A Bit Of Collaborating by Ann Evans
Hello everyone, sorry to follow on from Reb yesterday, it's purely coincidence that Reb and I are both hanging up our AE blogging pens, but I think this will be my final blog for
Authors Electric. I’ve loved reading everyone’s blogs over the years, but my
writing is leading me further away from Indie writing, so it’s difficult for me
to write on topics that our blog’s readers will be interested in.
Happy to say I’m busy writing for reluctant readers, with
about a dozen books published now with educational publisher Badger Learning.
These are for teenagers with a lower reading age than their actual age. I’m
also writing crime novels for Bloodhound Books; and as always magazine articles
on all kinds of topics.
However, something I can write about for this blog, which
ties in with Indie publishing and mainstream publishing is that the latest book
accepted by Bloodhound is actually a collaboration between me and a good
friend. So, two authors and one title.
Collaborative writing isn’t for everyone, and in my
experience, only happens occasionally with a particular story idea, and with a
particular person.
Although our book has only just been accepted, and we’ve
only just all settled on what its title should be, which is: The
Bitter End, people are already asking, “So how does collaborative writing
actually work?”
For myself and co-writer Rob Tysall, it’s been a sort of
evolving situation. Neither of us could have made a deliberate decision such
as, “Hey, let’s write a book together!” It was nothing that straight forward.
We’ve been working together for about 26 years. Rob is a
photographer, and we’ve always teamed up to do magazine articles together. I do
the writing, he does the photographs. But it means we’ve spent lots of time
together chatting, and he’s always come up with story ideas for when I’ve been stuck
for an idea.
Then one day about four years ago he suggested an idea for a
book, to which I immediately said, “I can’t write that! It’s too dark. It’s too
deep. I don’t think along those lines!” But this idea was growing and growing
in his head and he wouldn’t let up.
For a while I didn’t make any actual progress, but we did a
lot of talking, and plotting and planning, until I relented and drafted out the
beginnings of a story. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t quite how he’d envisaged it.
But we decided not to scrap the idea, but began working on it together.
Admittedly his first suggestion that I change a section,
sent me into spasms! Someone telling me
what I should or shouldn’t write! Unheard of! And that’s where a solid
friendship gets to work. We listened to each other’s ideas and reasoning,
discussed every scene and sentence, and didn’t fall out! In fact. Some of the
most tragic and intense scenes would reduce us to fits of laughter as words and
ideas ran away with us.
There are dark sections in this book, particularly from the
viewpoint of one particular character (no spoilers here) where Rob was in his
element and waxed lyrical while I typed. The practicalities of a collaboration,
at least in our case, is that just one person does the typing, that keeps the
style ‘uniform’.
So, imagine if you will, a male Barbara Cartland lounging on
the sofa dictating to his secretary the words of his latest masterpiece. It
wasn’t quite like that, but you get the picture.
Creating the characters together with their actions and
dialogue and in-depth backgrounds proved successful, and through teaming up
with someone from the opposite sex it allows you to get a whole different
perspective on what a male character would actually think, do and say, which was
very different to what I had that male character originally doing/saying.
And then, as Stephen King says, comes the part when you must
kill your darlings. Halfway through
writing the book, Rob says, “You know
(character) has to die, don’t you?”
“What? No! You can’t
kill (character)!”
Don’t worry it’s not the dog…
Looking at the book we’ve just finished, I think the proof
of the pudding as to whether the collaboration worked, is by us both realising
that without the other, the book wouldn’t have been written.
So, collaborating with a friend, is it something you’ve done
or tried to do? And did it work for you?
Comments
Eden and I had both contributed to the podcast several times when we decided to experiment with a joint effort. Of course, the fact that it's a podcast means there are literally two voices.
We both find the collaborative process highly stimulating. One of us starts a story, the other continues it, the first then develops it further and the second writes a conclusion. For me, it's the fact that the characters and plot move into ways and directions I'd probably never have thought of, so I'm taken into unexpected areas. It's very challenging but even more rewarding. The word count of each story is only around the 1500 mark but, nearing the end of the current exercise, I'm beginning to think alternating chapters of a novel might be very interesting, too.
Ann, sorry you're leaving. Shall we all start an 'Old Electrics' rival group?
Best of luck with Badger and Bloodhound.