I've always thought it would be fun to write an anthology about a bus full of people. Going seat by seat and telling a little story about every single one of them. Not "why" they're on the bus necessarily, but who they are, a small story about their lives... a random group of strangers. These would be character development heavy, and lighter on the plot (not saying there can't be a plot, more that the focus would be on establishing who they are). As for the stories themselves, I largely imagine they wouldn't involve the bus at all. The bus is more the excuse that lets us tell all these vastly different stories, and isn't really relevant beyond that.
To put it another way, when we use public transportation, we kinda get on and put our lives on hold for the hour or so that we're travelling. Our lives happen outside the bus, and rarely does being on the bus really change anything. It's just this strange environment where everyone is together in location but totally separate. They have entirely different lives which just happen to all come together for this small chunk of time. At the end of the ride, every single one of them goes about their day, and the vast majority don't even think of the bus. They don't think of their passengers and they don't really know what happens to them when they get off. Yet, all the same, after riding with these people for months, you get used to who they are, and when they're missing, it's easy to try to imagine what happened... did they miss it? are they sick? did they get fired? etc.
It's a very strange, quasi-intimate experience.
As people decide to participate, I'll assign them a color and X out the seats they claim. I'll then refresh the image so that the bus will show immediately which seats are open to be written about. If you want to claim a seat, just do a quick post in the forum saying "I want seat X (or seats X, Y, and Z)" you can then update that post later with your story, or post the story at the end.
The stories should be relatively short, character driven pieces. This isn't action-kung-fu-theatre bus. This is normal people bus. There can be criminals on the bus, but they should be real people. There's no minimum or maximum page length. You can make it a paragraph or 10 pages if you'd like. Other than that, anything goes. Have fun with it!
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