THEY say everyone has a novel in them but at the rate a group of students have been writing, they could finish 52 books a year.
A collective of nine English literature AS and A-level students from Croydon College put the final touches to a 180-page crime thriller last Friday. The catch? They only started on Monday and wrote it in just five days.
Part of the TooManyCooks voluntary project, the students boldly juggled the ambitious task with their AS and A-level exams.
Locked together in a room for a week, they have produced Behind The Screen, a dark tale detailing the events in the aftermath of a popular student's suicide.
Each scribe, under the watchful eye of team leader and teacher Chantal Irtelli, was responsible for the actions of one of nine main characters.
Brandon White, 20, said he was surprised at how well the formula worked.
"I didn't expect the collaborative side of it to work so well but we didn't really argue a great deal," he said.
"I'm not sure I'd write a novel with so many people again but I might do it on my own."
The book, which is available on Amazon, deals with heavy themes such as mortality, victimisation and cyber crime, and is based all over London.
To write the 40,000-word novel, students had to storyboard the whole plot before they set to work writing it.
The group chose 'Tim Cooks' as their pen name - a reference to the TooManyCooks project title.
Brandon added: "We didn't leave it on a cliff-hanger and it rounded it off quite nicely.
"We don't want to give too much away before people read it but there are a lot of heavy topics in it so we thought it would be better to keep it a bit lighter at the end."
Teacher Ms Irtelli said she had been impressed by the creativity of her students and thought the end result was comparable to American young adult author Judy Blume.
Ms Irtelli said: "A lot of the students are very tired now but we are hoping to do it again next year.
"There were a lot of cooks but they didn't spoil the broth!"
To buy the book for £1.81, visit http://www.amazon.co.uk/Behind-Screen-Tim-Cooks-ebook/dp/B00L8FLVQI
