30 Day Fandom Meme Day 28

[leethet]

Day 28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your fic?
No. I don’t see how it’s possible! In fact, once I polled some people in HP about how they collaborated because I simply can’t imagine it working (even though it clearly does – many collaborations are just fantastic). I can’t imagine writing a story with someone else and either enjoying the process or having it come out well, even though I’ve seen that it can happen. Fascinates me.

In HP a couple of artists have done art for my stories (Lizardspots did a sort of comic strip, trekkiegrrl and yael created single scenes), not in collaboration but just because they felt like it. It's very cool to see how other people interpret scenes, and how close they sometimes come to what I was seeing in my head. I don't know if that's coincidence or simply that I described it effectively - you really can't know - but it's very cool to see how others visualize my words.

Comments

[elmey.livejournal.com]

I worked for a long time in television where the process of making programs is very collaborative and often very frustrating. I like not having to collaborate when I'm writing :) I'm not even that fond of talking about the details of what I'm writing. Once it's written I'm happy to jabber on, probably ad nauseum, but not before. Obviously, as you say, some people collaborate very successfully, but I wonder how hard it is to have both people equally pleased with the process/results.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

I've worked in production, too, and also in journalism. I don't mind collaborating in production when each person is an expert in their sphere but I would have had a hard time in journalism.
I collaborated on a script once with a fellow journalist and it turned out well but the work load was unequal. I would never do it again.

Writing interactively in fanfic works for me, however, as long as I have the right partner. I wouldn't do it with just anyone and I guess I'd have to be convinced that the other writer could write the other character at least as well or possibly better than I think I could. This was true in all four instances. I greatly respected Nan's Plissken, Nancy's Illya, Linda's vampire and Fara's Angelique.

I might add that my ego and sensibility would never allow me to write with anyone if I didn't have full control over Solo's character. I know that going in :)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting way to work, I saw the description you gave above. I have a feeling I wouldn't be very good at it, but I think that's partly because I tend to work slowly and focus so much (too much probably) on emotional nuances.

Did you feel at all that you had to adjust your writing style? Or did the styles merge pretty easily?

[leethet.livejournal.com]

I agree with you that pace would definitely be an issue - either because you're writing to a deadline (as pros do) or because one of you would get too far ahead and get impatient or the storyline would fall apart because one person couldn't do more 'til the slower partner caught up. It seems that would wreak havoc on any enjoyment! But I would guess that generally the successful collaborations involve people whose writing speed (and ability to find time to write!) is broadly the same.

The related "pacing" question also boggles my mind - matching styles seems to me to be a very important issue so the story doesn't, you know, read like Dickens and Hemingway sat down to take turns.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

matching styles seems to me to be a very important issue

People do have distinct styles. I tend to notice it fairly quickly (an old lit major). But then perhaps people with radically different writing styles would be unlikely to have an urge to work together like this :)

I wonder how betas deal with that.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

I think it depends. In writing fiction, I have never felt an urge to collaborate. But in other areas of writing (work-wise) I can certainly see where one person brings, for instance the technical knowhow and the other brings the grammatical skills (that's how I've made a living for a long time!). So in that sense I can collaborate. But creative fiction is so different from nonfiction ... tenor, style, pacing ... I'm amazed that people can make it work, but they obviously can, and enjoy it. I do agree that as Dr C says above you must sacrifice a bit of ego to even attempt it - to be willing to give up some aspects of control, and even some of your content, to the greater good of getting a smooth story written. I just like my own methods too much, I guess!