Co-Writing for Fun and Profit

Didja miss me? Well, too bad…I’m back!

Today I’d like to share a bit about Turtleduck Press’s next novel (title and cover art forthcoming in due time). Kit and I have both talked in this space about the fact that we’re co-writing, but we haven’t gone into any detail about the experience…until now.

It’s not Kit’s first time co-writing a novel; I’ve done it before too, but not for many many years. And I’ve blogged before about having a major crisis of faith as a writer last year. So I was a little apprehensive about how it would go.

In fact, it’s been quite a smooth process — at least as smooth as novel writing ever is! It’s helped immensely to have somebody to bounce ideas off, to trade chapters with (we each wrote one point of view, in alternating chapters), to keep each other motivated. Having two minds to work on the worldbuilding and plotting has not meant that we’ve each done half as much work as on a solo novel, but it’s certainly helped — I think we’ve done a better job on this story than either of us could have on our own.

Luckily, we’re on a similar — though not identical — wavelength when it comes to planning. We did a pile of worldbuilding first (it’s a fantasy novel, more or less), then identified our respective characters and wrote some sample chapters. Those went out the window and we started over, with a clearer idea this time of what we were both aiming for. Somewhere in there we identified the “turning points” of our plot. In between those key events, we left ourselves a lot of freedom to play. (I think we’re both semi-reformed “pantsers”, aka “seat of the pants” writers.)

As I mentioned, our processes aren’t exactly the same. My first-draft chapters tend to be a lot rougher than Kit’s, with more notes-to-self and roughed-in spots to be fleshed out later. I also have a greater tendency to stick random things in and trust they’ll work themselves out later (which sometimes means I have to go back and take them out again), and to work out issues during the writing rather than before (which means I sometimes got very vague during our planning meetings).

We’ve tackled timeline issues — for example, I just noticed one spot where our two points of view are about to intersect, and that means they need to be on the same day, but one character has had one more day pass than the other. Oops? We’ve figured out how to write the scenes that feature both of our characters (answer: we work in real time in a Google Doc, with each of us writing our own character’s dialogue in turn, and then we fill in the other beats later). We’ve engaged in long discussions about our climax and ending, since this book is meant to kick off a loose series but still needs to be satisfying on its own.

Our adventure isn’t over yet. Right now we’re awaiting feedback from our editor (the fabulous KD) and some beta readers. This month we’re madly editing. It’ll go back for a copy edit and some more tweaks, and then in May it will go out into the world and we’ll be co-authors for real.

For added fun, go read Kit’s take on the process of co-writing this novel.

 

2 Comments:

  1. This was really interesting to me as I’ve also co-written my (first!) novel. The closest I ever came to doing something similar before is when my brother and I used to write parts of a story in a letter (pre-internet, dark ages!) and mail it back and forth.I’d love to read your novel when it’s finished, have you published yet?

  2. Pat, congratulations! I saw your response on Instagram, but in case anyone else is curious: http://turtleduckpress.com/wordpress/2016/05/01/city-of-hope-and-ruin-cover-reveal/

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