THE JADED promotional line of “a story of epic proportions” rang true yesterday as a world record for the most people to write a single creative work was broken in Dublin.
Almost 1,000 people contributed one sentence each to an ever-twisting tale about an arts-loving science student Sarah and her male best friend Sparky during the all-day event organised by See Change, a partnership organisation working across the Republic to reduce stigma associated with mental health problems.
The record attempt took place in the Physics Garden on campus in Trinity College Dublin over 12 hours yesterday.
A spokeswoman for See Change said the event was seen as a fun way to emphasise that Ireland needs to “rewrite its story on mental health”.
The record broken yesterday had been held since 2009 by South Pacific island Vanuatu, when 838 people participated. Yesterday’s event saw over 950 add a line to the narrative.
The characters in the story were dreamed up by organisers at a workshop this week with creative writing centre Fighting Words.
Five paragraphs were produced, providing the platform for an epic saga.
“The people in the workshop decided that Sarah’s greatest ambition was to fall in love, but she was afraid of failing her exams and letting people down,” said Orla Lehane, educational co-ordinator with Fighting Words.
From there, Sarah's story brought her to Kenya, she pondered joining the circus, had a fling with actor Ben Stiller, became an X-Factorstar and spent time in the monastic settlement on Skellig Michael, accompanied for the most part by her loyal friend Sparky, who unfortunately lost his leg at one stage in an air crash.
“It was kind of hard to keep up with,” admitted Fiona Gavin (19), from Rathfarnham in Dublin, after she contributed.
For Guinness to recognise the record, the story must be published on a pre-existing website. It was due to be published today on seechange.ie.
The story must also be coherent, a task that Fighting Words were assisting with yesterday.
A large projector showed each line as it was added, along with hand-drawn illustrations to highlight plot developments, and workers with the writing centre helped participants on how to contribute.