> I was actually thinking of a less interactive approach. More of being able to talk to and ask questions, to the author as it's being written. The sole discretion would still be up to the author to choose what direction the story would go, but I certainly would be "influenced" by an engaged audience. Who knows where the story would go with so many heads actively living in the "world" of said story.

Right! That's what I figured you meant at first. When you mentioned the "crowd funded mechanism" I wasn't sure if you also were thinking of ways for the crowd to be involved in the writing.

But ya, the interacting and the author seeing the comments and questions is interesting in its own right and would potentially influence the author.

> I think that it could be possible to create a third party app that people could vote on old content (and ongoing story) but it would "actually" go to like a comment that was made by the author elsewhere.

Interesting idea.

> I don't know how people would view such a system the works around the seven day limit, but I think it would certainly inspire writers to actually focus on quality as apposed to quantity. "Evergreen" material would be allowed an opportunity to be rewarded.

Right. I think people would definitely understand and support the spirit of it (even where it's working around the 7-day thing). I wonder about how it goes into action. I'd presume the Steemit blockchain would need to "cling on" to a post or comment of the author within 7 days, in order to have any way to issue rewards. So it would redirect your vote on the old thing to be a vote and reward on the new thing. 

I guess another option is like the author, probably thru a bot, would make a post like "rewards for Novel" every 7 days, and all the votes go there. (And they'd probably want to do it on a separate account to segregate the useless posts, if they have followers on their normal account.)

Not sure.