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

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

I can see why you would think collaboration might not work because at first, I didn't either. Nan and I tried a traditional collaboration first. She wrote a piece, I'd add or rewrite, then I did a piece, she's add to it or rewrite. That didn't work: we kept pissing each other off in the reviewing and rewriting.

Then we stumbled upon interactive writing. Basically, we divvied up the characters. I wrote all the MFU characters, she wrote the Escape characters and we divvied up the OCs. I would write the narrative piece that contained my character speaking or doing, then stop. Then she would write. After a while, it became instinctual when to stop, although sometimes, it was just a line of dialogue. We did this over a dedicated computer program in the late 1980s-early 90s, then over email. Wrote four and a half volumes and thousands upon thousands of words this way.

I then tried it with Nancy Hayes. She worked faster than Nan, so we did it over AOL/IM. Same divving up, but usually as I was writing my piece, Nancy would be revising hers and material flowed in two directions very quickly. We finished an entire complicated novel, Small Sacrifices, in six weeks. Our test was Two Men Sittin' on a Boat which is on File 40. Small Sacrifices won a FanQ.

Linda White wrote equally fast and I wrote the vampire story with her pretty much the same way and in similar record time.

Fara and I like to write Solo and Angelique this way and we finished an x-rated piece similar over AOL/IM.

In each case, we esablished an overall arc for the story BUT we kept pieces and secrets from each other as we moved along. No one could tell the other person what to write or how a character should act. It's very exciting that way --like living inside a character ---and it's totally absorbing and addictive. Nan and I only went down a dead end once, and then we agreed to throw a bunch of pages out, back up and start again, re-imagining a particular turning point.

I have been lucky in finding four people with whom I'm on the same wavelength and I think they would agree it was a satisfying experience with a good outcome each time.

I can provide links to some of the pieces and we can talk further about who wrote what and how if you're interested in pursuing the question.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

I have been lucky in finding four people with whom I'm on the same wavelength

I suspect this is key (not the only one, of course - but maybe a sine qua non?) - generally the same level of writing skill and the same outlook regarding story arc and level of detail - in a very broad sense, similar writing styles. I would think that without that, it'd be impossible, at least, to keep the seams from showing.

I really appreciate your articulating this!

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

I think similar perspective is important but not writing styles. I think only Linda has a style similar to mine. Nancy is far more cerebral; Nan and Fara, more emotional. But I guess we were all in the ballpark at least. And I don't think there could be too much difference in proficiency.

[leethet.livejournal.com]

Yes, I didn't really express that clearly, because I don't really mean like styles so much as a broadly similar approach - that is, someone who writes crack humor and a dry serious writer would have a hard time, I think, producing a seamless collaboration, but if each of you can bend toward a common style that's not too far from your strengths, I think that could work (I mean, in my head - obviously I've never done it!). Or at least it would help.

For reference....

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

Find an excerpt from “Small Sacrifices” still only available in print here.

An excerpt from Escape/MFU written with Nan is here and here.

"The Children of the Night Afair," written with Linda, is here.

And "Risky Business" written with Fara is here.