lunabee34 | Successful Co-Writing: the Who with the What Now?

I've been wondering for some time now how those of you who co-author fics negotiate doing so. It seems to me that writing with another person is potentially an incredibly rewarding experience but also one that can be fraught with tension. The only time I attempted to co-write a fic was roughly two years ago, and while the experience was very positive and a lot of fun, the fic was ultimately abandoned when we both had different visions for the project.

In the interest of full disclosure, my musing is prompted by an unfinished fic currently sitting on my hard drive. I'd love for someone to write it with me, but I'm unsure how the actual writing would proceed. Does one person do most of the actual writing, while the second person contributes heavily in the outlining, plotting, and revision/expansion stages (which seems the most workable model to me)? Do both people write equally, maybe taking turns every page or so (which seems much more difficult to me as even two very good writers will differ in terms of style)?

If you have written with another person and feel that the experience was a positive one, please share with me your tips on co-writing. And I'm maybe kinda putting out feelers to the hard-core flisters here about collaborating with me on something. Maybe. LOL

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Leah and I have an awesome time writing together. In fact, we're trying to get in sync to write something else together. When we're going strong, it's more fun than writing alone, because you get that sense of joy from your thoughts synchronizing and feeling like you're two halves of the same brain...

Like some of the other folks on your flist mentioned, Leah & I toss around story ideas on chat first. When we start writing seriously, we at least have a bare-bones plot, know what the major conflict is going to be, and how it's going to end. Then we each go off and write individual scenes in the story, and come back and share them, discuss them on chat, and refine our outline. By the time we've got around a third of the fic written, we usually have a list of scenes that need to be in the story to cover all the plot points, and what POV each scene is going to be in. Then we divide up the unwritten scenes, depending on who has a strong opinion about how any particular scene should go.

I should mention that we've been using either Google Docs (https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=writely&passive=true&continue=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&followup=http%3A%2F%2Fdocs.google.com%2F&ltmpl=homepage&nui=1) and Zoho Writer (http://writer.zoho.com/jsp/home.jsp?serviceurl=%2Findex.do) to make collaboration easier, and so that we're always on the same version of the story. (they're about the same, btw, Zoho can deal with slightly longer wordcount than GoogleDocs, but for longer fics, you're going to have to break the document into chapters, or the program will lose part of the document.) Each system also has a chat module, so you can write and chat at the same time if that works for you (I'm not coordinated enough to do that too often.), and you can give each other access so that you can edit each other's work.

You have to decide how much you trust your co-writer with your work, and agree beforehand what is okay to do and what is not. Is it okay to edit something you wrote without pointing out the changes that were made, or do you have to go through a "track changes" or similar mode and let each other approve of the other person's changes? Do you trust the other person to tell you when to chuck something and rewrite a scene? Do you trust them when they say: "here, wait, I have an idea!" and *they* rewrite your scene? It depends, obviously, and the different amounts of trust and confidence in each other don't come all at once, or without effort. You can, and probably should, take it in stages.

I think the best place to look for a collaborator would be to talk to folks who have betaed your fic before, and who you have a certain level of trust in already, and whose opinion you respect. Especially those of your betas whose writing you like, or whose writing is simpatico with yours, so that it's easier for your styles to mesh. It's good if you can find someone whose strengths and weaknesses complement your own, so that together, you're better than either of you apart...

This is such good advice. I've used Google docs before in a professional setting; I don't know why it didn't occur to me that the program is ideal for this situation as well.

And I also hadn't thought about setting boundaries with editing--whether your partner will require that you show your work or simply trust your edits.

The more that everyone comments, the more I become convinced that collaborating is an amazing experience that is A LOT of work to get right. LOL

collaborating is an amazing experience that is A LOT of work to get right.

absolutely. It's wonderful when it works right, but it's too easy to hurt someone's feelings or make them feel slighted or just dissatisfied. And that's the last thing you want, isn't it?

I'm lucky that Leah's extraordinarily thoughtful and gracious, but not everyone has that mode as their default setting, so it's probably a good idea to agree on boundaries and how you and your partner would be comfortable working together. Then you can relax and have fun writing cool fic together!

*nods*

And you're not the only lucky one. We all get to benefit from how well the two of you work together. :)

Successful Co-Writing: the Who with the What Now?

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