On Writing 2: Canterbury

The other day, I posted the following on wandering.shop:

#Story idea:
A 21-st century update of The Canterbury Tales, told by a carful of frat boys on a massive road trip to Disney World.
It was the English major's idea; he was sick of the music the other guys brought.

Now, we all know Disney World is America's great modern pilgrimage site, but I wasn't prepared for how many people were excited about this idea, or the responses that suggested I actually write the story. There are a couple of things in the way, I explained:

1. I've never actually read The Canterbury Tales, and don't feel like I have time to.
2. I have no idea how college-age guys talk, or how much the vernacular has changed since I was an undergrad. To really get a sense of it, I'll have to get help from my brother, who is an undergrad, and I don't know how much time he has either.

But somebody went and found me the Project Gutenberg upload of The Canterbury Tales, so now I guess I'm doing this thing. Or at least figuring out how to modernize the basic structure of the story.

Things I'll need to figure out for this outline:

• how many days the trip should take (it's probably going to be shorter than the original, since they've got a car)
• who the characters are--they have to have distinct personalities, or at least defining characteristics. Otherwise, as someone pointed out, it's just going to be "The Bro's Tale" over and over. I'm at least going to have:
• the English major who has the idea
• a science or engineering major
• an athlete
• a musician
• maybe a girlfriend or two
• which stories I'm retelling, and whether I need to add any new ones

I'm not guaranteeing I'll get anywhere with this; it may be that this isn't a good idea, or that I'm not the writer who will do it best. But here it is, and if it goes anywhere I'll talk about it in my crafting updates.