Set out below are the official rules of ThermoCow competitive fiction. Understanding them will greatly enrich your reading experience. Alternatively, you and a friend can use them to write your own cheap knock-off of Eagle Perfect: Legend of the First.

Title

To select a title, each author chooses two words. They then reveal their chosen words to each other simultaneously and assemble them into the funniest/catchiest possible title.

Characters

• Each author has one POV character, and all of their chapters must be written from that character’s point of view.
• Neither author can kill off the other’s POV character (or do anything in a similar spirit like travelling back in time and killing off the other author’s POV character’s mother). They can (and should), however, put the other author’s POV character in danger.
• Authors can build their own POV character to have whatever traits, etc, they want, but can also reveal things about the other POV character.
• Authors can advance the other POV character (as seen through their POV character), provided they stay in character. The “narrator voice” has no special power over the other POV character.
• Either author can introduce and eliminate any non-POV characters.
• Character attributes are chosen from a list, one by one, as if picking teams for a sporting match.

Plot

• The POV characters will have one central conflict that drives the story. Every chapter must develop the central conflict, even if it is only a little.
• The plot must be coherent on some level. No glaring inconsistencies with anything previously written, and no ignoring the other person’s plot cues.
• Subplots can arise spontaneously and again can’t just be ignored.

Opening situation / context / world building

Decided by agreement.

First chapter author

Decided by coin toss. Winner can choose to start writing or send the opposition in to write. 

End

When the story is on the cusp of its conclusion, each author will each his own version of the final chapter, creating two alternate endings.