People go into collaborations for different reasons…and each project, and each co-author, is a different situation. Sometimes, two or more writers collaborate because they came up with a brilliant idea in the bar at three in the morning…and next day, it still looks brilliant and fun. Sometimes, the collaboration springs out of something that began as a mutual writing exercise. Sometimes, two friends discover they’re working on very similar projects and decide to share. Sometimes, one of the writers is trying to cheer up the other, or help them out of a hole. Sometimes, two writers find that they work much, much more effectively when they toss ideas back and forth between them and then dash to the computer to get something down than they do trying to crank stuff out on their own.
Similarly, there lots of different methods for collaborating. One that works well for a lot of people is “I write my characters; you write your characters,” in which each writer comes up with some characters, they decide mutually on which ones will be the central viewpoints, and then they work out (in advance or as they go along) which scenes will be from which viewpoint. The writer who has that character writes the scene.
Another one is to have one viewpoint character, and switch writers at the end of every scene or chapter. I heard once that this is how Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth worked, with one writer spending his chapter getting the hero into a terrible fix and leaving him on a cliffhanger, and the other writer then having to write him out of the mess. I don’t know if that’s true, but it would certainly explain the plot-pattern in some of their collaborations.
I’ve also known collaborations where one writer does one type of writing – all the dialog, say – and the other puts in all the action or the narrative. This works really really well when each writer is playing to a particularly strong point, but it requires a whole lot of trust in each other.
Yet another collaboration style is the one where one writer does the prep work and a detailed outline, the second writer comes up with a first draft, and the first writer does the rewrite and polish. This is especially common in the sort of commercial collaboration wherein a publisher matches up a new, up-and-coming writer with one who’s more experienced and who has a large following, in hopes of boosting the newer writer’s audience, but there are other collaborative partnerships that just naturally fall into this pattern.
And there’s the one where both writers are in the same room, with one looking over the other’s shoulder, switching places whenever the one at the computer gets stuck or the one watching can’t stand it any more. It doesn’t seem to be common (since it requires both writers to be in the same place), but I know at least one set of roommates who work this way, and I’ve seen several folks do this to produce short stories while at a convention.
There is no one right way to collaborate with someone; there is only what works for a given pair of collaborators. I’ve worked on several, and each of them was different. For the Kate and Cecy books, Caroline wrote Kate (and later Thomas), and I wrote Cecy (and later James); we didn’t talk much about plot and the only editing of each other’s writing we did was for typos and consistency. Because they were in letter format, we were essentially doing the “you write your characters, I’ll write mine” method, plus the switch-writers/viewpoints-at-the-end-of-each-chapter method. The big advantage of working like this was that there was never any problem with the characters all sounding alike, or with one of us not really “getting” the other’s characters well enough to write them from the inside.
For two other collaborations (each with a different author), we picked a viewpoint character, then one of us wrote until we got stuck (which was sometimes in mid-sentence); then we handed it off to the other person. The next writer would go over the previous writer’s work, editing and making changes, then go on until they got stuck, whereupon they’d hand it back. The editing-and-revision pass kept the viewpoint character’s characterization and the overall style remarkably consistent, even though, as I said, sometimes we switched writers in mid-chapter, mid-scene, or mid-sentence.
Another collaboration I worked on involved you-write-your-characters-I’ll-write-mine, but with lots and lots of joint plot-planninig and a lot more editing of each other’s chapters than Caroline and I did.
In each case, I don’t think the results would have been nearly as good if we hadn’t worked the way we did. Trying to write Kate and Cecy with lots of plot-planning and each of us editing the other would have a) killed the books dead (Caroline is the sort of writer who cannot discuss her work in advance of writing it without killing it), and b) probably smoothed out the voice and style more than was appropriate for an epistolary novel. Trying to write a single-viewpoint collaboration without editing each other would likely have made it lumpy and inconsistent in style, voice, and quite possible stuff-that-happens (also, in both cases, there really wasn’t anybody else either of us wanted to write. It was that character’s story, and nobody else’s).
All of the successful collaborations I’m familiar with have been ones in which both of the writers were having a tremendously good time. The Fun Quotient isn’t a guarantee that the project will get finished, much less reach professional publication – I’ve had loads of fun working on each and every collaboration, but the three Kate and Cecy books. are the only ones that ended up published, and only one of the others made it to any sort of ending.
Since this post got awfully long, I’m splitting it into two parts. So more random thoughts about collaborating next time.
Cool! I have no idea how I would feel about collaborating on fiction, but actually, Monday night I had a great time collaborating while writing an academic abstract. My friend was like “we should submit one of those ideas we’ve had on Old Irish to DIGS!” And I was like “sure!” And she was like “The deadline is tomorrow.”
She came over at 8 and we figured out an idea, and some examples, and she wrote like a rabid squirrel while I made tea. Then I took it and reorganized it, and went through it sentence by sentence to make sure it actually said what we thought it said. Then I wrote a theoretical paragraph, and she hung over my shoulder and said “be less aggressive there.” We rewrote it.
The we sent it to the professor and he said “Great! Done!”
This never happens.
It was really a bit of an incredible experience because it worked. We weren’t fighting about phrasing and there weren’t egos on the line, and we came up with something smart and clear and coherent in the same amount of time that either one of us would have spent making a mess of it.
And if the organizers like it, yo Lisbon!
I’ve never done anything like this, so it’s interesting to get a peek behind the curtain. I think it worked out wonderfully for you in the Kate and Cecy books, which seems like a fun exercise. I want to try that sometime when I come across another author who writes in a similar genre to me (it seems like most writers I “meet” online write paranormal YA …) and who I get to know and trust their style. I don’t think a collaboration like this would work unless both writers were of equal ability.
Any thoughts on whether it is a good or a bad thing for a new author to start out as a collaborator?
I am referring to commercial collaboration where the publisher pairs an established author with a new one.
JP:
Well, I paid no attention at all to Misty Lackey until she did The Elvenbane with Andre Norton. Baen routinely pairs newbies with front-list writers, and the junior partners generally say it’s more than worth it both for the recognition and the education. The pay, OTOH, isn’t wonderful, since the royalties are split between them, so it’s not something they want to do too much of. Also, when I did pick up on Misty, I realised that her name was also on the only one of the Brainship books that I’d actually enjoyed – but I had promptly forgotten her, so that one didn’t work out all that well for her.
So, I guess, the answer is, as always, ‘it depends’
Cara – That’s exactly how the best collaborations work. And good luck!
Tiana – Defining what’s “a better writer” is pretty tricky. I’ve worked with writers who were both more and less experienced than I am, and with writers who were significantly stronger or weaker in one particular area than I was in that area. It made a bit of difference in terms of the way the mechanics of the collaboration worked – if both writers were at the same level and we disagreed, the discussion about what to do was usually longer, whereas if one writer was stronger or more expeirienced in a particular area, the less-strong writer often (not always) accepted the stronger writer’s argument sooner – but there wasn’t really any difference in whether the collaboration worked at all. It’s more about trust than it is about ability.
J.P. – If you are a completely unpublished writer, you are not going to persuade a publisher to match you up with an established author. Publishers only do this for authors they’re already publishing, authors they want to give a boost to (and apart from Baen, most of them don’t do so very often). If you are good friends with a published writer and you come up with something that fits the “fun quotient,” it’s possible, but if you’re looking at it as a boost into publication, it’s unlikely to work (and you’re highly unlikely to persuade a published writer, even a good friend, to do this UNLESS they’re going to have big fun. As Louis said, the money isn’t very good, and besides the fun, there’s not much in it for the more experienced writer).
Louis – What you said. Which is why “is it fun?” is really the most important question about any collaboration.
Patricia – I know this is really rare and amazingly lucky. I am not asking about the totally unpublished scenario. I am asking about when Baen has new writers publish in anthology collections a few times and then write with the main author as Eric Flint appears to have done with Virginia DeMarce. Ms. DeMarce has five books this way, which I enjoyed. I have seen nothing by her outside that universe, however. I was wondering if the nature of her entry in publishing is preventing her from publishing anything that is solo written and also outside of that world. What do you (or others) think? I don’t know her and have not seen her at any conventions to just ask.
J.P. – I can’t speak to your specific examples; all I can do is speculate. Writing a collaboration is nearly as much work, and takes nearly as much time, as writing a solo project. A writer who’s having fun and making money writing a collaborative SERIES is very likely not to have time for anything else, unless they’re one of those really fast folks who can write two or three books per year without any problem. I wouldn’t expect a writer with Ms. DeMarce’s track record to have problems selling her solo work, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that she’s currently having difficulty finding time to write it.
I’m so glad to hear that. I have paid short story publication scheduled for this month on Baen’s website, and I was offered a paid opportunity to write for an anthology. I am doing it. I am delighted. And yet, my back brain was trying to come up with reasons why this must secretly somehow be really bad, because surely entries into publishing are for other people and not for me.
J.P. – Tell that bit of your backbrain to sit down and shut up. And then enjoy being published and getting paid. (And perhaps pay some attention to the series of posts I’ll be starting Wednesday…) 🙂
(Caroline is the sort of writer who cannot discuss her work in advance of writing it without killing it)
AHHHH! I AM NOT ALONE!!!!!!
Ahem. Sorry. It’s just nice to have validation about one’s own style now and then.
(Also, I agree, J.P. Shove that bit of backbrain into a corner and tell it to stop being afraid of success. Also, CONGRATS!)
It’s quite possible that Virginia doesn’t have any other stories to tell. I suspect that she only thinks she doesn’t – i was [virtually] watching when she was frog-marched up onto the authors’ podium. Insisting the whole time that she was an academic who wasn’t _able_ to write fiction. Given how deeply she’s involved in the 1632 project, it’s true she may never branch out on her own, but now that she’s turned loose her inner author I wouldn’t be surprised if something completely original came bubbling to the surface and was published in the next few years.
Anyway, the point is that her career isn’t typical – nor is 1632 at all typical of what Ms Wrede has been talking about. You should look at what you’re doing as following the _old_ career model: showing you can write publishable material by coming up through the magazines, then getting a book publisher to take a whirl.