The way we did this in the past was I and the other two players had a very simple agreement on the overall structure of the story. Our characters were to have met in their youth but then due to some circumstances, were separated shortly after. We just made the story up as we went. One of us would add a paragraph or two, then PM it and the other player would add something to it. If we wanted to revise it or mix in our character's reactions we just went ahead and edited the previous poster's work and PM'd it back to them. After going back and forth so many times we eventually had a pretty decent background story which gave a lot of insight into the rp event that it supported.
If interested, this is the story that we ended up writing. It served as a backdrop for a major RP event that we participated in. My characters were Rigwyn and Izalox. Jacula and Jaida/Cavi were the other two players - Cavi/Jaida posted the stories that she and I wrote. The event itself was run by Jacula.... hope he doesn't mind me posting this xD
http://www.hydlaaplaza.com/smf/index.php?topic=36609.0
Regarding this particular story, this is what I am hoping to accomplish:
I have a human male warlock that I want to develop. I thought it might be interesting if he started out as an ambitious, power-driven student or novice in the scarlet monastery (or some other tainted school of light) and then have him fall from grace so to speak. As for the how of it, I'm entertaining a few possibilities:
A. He might meet a female warlock who he tries to impress.. perhaps she leads him astray - or perhaps he denies being a scarlet and tries to learn the dark arts in order to impress her... and from there continues to spiral downward and eventually breaks his ties with the monastery. Perhaps he is caught with some dark literature and is cast out.
B. He might suffer some terrible form of abuse while in the monastery and turn his back on the light - blaming the holy light for not helping him when in need. Ie. He might be taken advantage of by a mentor or superior or unfairly punished. His drive for power would be at odds with such a feeling of powerlessness.
C. Perhaps he fails some test of faith miserably. If you have ever heard of the phenomena referred to as
"Dark night of the soul" its basically a spiritual state where a believer is basically hurled into a major depression. In this state they are forced to rely on raw faith - not pious feelings to get by. It might be interesting if he was in this state and snapped - turning to evil.
I'm open to other possibilities too. It all depends on what objectives other players have for their characters. If someone wanted to write in an abusive/sadistic scholar, then "B" might work best, likewise if someone was interested in writing about a temptress or someone who was out to corrupt innocent scarlet novices then "A" might work best.
As for the time-frame, I think Alonus would probably need to be a young adult if we was studying in a monastery, and once he turned to the dark side, he would need a good amount of time to become proficient at being a warlock. My guess is perhaps he enters the monastery at 15, and at 20 or so he turns. This would give him another 10 to 15 years to train as a warlock making him about 35 years old. He would of course need to come in contact with a warlock mentor at some point. This is a very loose timeframe - I still need to check it against lore to make sure it makes sense.
For location, I was thinking areas in the vicinity of the scarlet monastery might be good since its very close to horde and alliance territory. Adding alliance and horde characters to the story should be pretty easy.
As you can see there would be lots of room for a variety of races and classes. Some characters may remember each other from this past event, others may have changed their appearance since then. Likewise, relics, books, and memorable objects could be written into this past event and then could surface later on.
How does this sound so far?