collaboration notes
Charlie Stross
pass on some of the experiences.
I've worked on collaborations in two ways, and there's a third method
that I haven't tried. Method (a) is for one writer to write a draft,
then pass it to the other to re-write. This probably doesn't demand
much explaining. Method (b) is less predictable. One writer starts by
writing a scene, or a part of a scene, then throws it at the other writer
to extend. The other writer adds a bit, throws it back, and they kick
ideas around (in email, on the phone, by whatever means) for where the
story is going. (I'm going to ignore method (c), which is for J. Random
Famous Author to write an outline, and J. Random Grubbing Hack to fill
in the dots in return for a cut in the proceeds.)
Obstacles to a collaboration by method (b) working include, but are not
limited to, the following:
1. Writing skill. Don't start this kind of collaboration with someone who
isn't at roughly the same level as yourself in terms of ability, or
the sutures on your Frankensteinian monster will tear.
2. Marketing/ownership. You need to reach agreement on ownership before
you get stuck in, or you'll be in trouble. This applies to writers at
all levels. One equitable solution is joint ownership -- each of you
agrees that the other owns 50% of the work, but retains the right to
cede ownership to the other (i.e., to give up on it). Money from sales
is split 50/50, unless it's in a personal anthology, in which case each
author has nonexclusive rights to the story (i.e. you can both publish
it in your own short story collection without paying the other).
The reason this is important to nail down in advance is that if it goes
well, you don't want to start arguing over who owes who what with your
partner. It's better to waste a little time agreeing ground rules in
advance for a story that fizzles out than to risk pissing off someone
you respect enough to work with.
3. Submission of the finished MS. This is part of the workload, too, and you
really want to agree on where it's going. If the story is being written
for a specific market this isn't a problem, but general collaborations
deserve a bit more thought. Because magazines don't pay twice as much for
stories with twice as many authors (I wish!), you probably want to agree
in advance to try the most lucrative markets first. And if you and your
collaborator have sold to different editors in the past, whoever's dealt
with a specific editor before should probably be the one to send the story
in.
4. Momentum. If you write a thousand words, then pass it to your collaborator
to write another thousand words, the process can lose momentum abruptly.
In my case, I collaborated with someone who is based mostly in the Bay
Area (who I've never met face to face). Because I'm eight hours ahead of
him, I'd typically finish some work in the evening and email it to him.
He'd receive it in the morning (his time zone) and if he was too busy to
work on it the same day, he'd send it back to me the next day. But his
next day meant an extra 8 hours delay due to time zones -- so instead of
a 24-hour turnaround we averaged more like 48-72 hours.
The time zone thing might not affect you, but issues like postal delays
(if you do it via paper) are equally significant. When you're writing a
story of your own it's easy to stick to a quota like 1000 words per day.
But if you apply that quota rule to a collaboration, be prepared for the
working average to drop to half or less of the target due to time in
transfer. In practice, our rate dipped as low as a thousand words a week
at times. And if your momentum dips too low, you risk stalling the whole
project.
(Luckily we picked up towards the end, and the result is 19,950 words
completed in roughly 2-3 months.)
5. Synergy. You and your co-author, however much you think you're on the same
wavelength, will have different styles of idea, plot, and characterisation.
It is highly likely that, if things are going well, something your partner
does will trigger fresh creative juices on your part, and you'll feel the
urge to slip something new in. It's equally likely that something they do
will set your teeth on edge. Don't be afraid to edit their work, and don't
be offended if they edit your passages -- both of you will need to sand
the raw edges down in the interests of achieving consistency.
Anyone feel like adding to this list, from experience?
-- Charlie
Cory Doctorow
this list, which does a very neat job of identifying the pitfalls we
avoided (and those we stumbled into).
The previous lengthy collaborations I've worked on had agreed-upon
outlines with the workload divided among the writers, which seemed to
make everything go much more smoothly. OTOH, the ad-hoc nature of the
plot for our story really gave rise to something quite wonderful that
I doubt we could have arrived at via an outline. I think that as
Charlie and I work on more pieces together, we'll get better
accustomed to one another's styles and be in better shape to
collaborate on an outline (harder than collaborating on a story, since
you need to provide good examples to make an outline unambiguous
enough for another person to work from it).