Holes, Compromising and Collaborative Writing.
Hello to you all. I’m suki_blue and I’ve been writing fanfic for four years in various fandoms (Buffy/Angel, Stargate: Atlantis, DC Comics, Harry Potter, and now Torchwood). My fics are usually romantic, plot-filled, and I try to be funny without being laughable. My references and examples are to the Buffyverse but, if you squint, you can hopefully apply them to any fandom that fondles your fancy.
When Jan asked me to give a talk on collaborative writing, my first thought was, I’ve done it, but I have no idea how. What on earth am I going to say? My joint effort came almost out of nowhere. In August 2005, amejisuto and I decided to write a fic together for kitty_poker1’s birthday fest. It’ll be fun, we cried! Something small, a nice little distraction from our usual projects. Two years later we posted part 65 of Griefcounseling and promptly collapsed into a small heap on the floor. Our nice little fic had turned into a 192,000 word epic.
But the question is: how did we do it? How did we organise it, plan it, write it? And most of all, how did we get through 192,000 words without a single squabble? This is what I’m going to attempt to explain. Remember, this is my way, not the way. As with any methodology or technique, it’s not the only way it can be done and what works for me might not work for someone else.
It helped that Ame and I were in sync. By that I mean we were on the same page, singing from the same hymn sheet, or, to go with a phrase that will hopefully one day catch on as a brand new cliché, our heads were poking out of the same hole. Our OTPs were the same, our fic tastes were the same, our writing styles were near-enough identical, we’d read everything the other had written and we were best friends. It also helped that our beta, kitty_poker1, was also our best friend and was sharing the same hole. (I’ll drop that metaphor now, yes? Maybe not.)
As with all fics, we started with an idea, a concept, and moved on to formulate a plot. We were going to take Season 6 BTVS canon and mix it up. We wanted to ask the question: what would happen if Anya was dead and Xander objected to bringing Buffy back from the grave? I’ll admit I was a little bit concerned about how were going to go about writing this. How would we decide who was going to write what? In the end it was simple: I was more comfortable writing Spike’s pov (point of view) and Ame was more comfortable with Xander’s. It also made sense as she’s a Yank and I’m a tea-drinking, jaffa-cake scoffing Brit, so we were writing to our strengths. (I don’t know about you, but I find writing a pov character from my own country infinitely easier.)
We agreed we would take it in turns to write scenes or groups of scenes. So, for instance, I might write six pages of Spike doing his thing, thinking about his situation, showing his emotional state after Buffy’s death. Then I would email the scenes to Ame and she would switch to Xander’s pov where she would do the same, adding to the story and reacting to anything in my scenes she felt Xander would need to react to. Most of the time we planned this. I would tell her what I was going to do with Spike, she would give me the thumbs up, and vice versa.
There were times, however, when our ability to forward plan was non-existent. We always had ultimate goals in mind, major plot points we wanted to achieve, but there were moments when we had no idea how to get there. A to Z is all well enough, but the journey to get there was riddled with Qs and Hs and that pesky P. Too many options and a tight deadline (I’ll get on to deadlines properly a bit later) got in the way. At those times, we conferred about what we wanted to achieve by the end of the entire chapter and then went with our own instincts. Let me tell you, we threw each other some interesting curve balls sometimes and that was wonderful fun. As long as we didn’t deviate from the main story, write out-of-character, kill-off a main character, or hijack the other person’s pov, we were free to do what we wanted. I remember well sending or receiving emails with surprise scenes and a little note with an insincere apology and an *evol grin* attached.
But the only way we were able to give each other relatively free rein was complete trust and mutual respect. You need to know your co-author isn’t going to rocket Cordelia off to Mars in a ship made from bottle tops, have Gunn weeping in the corner, Tara turning straight, or Angel actually cracking a smile.
Really, we just went with the flow, and our similar writing styles meant that our scenes slotted smoothly together and, generally, most people couldn’t tell us apart. Apart from one person. Another reason the project was so successful was that we shared more than just a brain. Kitty had been a beta to both of us for a long time and she knew us and our writing very well. A benefit was that she sort of patched up any holes (not the one we were sticking our heads through), gave us grammatical and narrative consistency and caught any plot irregularities. So what I’m saying is, find a beta who is also willing to look at the other author’s work. Having a separate beta each could cause problems. Are they reading the whole story or just your chapters? Are they aware of your co-author’s style? These things could potentially affect the chapter you present to your readers. Maybe you have a beta each and you want to use both? Fine, but make sure both betas look at all the work, and beware the Clash of the Betas! which could potentially be an issue in any situation when you use more than one beta for the same job.
What happens when your co-author completely disagrees with you? You want to go one way and she wants to go the other. Try to compromise and have a think about if you really need to write Wesley getting an unfortunate case of the runs after a dodgy meatball sandwich. If your co-author has made a point of saying, ‘Actually, I’m not sure it’s a good idea,’ then swallow it and move on if it’s not important to the plot. It doesn’t really matter. And if it’s a bigger point you are arguing about, perhaps something that changes the direction of the entire fic, for instance, then if your co-author doesn’t agree, just don’t do it. Feel free to spend plenty of time trying to convince her, but you haven’t got any right to change something so dramatically. You cannot turn Spike female in the middle of your hard-hitting emotional drama. It’s not fair to your co-author. It’s not what she signed up for. But it obviously goes without saying, always try to compromise. If you let her deviate and give in to her creative urges, she’ll be much more likely to extend you the same courtesy.
Luckily, Ame and I rarely disagreed and certainly not about the minor details. We each did our thing and because we both put our hearts and souls into it, what came out the other end was something that satisfied us both, and our readers. The only time I can remember that we wanted to go in different directions was when Ame one day emailed with ‘We should make Dawn a Slayer!’ and I paled at my desk. We’d been writing Grief Counseling for way over a year and turning Dawn into a Slayer, I knew, would add a further six months to the project, and I was getting tired. So I said no, I didn’t want to do it, and I said why. Ame completely understood and never pushed the issue, no matter how good a suggestion it was. In the end, I came around to the idea. Why? Because it was a good idea and it fitted into the storyline perfectly. She’d been absolutely right all along. Why didn’t we fall out over it? Because there were always other options, because we’d always compromised, shared, and allowed vetoes, and mostly because our friendship was, and still is, a strong one.
That brings me to another issue. Do you co-write with a friend, a stranger or someone who is neither? Up to you. Personally, I think it’s easier with a friend for the reasons I highlighted earlier (don’t make me get that hole out again). But perhaps writing with someone you don’t know so well could be an interesting challenge. I would recommend that you choose someone who is on the same, dare I say it, writing level as you. You need to be as good as each other or the fic will look wonky and obviously written by more than one person, which will throw your reader out of the story in places and might even make her shut the window and never return.
I once was asked to co-write a crossover fic. (I think it was Btvs/SG-1.) I considered it for thirty seconds before I politely declined. Firstly, I didn’t know the author or her work and, secondly, I had no idea about SG-1. It was a bad combination. I would have been writing partly about a fandom I had no clue about, and what would have happened if my co-author turned out to be bad-tempered, difficult, and far too precious about her other fandom and the characterisations? I would have been stuffed! Seriously though, I’m sure she was a darling, but if you’re going to write about a fandom you’re unfamiliar with, it’s wise to be familiar with the author, at the very least.
Deadlines. I mentioned them earlier so here we go. Ame and I needed them. There, I said it. Grief Counseling spiralled into a mammoth fic and it needed control and we needed motivation. For roughly the first year, we posted weekly, but as time went on and our RL and fandom situations changed, we needed to post every fortnight. Co-writing can be a long process. It has to be discussed, written, sent for approval, more written, more approval, and that’s all before it goes to the beta and it gets sent back for two authors to look over and discuss, edit, polish. It can take a long time and you need to be realistic about that, particularly if you have other projects. I completely understand and often fall prey to the must post nownownow! syndrome, but with that urge can also come diminished quality. The deadline will keep you motivated and on track, but be sensible about it. Your readers would rather wait an extra week to get something brilliant and unrushed rather than a weak chapter that really wasn’t worth the effort.
Another thing to think about, once you’ve decided to co-write and found an author willing to put up with you, is using the best of your skills. What are you good at? What is your co-author best at? Work it out and use it. Ame is absolutely brilliant at writing Cordelia so if we needed a scene that used her heavily, Ame wrote it. That also meant that Cordelia needed to interact more with Xander because he was Ame’s pov character. What was I good at? Surprise cliff-hangers and evol grins. But that was something Ame had to put up with. *eg*
And if you come across a problem while you’re writing, don’t be afraid to lean on your partner, as she might lean on you one day. Take up her slack and she’ll take up yours. On some occasions, I wrote like I would never stop, but sometimes the opposite happened and we had to re-think the chapter so that Ame could take over. Sometimes only one of us would write the chapter if the other was ill or busy with RL. And sometimes I had to ask Ame to tell me exactly what I needed to write before I could write it - handholding, a definite benefit of co-authoring.
As corny as this is going to sound, the most important thing is to enjoy yourselves. Co-authoring is a challenge and to post a successful co-written piece is a fantastic achievement. Remember you’re not trying to outshine each other. You’re working together. The readers should not be able to distinguish who is who. And you can use any method you like, whatever feels most comfortable. So find a partner, make sure you have suitable beta arrangements, plot out a story outline (because outlines are good and it could save an argument later), have a quick natter about how you want to do things, and off you go.
I hope some of this helps and good luck if any of you decide to take on a joint project. If there are any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them in the comments. I’ll climb back into my hole now.
Beta'd by kitty_poker1 and amejisuto
When Jan asked me to give a talk on collaborative writing, my first thought was, I’ve done it, but I have no idea how. What on earth am I going to say? My joint effort came almost out of nowhere. In August 2005, amejisuto and I decided to write a fic together for kitty_poker1’s birthday fest. It’ll be fun, we cried! Something small, a nice little distraction from our usual projects. Two years later we posted part 65 of Griefcounseling and promptly collapsed into a small heap on the floor. Our nice little fic had turned into a 192,000 word epic.
But the question is: how did we do it? How did we organise it, plan it, write it? And most of all, how did we get through 192,000 words without a single squabble? This is what I’m going to attempt to explain. Remember, this is my way, not the way. As with any methodology or technique, it’s not the only way it can be done and what works for me might not work for someone else.
It helped that Ame and I were in sync. By that I mean we were on the same page, singing from the same hymn sheet, or, to go with a phrase that will hopefully one day catch on as a brand new cliché, our heads were poking out of the same hole. Our OTPs were the same, our fic tastes were the same, our writing styles were near-enough identical, we’d read everything the other had written and we were best friends. It also helped that our beta, kitty_poker1, was also our best friend and was sharing the same hole. (I’ll drop that metaphor now, yes? Maybe not.)
As with all fics, we started with an idea, a concept, and moved on to formulate a plot. We were going to take Season 6 BTVS canon and mix it up. We wanted to ask the question: what would happen if Anya was dead and Xander objected to bringing Buffy back from the grave? I’ll admit I was a little bit concerned about how were going to go about writing this. How would we decide who was going to write what? In the end it was simple: I was more comfortable writing Spike’s pov (point of view) and Ame was more comfortable with Xander’s. It also made sense as she’s a Yank and I’m a tea-drinking, jaffa-cake scoffing Brit, so we were writing to our strengths. (I don’t know about you, but I find writing a pov character from my own country infinitely easier.)
We agreed we would take it in turns to write scenes or groups of scenes. So, for instance, I might write six pages of Spike doing his thing, thinking about his situation, showing his emotional state after Buffy’s death. Then I would email the scenes to Ame and she would switch to Xander’s pov where she would do the same, adding to the story and reacting to anything in my scenes she felt Xander would need to react to. Most of the time we planned this. I would tell her what I was going to do with Spike, she would give me the thumbs up, and vice versa.
There were times, however, when our ability to forward plan was non-existent. We always had ultimate goals in mind, major plot points we wanted to achieve, but there were moments when we had no idea how to get there. A to Z is all well enough, but the journey to get there was riddled with Qs and Hs and that pesky P. Too many options and a tight deadline (I’ll get on to deadlines properly a bit later) got in the way. At those times, we conferred about what we wanted to achieve by the end of the entire chapter and then went with our own instincts. Let me tell you, we threw each other some interesting curve balls sometimes and that was wonderful fun. As long as we didn’t deviate from the main story, write out-of-character, kill-off a main character, or hijack the other person’s pov, we were free to do what we wanted. I remember well sending or receiving emails with surprise scenes and a little note with an insincere apology and an *evol grin* attached.
But the only way we were able to give each other relatively free rein was complete trust and mutual respect. You need to know your co-author isn’t going to rocket Cordelia off to Mars in a ship made from bottle tops, have Gunn weeping in the corner, Tara turning straight, or Angel actually cracking a smile.
Really, we just went with the flow, and our similar writing styles meant that our scenes slotted smoothly together and, generally, most people couldn’t tell us apart. Apart from one person. Another reason the project was so successful was that we shared more than just a brain. Kitty had been a beta to both of us for a long time and she knew us and our writing very well. A benefit was that she sort of patched up any holes (not the one we were sticking our heads through), gave us grammatical and narrative consistency and caught any plot irregularities. So what I’m saying is, find a beta who is also willing to look at the other author’s work. Having a separate beta each could cause problems. Are they reading the whole story or just your chapters? Are they aware of your co-author’s style? These things could potentially affect the chapter you present to your readers. Maybe you have a beta each and you want to use both? Fine, but make sure both betas look at all the work, and beware the Clash of the Betas! which could potentially be an issue in any situation when you use more than one beta for the same job.
What happens when your co-author completely disagrees with you? You want to go one way and she wants to go the other. Try to compromise and have a think about if you really need to write Wesley getting an unfortunate case of the runs after a dodgy meatball sandwich. If your co-author has made a point of saying, ‘Actually, I’m not sure it’s a good idea,’ then swallow it and move on if it’s not important to the plot. It doesn’t really matter. And if it’s a bigger point you are arguing about, perhaps something that changes the direction of the entire fic, for instance, then if your co-author doesn’t agree, just don’t do it. Feel free to spend plenty of time trying to convince her, but you haven’t got any right to change something so dramatically. You cannot turn Spike female in the middle of your hard-hitting emotional drama. It’s not fair to your co-author. It’s not what she signed up for. But it obviously goes without saying, always try to compromise. If you let her deviate and give in to her creative urges, she’ll be much more likely to extend you the same courtesy.
Luckily, Ame and I rarely disagreed and certainly not about the minor details. We each did our thing and because we both put our hearts and souls into it, what came out the other end was something that satisfied us both, and our readers. The only time I can remember that we wanted to go in different directions was when Ame one day emailed with ‘We should make Dawn a Slayer!’ and I paled at my desk. We’d been writing Grief Counseling for way over a year and turning Dawn into a Slayer, I knew, would add a further six months to the project, and I was getting tired. So I said no, I didn’t want to do it, and I said why. Ame completely understood and never pushed the issue, no matter how good a suggestion it was. In the end, I came around to the idea. Why? Because it was a good idea and it fitted into the storyline perfectly. She’d been absolutely right all along. Why didn’t we fall out over it? Because there were always other options, because we’d always compromised, shared, and allowed vetoes, and mostly because our friendship was, and still is, a strong one.
That brings me to another issue. Do you co-write with a friend, a stranger or someone who is neither? Up to you. Personally, I think it’s easier with a friend for the reasons I highlighted earlier (don’t make me get that hole out again). But perhaps writing with someone you don’t know so well could be an interesting challenge. I would recommend that you choose someone who is on the same, dare I say it, writing level as you. You need to be as good as each other or the fic will look wonky and obviously written by more than one person, which will throw your reader out of the story in places and might even make her shut the window and never return.
I once was asked to co-write a crossover fic. (I think it was Btvs/SG-1.) I considered it for thirty seconds before I politely declined. Firstly, I didn’t know the author or her work and, secondly, I had no idea about SG-1. It was a bad combination. I would have been writing partly about a fandom I had no clue about, and what would have happened if my co-author turned out to be bad-tempered, difficult, and far too precious about her other fandom and the characterisations? I would have been stuffed! Seriously though, I’m sure she was a darling, but if you’re going to write about a fandom you’re unfamiliar with, it’s wise to be familiar with the author, at the very least.
Deadlines. I mentioned them earlier so here we go. Ame and I needed them. There, I said it. Grief Counseling spiralled into a mammoth fic and it needed control and we needed motivation. For roughly the first year, we posted weekly, but as time went on and our RL and fandom situations changed, we needed to post every fortnight. Co-writing can be a long process. It has to be discussed, written, sent for approval, more written, more approval, and that’s all before it goes to the beta and it gets sent back for two authors to look over and discuss, edit, polish. It can take a long time and you need to be realistic about that, particularly if you have other projects. I completely understand and often fall prey to the must post nownownow! syndrome, but with that urge can also come diminished quality. The deadline will keep you motivated and on track, but be sensible about it. Your readers would rather wait an extra week to get something brilliant and unrushed rather than a weak chapter that really wasn’t worth the effort.
Another thing to think about, once you’ve decided to co-write and found an author willing to put up with you, is using the best of your skills. What are you good at? What is your co-author best at? Work it out and use it. Ame is absolutely brilliant at writing Cordelia so if we needed a scene that used her heavily, Ame wrote it. That also meant that Cordelia needed to interact more with Xander because he was Ame’s pov character. What was I good at? Surprise cliff-hangers and evol grins. But that was something Ame had to put up with. *eg*
And if you come across a problem while you’re writing, don’t be afraid to lean on your partner, as she might lean on you one day. Take up her slack and she’ll take up yours. On some occasions, I wrote like I would never stop, but sometimes the opposite happened and we had to re-think the chapter so that Ame could take over. Sometimes only one of us would write the chapter if the other was ill or busy with RL. And sometimes I had to ask Ame to tell me exactly what I needed to write before I could write it - handholding, a definite benefit of co-authoring.
As corny as this is going to sound, the most important thing is to enjoy yourselves. Co-authoring is a challenge and to post a successful co-written piece is a fantastic achievement. Remember you’re not trying to outshine each other. You’re working together. The readers should not be able to distinguish who is who. And you can use any method you like, whatever feels most comfortable. So find a partner, make sure you have suitable beta arrangements, plot out a story outline (because outlines are good and it could save an argument later), have a quick natter about how you want to do things, and off you go.
I hope some of this helps and good luck if any of you decide to take on a joint project. If there are any questions, I’ll be glad to answer them in the comments. I’ll climb back into my hole now.
Beta'd by kitty_poker1 and amejisuto