Being In Tune

When we reached the end of a recent writing session and Kent read aloud what he had written, Jen said, “I like when you approach things from angles I never would have thought of.” The feeling is mutual, and that’s kind of the whole magic of writing with a partner: the synergy that comes from aiming two imaginations at a challenge.

Of course, in another recent Writing Cave conversation someone made a comment along the lines of, “Good to touch base before running too far ahead, in case your vision and mine turned out to be totally different.” There’s a famous song lyric about words having two meanings sometimes… the point is, just because you’ve talked it through and think you’ve agreed on how things should go doesn’t mean you’re really in sync.

There’s no magic pro tip for ensuring a perfect mind-meld between partners. You just have to practice. There will be misunderstandings and disagreements from time to time. Ironically, the better you are at processing disagreements, the fewer of them you’ll end up having.

Here are some non-magical tips that might help, though.

• talk to each other about the story and the characters, a lot — what would take hours of rewriting to fix is often fluid and instantaneous in conversation
• err on the side of more structure in your process, rather than less — spell things out thoroughly in the prewriting phase
• maintain a win-win mindset — unexpected ideas from your partner are a good thing!

A writing partner is a source of frequent pleasant surprises.