and the
rather inspirational effect it seemed to have as the coffeeshop came together
in peoples minds, is just the type of consensus work that we lojbo do well, and
I want to see more of it.

Indeed, the better writers can invent stories and worlds of their own, and
characters as well.  Others may choose to have their story rest in an
interaction between patrons and staff in the coffeeshop, which itself is
a basis for a lot of powerful story imagery, and, given some preparatory
work in character development of the staff, allows people with perhaps less
skill or imagination to still tell a reasonable story, concentrating on the
Lojban and NOT on the creative work that not all of us do so well.

lojbab