Writing with a Collaborator
Recently a member of my forum emailed asking if I had any advice on working collaboratively. I didn't really have time to reply to him just then, so I suggested posting a query on the forum (that's one reason I set it up!). However, it is a very interesting question, so I thought I'd post a few thoughts about the subject today.
First of all, I do like the idea of working with a collaborator. Writing can be a lonely business, so the prospect of working with someone else is attractive for the human contact aspect alone. Plus you have someone else to bounce ideas off (many of the most successful comedy writers work in duos and I'm sure this is part of the reason). And, of course, having a collaborator means that they will do some of the work instead of you!
Of course, there are drawbacks to working with a collaborator too. If you don't get on with your partner or constantly disagree with them, the savings in time and effort may easily evaporate. Instead of being entirely free to pursue your own artistic vision, you may sometimes have to compromise. And, of course, any payments resulting from your labours will have to be shared with your partner instead of all going into your own pocket...
I have worked with a writing partner on various occasions over the years. I hope he won't mind me revealing that the person I've worked with most often is my old friend, the poet Simon Pitt. One of our first collaborations was a satirical sketch show called The Naked Apricot (a skit on the book by Dr Desmond Morris "The Naked Ape"). This was performed by a local amateur theatre company, and in financial terms anyway was their most successful show ever (admittedly, it probably helped that we didn't get paid a fee for it!).
More recently I collaborated with Simon on a couple of non-fiction books: Fifty Great Ideas for Creative Writing Teaching and How to Invite Any Writer, Artist or Performer Into Your School. We are also working on another book intended for writers and artists who want to work in schools, although because of our busy schedules progress on this has been rather slow.
The way that Simon and I work is to take a project, divide it into chapters or sections, and then allocate each of these to one of us or the other. When we have completed our assigned chapters, we pass them over to the other one to read, edit and add his own input. In addition, I tend to handle the IT-related aspects, e.g. our recent experiment in self-publishing on Lulu.com, as I'm sure that Simon would agree that this is not his strongest suit.
One thing we don't do (or at least hardly ever) is sit down together and go through our draft manuscripts line by line, word by word. Apart from being horribly time consuming, I could imagine this putting our friendship under strain. In my experience anyway, it's easier to accept (and give) criticism in the form of a quick note rather than face to face.
My number one advice to anyone thinking of working with a collaborator is to agree how you will work together first. If your collaborator expects you to sit down and write together while you prefer to work alone and just meet for planning, marketing and so on, it's doubtful whether the partnership will succeed.
Likewise, it's important to discuss the proposed topic of your book, screenplay or whatever in detail, to ensure you don't have totally different perspectives on it. That's not to say you have to agree in advance on every point, but unless you have certain basic assumptions in common, the writing process is likely to become a test of endurance. This applies especially in fiction-writing projects.
Finally, it's worth looking into the growing range of resources on the Internet that can facilitate working collaboratively. One example is Google Documents, which lets you publish documents on the web where they can be viewed and, if you allow it, edited by other selected individuals (i.e. your writing partner/s). This means it is perfectly feasible to work collaboratively with people in other countries and even other continents. I will talk more about Google Documents in a future post, as I find it a very useful facility, even for projects where I am not working with a collaborator.
First of all, I do like the idea of working with a collaborator. Writing can be a lonely business, so the prospect of working with someone else is attractive for the human contact aspect alone. Plus you have someone else to bounce ideas off (many of the most successful comedy writers work in duos and I'm sure this is part of the reason). And, of course, having a collaborator means that they will do some of the work instead of you!
Of course, there are drawbacks to working with a collaborator too. If you don't get on with your partner or constantly disagree with them, the savings in time and effort may easily evaporate. Instead of being entirely free to pursue your own artistic vision, you may sometimes have to compromise. And, of course, any payments resulting from your labours will have to be shared with your partner instead of all going into your own pocket...
I have worked with a writing partner on various occasions over the years. I hope he won't mind me revealing that the person I've worked with most often is my old friend, the poet Simon Pitt. One of our first collaborations was a satirical sketch show called The Naked Apricot (a skit on the book by Dr Desmond Morris "The Naked Ape"). This was performed by a local amateur theatre company, and in financial terms anyway was their most successful show ever (admittedly, it probably helped that we didn't get paid a fee for it!).
More recently I collaborated with Simon on a couple of non-fiction books: Fifty Great Ideas for Creative Writing Teaching and How to Invite Any Writer, Artist or Performer Into Your School. We are also working on another book intended for writers and artists who want to work in schools, although because of our busy schedules progress on this has been rather slow.
The way that Simon and I work is to take a project, divide it into chapters or sections, and then allocate each of these to one of us or the other. When we have completed our assigned chapters, we pass them over to the other one to read, edit and add his own input. In addition, I tend to handle the IT-related aspects, e.g. our recent experiment in self-publishing on Lulu.com, as I'm sure that Simon would agree that this is not his strongest suit.
One thing we don't do (or at least hardly ever) is sit down together and go through our draft manuscripts line by line, word by word. Apart from being horribly time consuming, I could imagine this putting our friendship under strain. In my experience anyway, it's easier to accept (and give) criticism in the form of a quick note rather than face to face.
My number one advice to anyone thinking of working with a collaborator is to agree how you will work together first. If your collaborator expects you to sit down and write together while you prefer to work alone and just meet for planning, marketing and so on, it's doubtful whether the partnership will succeed.
Likewise, it's important to discuss the proposed topic of your book, screenplay or whatever in detail, to ensure you don't have totally different perspectives on it. That's not to say you have to agree in advance on every point, but unless you have certain basic assumptions in common, the writing process is likely to become a test of endurance. This applies especially in fiction-writing projects.
Finally, it's worth looking into the growing range of resources on the Internet that can facilitate working collaboratively. One example is Google Documents, which lets you publish documents on the web where they can be viewed and, if you allow it, edited by other selected individuals (i.e. your writing partner/s). This means it is perfectly feasible to work collaboratively with people in other countries and even other continents. I will talk more about Google Documents in a future post, as I find it a very useful facility, even for projects where I am not working with a collaborator.
Nick at 12:36 PM
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