I found this the other day on Mary Balogh’s site. I can’t remember if I have blogged about it before or not. I love this idea and have to say I have wondered what the results would be like.

From Mary Balogh:

I am also involved in writing for an anthology that Avon will be publishing some time in 2008. There are four contributors–Stephanie Laurens, Candice Hern, Jacquie D’Alessandro, and me. This book uses a fascinating concept–one in which I have been trying to arouse interest for several years. Finally I succeeded! It has always been my theory that if a number of writers were given exactly the same plot premise, they would proceed to write stories that were quite different from one another. That is what the four of us are doing. We have agreed upon certain plot elements: a man and a woman, who have not seen each other for ten years, are separately stranded at the same inn. The whole story is to cover no more than twenty-four hours. We are not conferring as we write these stories. It is an experiment that I hope will work as we all anticipate it will–that is, we will produce four unique stories even though they will have the same basic plot idea. More of this later, when the stories are written and our editor at Avon tells us what she thinks!