Writing in Collaboration with Others - what are the secrets of success?

I'm in the middle of co-writing a non-SW fic with my friend Frosty. So far it's worked out wonderfully.


First, we both have the same idea of where we want the story to go and how we want the characters to develop. If you don't agree on where you're going you'll have a heck of a time getting there.

Second, as Ishtar said, play to your strengths. Frosty's better at emoting, while I'm a little better at action, so I write most of the action scenes and she focuses on the more dramatic ones.


Not necessary, but an interesting sidenote, is that we're a lot alike in personality. We can write each other's characters and be very, very close. Often there's only minor changes that are made to tweak the characters back to true. We've been at this long enough that it's hard to tell who wrote which scenes anymore, and I think that's dang cool.

 

*waves at oba*

I see a lot of advice about style and planning and outlines and things, but I'm going to state something here that will probably come off as obvious -- Make sure you and your cowriter can get along.

Conflicts in personality between authors = not good. It affects your writing, your timing, and just about everything else that will influence the quality of your story and the reader response to it. I've only seriously cowritten with oba, and stars know she's my bud. We got to know each other over time, but it would be so difficult to write with a complete stranger who may or may not have a totally conflicting personality.

When looking for a cowriter, in addition to all the stylistic elements, look for the things you look for in a friend, because chances are that that's what you're going to turn into as the story progresses. It's bonding not only in the story but between the two people as well; you're going to be spending a lot of time talking to this person, relating to the story and otherwise.

Wow, that was a long rambling.

 

Wow, that was a long rambling.

Long maybe. But appreciated all the same. Thankfully, though, that is one problem we don't have!

 

I've never actually cowritten a single story, but I've collaborated on a series...sort of. What happened is this: a long time ago (in a galaxy nearby ) I joined a SW ezboard. There were three very good fan fic authors there at the time, all of whom were including little tributes to each other's fics in their own fics.

Being a good author (or so I'm always told) myself, I started posting some fics of my own and also used references to the other three authors' fics. As time went on, the four of us would talk on AIM a lot, bouncing ideas off each other and suggesting things for the plot and stuff. Eventually, I proposed that we make the connections between our fics "official" and I created another ezboard and set up tight security so only the four of us could use it for us to do our planning on. Thus the Fan Fic Alliance (or just FFA for short) was born. Eventually, another author joined the message board and we liked his writing so much that we offered to let him join the FFA, so there's five of us now.

Anyhow, because our stories started out independant of each other, we had already had too much of our plots preplanned in advance to completely mesh them into one timeline. Rather, our timeline branches into two distinct continuities.

 

Big collaboration in process on the KOTOR fanfic some of us are doing. We've not started properly yet, but I think it will work out.

I think that the secret is really to just keep in contact with the person/s you're writing with and be able to get on.

 

There is a collaboration of sorts on this thread.

We're still looking for some writers if anyones interested. Not sure if this would be leligable for the co-authors board.

 

Oooh what a great topic. I've written more fics collaborating than I have by myself. Collaborating is a great tool because you are accountable to someone else and you can't just put the story down and never pick it up again if you have someone else working with you. It helps get over that frustrating writer's block. But I think the key is communication. I've co-written with both Durhelediel and Greencat336 and in both situations we've written it out sort of rpg style first. It's great to get the creative juices flowing and the characters can interact more that way and it definetely helps when you're stuck with dialogue. (Did I spell that right? It doesn't look right for some reason)

 

Hmm, well me and my friend -Trickster- have been working together on stories for a long time. While we would both have stories that one of us would mainly be working on, we've almost always contributed a ton of stuff to the toehr's story. For examply, most of these collabertaions have come from this little yet complicated AU universe that we created that actualyl started as an RPG. We'd be talking on MSN Messenger adn one of us would say something like "Hey, I need to think of how to work with this. Can you give me some character reactions?" And by the end of that, we'd have almost a whole "Chapter" RPed out adn ready to be put into story format. But working together with someone is always fun, and it can make the evil DWB slightly less of a problem because the chances are that if you're stuck at a part, your co-author will have an idea and then you can just wave good-bye to that evil Sith Lord.
Anyways, that's just my two-cents...

:Targeter:

 

Layren:Collaborating is a great tool because you are accountable to someone else and you can't just put the story down and never pick it up again if you have someone else working with you. It helps get over that frustrating writer's block.

Very true. It helps to know how much you will personally dissapoint one person if you discontinue a story. Most of the time we writers don't lose interest in our pet projects, we just get discouraged by the whole isolation of it all. Writing is very isolating. When you are co-writing, there's someone to share that loneliness and it's rather wonderful.

 

So I take it that you're having a wonderful time with the two stories you're co-writing, right l_n?

 

So I take it that you're having a wonderful time with the two stories you're co-writing, right l_n?

Yes, I am!

 

Great topic!

A friend and I are working on our first collaboration, which is also the first co-writing effort for both of us.

We started by drafting an outline and dividing it up into who would write which portion. We've allowed it to be an organic creature, however, and have discovered that flexibility and open-mindedness are our friends, lol.

In our case, the story boils down to the characterization of two protagonists. She is the definitive voice for one and I the other, based on our personal fandom/writing preferences. Although we both write each character, we agreed to advise each other on characterization issues.

So far, what has worked for us is to send portions/chapters back and forth and beta each other's work until we are both happy with the chapter.

Also, a practical tip that is helping us is to incorporate the story with the outline and use designated text colors when sending the outline/story back and forth. For example, the outline is always in black text, with the body of the story added under the appropriate plot point, where her writing is always in red and mine is always in blue. This helps us keep track of who wrote what and where the story is going.

(I should mention that we have an added advantage of being FanForce friends and have spent many late nights on the phone or in my living room floor talking about the story, lol.)

It is still very much a work in progress with only 2 chapters posted, but we are having fun - and that is definitely the most important factor.

 

oops - the hazards of sharing a pc, lol

 

I agree with l_n on the motiviation to keep writing and keep within a timeline to post. I'm Jedi-Trace's co-author, and knowing that she is a writing-machine keeps me on my toes. In our case, as Trace mentioned characterization is our strength. She writes Mara and I write Vader, but when we have to write the others we really lean on each other for feedback and support. This is actually been the best writing experience I've ever had!!

 

As was said earlier, the key factor is TIME.

My coauthor and I worked great together. We had the entire story planned out 6 months in advance, we had the first chunk of it written out, everything. But, we could never finish it because we never had the time.

Also, as Lilith mentioned, it's sometimes better to have two different strength. I know with my coauthor Amanda, she could write wonderful imagery yet didn't like doing dialouge, and I loved dialouge and stunk at imagery. So, we'd play off each other.

But one of the most important things ever: make sure you two get along.

 

I've only done a couple collabs with Star Trek ficcing. I wrote primarily for the one main character and the other writer handled the other main character with us divvying up the background characters amongst ourselves.

It started out of the blue with his asking me if I was up to do one in the one Trek group we share and I said 'why not?'. Communication is vital in my opinion (we worked on the fic in emails while discussing plot and such through instant messenge) and so is time. The first story we did with our OCs took about three months to finish and we had such a good time of it, we did a sequel later on.

I'd love to do a Star Wars collab, but like the others, it's that first step of asking that's the crunch. So many here are strapped on time or busy and I'd hate to put them on the spot so to speak when they've already got a full plate as it is.

 

I'm currently co-writing two fics with two different friends and I've found that the actual writing process should be alternated chapter-chapter, but every chapter should be brainstormed over IM or the like by both authors so that the story doesn't take any unwanted twists.

And yeah. RPing out chapters works really well