posted
I have day dreamed many times of penning a masterpiece with some of my literary idols. I'm wondering if anyone has had the opportunity to work with another wordsmith. What was the experience like? What were some of the pros and cons?
[This message has been edited by Denem (edited February 28, 2009).]
posted
I love writing with other people. It's always gone very smoothly for me, and it helps to have consistent, quality input on characterization and plot. It's good to take advantage of each others' strenghs. In one fantasy story I co-authored (just for fun, never published), I always made him write the fight scenes, because he was so much better than me.
Now I have a letter game going on with a different friend. We each have a character, and then our characters write letters to each other advancing their own sides of the plot. It's a lot of fun to do.
posted
First off, no, I haven't collaborated with any of my "idols", but I have- and am collaborating with a couple of fine writers. BC is right in that it is a chance to watch someone who is skilled in your weak spots and learn from them, but I'm too hands on to watch.
What we did, in the collaboration I'm writing on now, is to spend time writing with the main characters, getting to know them, while we were expanding on the basic outline we had in mind. When we focused on finishing the outline, it grew (exponentially). So we focused on the acts, the chapters and character growth and found ourselves with plans for three stories set in vastly different timelines. Then we honed in on the most distant timeline first. Once we shgarpened it, we decided who would take each character at first (chapter-by-chapter) and as we progressed, we broke the latter chapters down so we each have a hand in all of the scenes. In the end, we'll each go over the other's work, filling in what we feel is missing, and making notes of what needs to be cut or trimmed. Then we'll exchange files and make the corrections to our own work (and their edits). By the time we put them back together, we should have a fairly polished piece. Then we'll have to get together for a couple of days and knock the rest out.
And yes, so far, it's been extremely rewarding and allowed me to grow as a writer. But, it's not for everyone.
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I found collaborating a mildly unhappy experience...not that I've done much of it, and not at all since college. But it proves nothing. It was for English class, my collaborators were all non-writers, and we were assigned specific tasks within the collaboration...I got the feeling I was doing all the heavy lifting in the process. Perhaps with someone more serious about writing...
(Not that I've rewritten the work of others, and had my own rewritten---there was a lot of that in my Internet Fan Fiction period, where we handed each other each other's works and rewrote them to demonstrate what we had in mind---sort of a one-up-from-critiquing.)
posted
Collaboration is something that has to be done carefully. First off, you have to get along. Second, both of you have to understand the world you are working on and have some form of agreement on how things work there. Third, there has to be some spoken, or unspoken agreement on how much work each does. Fourth, one must give up some Ego to share one's baby, and for some that is nearly impossible. The fear of it being stolen after you have done all the work, is something one must deal with, one way or another. Many authors just cannot give in to another.
I am in a collaboration on my Waxy Dragon stories. Early on, I would allow others write stories, and I would edit them to fit my world. The stories were written for a particular audience, and they sort of joined in at various levels. My writing partner wrote quite a few stories and her handle on the world was excellent. She started suggesting things I had not thought about, and now is an equal partner in the world. She writes her own stuff too, which is dark fantasy. What we find we do a lot of now, is that I will write my best, which tends to be the action, and she will edit it, adding scenery and dialog to the pieces. Essentually, I create the piece and she dresses it.
One should start slowly on sharing, and work into it, to see how you get along and work together.
posted
My first completed novel was at the age of seventeen with my cousin who happens to be one of my best friends. The benefits of this process were: 1. It leant some confidence that we would finish it because we could rely on each other 2. We came up with a lot more ideas and were able to build new ideas by combining our independent ideas in a synergistic way and 3. We could get after each other to write and motivate each other.
The drawbacks were 1. Disagreement on any idea would halt our progress 2. The result didn't perfectly resemble what either of us wanted because we had to compromise.
But ultimately, looking back, neither of us remember whose idea was what and we agree that the end result was certainly better than what either could have come up with on our own.
Though here's a recommendation. Have one person be the main writer, and have him re-write the scenes written by writer 2. This is to keep the voice of the story consistent.
posted
I've yet to collaborate with anyone, and would be very choosey about whom I chose to collaborate with if I were to do so. I had many bad experience with collaborating on programming projects in college. Invariably I ended up doing 90% of the work if I wanted it to turn out well, including the administrative stuff of planning meetings and how to merge things.
If I found someone I worked well with, I think it could potentially be cool, though I can see lots of potential conflicts if you can't agree on some things (such as the ending).
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