Category: Writing as a Team

Two people writing as a team can have advantages over soloist authors. But to have a fruitful writing partnership we must adopt a process that utilizes our strengths, and we need a relationship that’s strong enough to support the endeavor. Here’s where we explore the matter from various angles.

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

r-avatarAt the writing conference we just attended, someone presented on the topic of cowriting. It was a married couple who write SF together, but it wasn’t us. Honest. Their excellent presentation was itself a collaborative enterprise, sort of a tag-team slideshow.

One’s comfort zone, specifically leaving it, came up in the context of how having a writing partner differs from writing solo. They mentioned having originally listed it as a drawback then moving it over to the plus column instead.

We agree all around. Let’s take the positive side of things first: new challenges are good for us. About a thousand more homilies could go in here, and we all know them by heart. The difficulty is taking them to heart, and willfully stepping over the line that defines that zone of cozy security. That’s the beauty of what a writing partner gives you, someone who’s invested in your success but who nevertheless sometimes nudges you out into scarytown. Ideally that’s symmetrical, with your partner’s comfort boundaries getting smudged just as much as your own.

The basis for discomfort over entering a cowriting partnership is trust, and trust comes in different flavors. It’s entirely possible to respect someone’s integrity and honesty but still not like how it feels when they want to look at your work in progress. That’s a perfectly human reaction to a new partner, and you have to practice with each other for a bit to get over that first hill. (And maybe another couple of hills.) When it’s working, you’re both more concerned with the quality of the work than with your individual contributions.

Now, for the negative: you might be uncomfortable with the person for fundamental, personal reasons. You might be incompatible, and the amount of effort it would take to overcome that isn’t worth it. You could be the fastest of friends and still not be compatible as cowriters. The dreaded artistic differences. You might, on the other hand, find that working with a particular person makes friendship impossible. Maybe the art is flowing, but it’s at too high a personal cost. How high is too high? That’s for you to say.

Writing with a partner will necessitate going outside your comfort zone sometimes. But a good partner will never shove, just nudge.

Writing Cave Status Report

r-avatarRune Skelley’s habitat has been a rather hectic place of late. In addition to the recent travel and interviews that we mentioned the past couple of Fridays:

  • We heard back from two more Science Novel beta readers with much positive input
  • Yesterday’s #PitMad kept us nicely distracted on the twitters for a while, pitching the Trilogy and the Music Novel
  • Jen analyzed the outline of Son of Music Novel and terrified Kent with the number of words we should expect to write by the end of the year to meet our deadline
  • We allocated the next handful of stubs — we will be able to work in parallel for the foreseeable future so our productivity should take an uptick (unless this jinxed it)
  • We’re shortly off to a conference, our first in a while

All the schedule disruptions, while they slow down our prose generation, are also positive things in their own right. So we have mixed feelings about them. Maybe if they didn’t travel in packs…

Q&A with Reggie Lutz


r-avatarWe’ve mentioned our good friend Reggie Lutz several times on this blog, and I’m sure you’ve seen her comments. Reggie has published many solo works (poetry, short stories, and a novel) through both traditional and self-publishing, and has also dabbled in collaboration in the past. Her future writing plans include a deeper dive into the world of coauthorship, so we decided to talk to her about her process.

 

qCongratulations on publishing Aliens in the Soda Machine, and Haunted. Boost your signal here!

aThank you! Get your Aliens here: Amazon or here: Smashwords 

Get Haunted here: Amazon or here: Smashwords

 

qYou collaborated with Jen, on a somewhat… unusual project. How would you describe that experience?

aThat project was one of the most fun writing experiences I have ever had. Jen and I were sort of challenging each other with writing prompts and somehow ended up sharing characters. After a certain amount of time we realized we had enough rough material to fill a book, and started to shape a plot around those. The result is wild, weird, and hilarious. If there is any muscle tone left in my abs, I have to attribute that to all the laughing we did while working on the Saa of Hieronymus Warhol.

Jen is extremely organized and focused, even as she was making me laugh so hard I cried. So it was really great to share the reins with her on that project. Did I mention the laughing? I also learned a lot about collaboration with that project. As someone who usually writes without a collaborative partner I learned how to let go of a certain amount of control, and that when you work with someone you trust that can be a relief rather than a source of stress.

 

qWhat can you say about working with your current collaboration partner, Devon Miller?

aWorking with Devon has been awesome so far. We spent some time brainstorming, then exploring the world via prose until we struck the right note. From there we made decisions about what the story was about, how the plot was going to move. She lives in another state, so we had weekly phone meetings during which we went over the previous week’s work, and then we assigned each other the next scene that needed to be written. Because we were so organized in our approach, we were able to skip around chronologically while we were creating the first draft. This aided in productivity a great deal, as it allowed for one of us to work on one story arc while the other fleshed out a different arc.

One thing we did before going in was talk about how we wanted to work, what the parameters were going to be, who would take charge of which task. This was easy, because Devon and I have been friends for much longer than we’ve been writing together so trust was established well before we took on this project. One thing that was really surprising was the speed with which the first draft of the first book came together. It only took three months. We’re in editing stages, currently, and are set to start work on the second book late September.

 

qHow does writing solo differ, for you, from working with a partner? How is the process impacted, in your specific experience? Does it influence subject matter, theme, tone?

aThe biggest difference in terms of process is that when collaborating, you are not the only one making decisions, and some decisions that you aren’t used to making before getting to the work have to be made before you start. Devon and I worked with a loose outline in order to enable some organic growth of story within certain parameters, but we had to understand who our characters were, and what was crucial in this case was having a shared understanding of the worldbuilding, how the society in the story operates, what the geography is like. It isn’t that you don’t think about those things with solo work, but when working alone, you can kind of wing it and fix it later if it doesn’t work. If you are writing genre fiction with a partner, and you decide the sky is always gray, but your writing partner decides the sky is always orange then those things will come into conflict with each other pretty quickly. A small detail like that can have big implications later. A gray sky might mean the world is moist and there is drama around certain kinds of infections, an orange sky might suggest a desert planet and therefore a lack of water would be a bigger issue. (Assuming we’re talking mammals.)

Working with a collaborator absolutely influences subject matter because you both have to be invested in what plays out on the page. So you’ll look for shared areas of interest, ideas that are exciting to you both and then within that you’ll look for opportunities to play to each other’s strengths. Devon loves horror fiction so we looked for places in the story to use that. I like to blend unexpected elements to create something offbeat but with an emotional undertone so we developed other areas of story to facilitate that.

During the course of a first draft there will inevitably be places where the tone does not match. Part of our editing process is to make sure that it does, and that the tone we choose is what best suits the story. What was a relief and a happy surprise for Devon and I is that the way we write individually works well together, we often find we’re on the same page about things like tone before we’ve even discussed it.

 

qAnything else you’d like to teach us about collaborative writing?

a

That’s an intimidating question coming from the masters of collaboration! I will say that I learned a lot about the benefits of plotting and planning a given work through collaboration, but that learning to leave room or when to be flexible in a writing partnership is as important to a collaboration as having a plan in place. That flexibility applies to everything in the process, from unexpected plot deviations that work better than the original plan, to having to cancel meetings because life, sometimes, intervenes. The second thing is that everything on the page from your favorite character to your most beloved sentence is on the table for discussion. When you work with someone you know well and trust, it is easy to be open in this way. But that openness is crucial to arrive at the best possible version of story.

 

qWhat have you learned from us?

aSo many tangible and intangible things about writing it’s really hard to figure out where to start. One of the things that I always admired about your collaborative process was that you both were always really committed and disciplined about the work and organized in your approach to it. I learned a lot about the value of that and I’ve applied them.

The critique group you run taught me a million things that all speak to one concrete truth about what one absolutely must do when writing fiction, and that is to do everything in order to serve the story.

Leaping From the Turnbuckle

r-avatarThe Skelley Method for Excellent Fiction Writing™ advocates the use of stubs, our proprietary step between outline and fully composed prose.

During writing sessions we manage our workflow by divvying up the stubs. The choice of who writes what usually comes down to which characters are prominent or what kind of subject matter is involved, and we’re both pretty versatile. The thing that almost never happens is handing the scene over to our partner partway through.

Almost never. But that’s exactly what we did just recently, and it was quite successful. It’s an example of the benefit of flexibility in your process. In this case, Jen did the first half and then Kent stepped in to finish it. He likes to bat clean-up, so it was a smooth experience.

Last night we had a variation on the theme, where Jen went back to a scene Kent wrote a few weeks ago and filled in a spot where he’d inserted a placeholder. It was a case where we knew conceptually what should go there, but the implementation was turning into a speed bump. Now that Jen’s revised the scene it’s in great shape. (Side note: a lot of advice books would say not to fiddle with any of your completed scenes until you have a completed draft, and that’s often wise counsel. With a partner, things can work a bit differently. Also, this revision counts as forward progress even though we had to go back to do it — plus now we can see how the concept actually works, so our new scenes don’t have that question hanging over them.)

This tag-team approach to our recent scenes has allowed us to rack up 72,000 words in the first draft of Son of Music Novel. 72,000 words so far. We’re nowhere near done.

Writer’s Block? Our Ounce of Prevention = Stubs

r-avatarWe haven’t talked about the special sauce in our team-writing process lately. We still rely on stubs, and so should you. Besides curing warts and controlling the weather, stubs have another miraculous ability we’ve neglected to mention. If you use them, you’ll rid yourself of writer’s block forever! Okay, sometimes it might still be hard to get rolling, but we find our stubs help us keep on track and on task, and make the tyranny of the blank page almost a thing of the past.

Here’s how it works.

The stubs themselves are “burner” writing. You know you’re the only one who will ever see them, so you can give yourself permission for the prose to suck. That’s terrifically liberating, and paradoxically can lead to your best work. If the stub starts to get “too good,” that’s fine. You’ll be able to mine it for gold later on.

When it’s time to do the “real” writing, the stubs give you something to use as a jumping-off point. There might be gold in there, after all. Even if there’s not, the stub holds all the minutiae for you, so you don’t have to worry about it. This lets you apply your energies to crafting magical sentences and inhabiting the characters.

The next time you feel blocked, think of stubs as a way to get get unstuck. Optimally, they’re part of a system that begins with a thorough outline, but you can get a lot of bang out of them even without additional infrastructure. Maybe all you need from them is their disposability, so you can get out of your own way and start writing. Or maybe your stub will just be a list of the key details you need to keep track of in the scene. The important thing isn’t to use them right, it’s to use them to write.

Writing Cave Mix Tape

r-avatarSome people prefer to work with no background music. We call those people “freaks.” They “enjoy” something they call “peace and quiet,” and say it helps them to concentrate.

Kent and Jen, like all right-thinking people, feel more productive with their favorite tunes serenading them.

When you’re working by yourself you can choose whatever music you like. Adding a writing partner to the equation complicates things, because chances are you won’t always agree on what constitutes good music. And the only thing worse than no music in the background is bad music in the background. It distracts like a motherfucker.

In addition to the challenge of finding music you can both agree on is the need to have that music also be conducive to writing. Some things, no matter how wonderful, just don’t work as background music, whether it’s because the lyrics are too awesome or too funny, or because the music itself is too kick-ass and all you want to do is dance or headbang. If you get too wrapped up in a song, it won’t work as a writing accompaniment.

We could of course wear headphones, and thus be free to both partake of whatever we want, but one of the most enjoyable parts of collaborating for us is the spontaneous conversations. We’d lose that if one or both of us busted out the Skullcandy.

Our current project presents its own challenges when it comes to choosing a soundtrack. We’re writing about musicians, and as we talked about last week, we like to set a mood with their music. If we’re trying to describe something dark and brooding while we’re listening to something bright and exciting, it’s just not going to work. And vice versa.

Our requirements for Writing Cave background music while working on Son-of-Music-Novel are:

  • is our son currently playing drums or piano? if not:
  • something we both like
  • that is generally conducive to writing
  • that does not set the wrong mood for the scene that either of us is working on
  • something that hasn’t been overplayed

What it boils down to is that we end up working in silence more often than we’d like :(

But what about when it’s not the Sound of Silence (a song which makes an appearance once in a blue moon)?

Classical music works in many situations because of the lack of vocals (we don’t do opera). We lean toward piano pieces, but Kent also has a really nice collection of classical guitar on his Mac. Full orchestration is a bit overwhelming we find, when we’re trying to work.

Non-classical stuff we’ve been into lately:

  • Royal Blood
  • Hanni El Khatib
  • The Kills
  • The Black Keys
  • Franz Ferdinand
  • Radiohead
  • Jack White and his various incarnations (but he tends to be distracting)
  • Fiona Apple
  • Portishead
  • The Cure
  • Bowie
  • The Doors
  • Nick Cave
  • Mike Doughty/Soul Coughing
  • Toadies (they were our first Twitter followers! True story)
  • Talking Heads
  • PJ Harvey
  • Police

Thank you, Sarah M, for giving us the nudge. (Sorry the Decemberists aren’t in our rotation. Perhaps we’ll check ’em out.)

What about you? What are you listening to?

 

The Story of the Film So Far

r-avatarAs we told you last time, Novel #6 is shaping up nicely. We decided it was time for a read-through of the work so far, so that’s how we spent a good chunk of the holiday weekend. One of the main reasons we wanted to do it was to get a sense of how the parallel threads are meshing and how the beats line up.

Overall we were quite pleased, but we do have a few places marked for adjustments. Naturally we aren’t stopping here to try to fix anything, because we need to keep up our momentum. But looking at what you’ve accomplished can be very motivating.

The writing will soon bring us up to the end of the first act. The second act is quite different and it feels good to have the tone of things so far firmly in mind as we near that transition. Although we had only a few notes, the read-through gave us a lot to talk about and energized us to keep going.

We Meant to do That

r-avatarTheme is not something we talk about a whole lot, either in the writing cave or here on the blog. We just don’t get the urge to write a novel “about” Man’s Inhumanity to Man, or whatever. I’m sure that for some writers starting with Theme feels natural and is a tremendous inspiration, but to us it feels at best backwards, at worst pretentious. We’d rather come up with a plot and characters that excite us and write about those.

English majors and high school students shouldn’t worry though. We aren’t trying to put them out of business. Theme does tend to arise naturally while we’re writing. We’ll notice certain symbols that arise and tie various plot threads together, which will prompt us to look for more events that can be tied in, until the whole plot hangs together on a thematic spiderweb. Those moments of discovery are delicious and addictive, and they convince us that our subconscious minds are freakin’ brilliant.

“Oh, you like how all those little details support our theme? Of course you do! We meant to do that!”

Almost a year ago Jen had a dream about some of the characters from our trilogy. The scenario was quite amusing (to us anyway) but didn’t fit with those novels, so we put it aside. As we were fleshing out the characters for Novel #6, Jen suggested it as a quirky attribute for one of the females. Kent agreed, and now it’s taken on a life of its own and has, against all odds, become the theme for Novel #6.

We did not set out to write a novel about “when the thing you rely on becomes the thing that harms you,” but that’s what we’ve ended up with. The heroes and villains each find themselves dealing with just such a scenario. Because we’re great and we meant to do that!

It keeps spreading, too. Last night we discovered another little detail in the background/supporting documentation that has been in place for a few months, and now, when looked at through the Theme Filter™, takes on new meaning.

Working with a writing partner increases the opportunity for such delicious discoveries. You have two brains approaching the topic, each from its own unique perspective. You’re each going to include different ideas that echo your theme, and you’re each going to spot different details that can be punched up to reinforce it even more.

Can’t Stand the Pressure

r-avatarAmong the most common recommendations thrown at writers is to always end a chapter/scene/paragraph/sentence on rising tension. Man, that makes for irritating prose.

Like most advice, good or bad, this is primarily aimed at those still learning. Limp plotlines are a common problem for newbies, so the impulse to remind them to keep us engaged is understandable. And even veterans are susceptible to info-dump and purposeless dialog and throat-clearing, all the bugbears that make the text drag. The problem here, as with all bad advice (badvice?), is not the intent.

The problem is that it’s the wrong prescription, and it’s overprescribed to boot. In some genres, a pell-mell dash with no letup is desired. But if you’re writing in that niche, you know that’s what you’re about. The reminder probably doesn’t mean much. No, this advice gets broadcast all the time as general-issue guidance. Did you think you were going for a somber tone, evoking loss and regret through imagery? Wrong — go back and punch it up. Laying the groundwork for a stunning reveal? Nope, we can’t allow that — tension only ever rises, haven’t you been listening?

Given the goal of reader engagement, writers have several options that are unrelated to the state of tension. Having something significant to say is a great start — wanting to write as opposed to wanting to be a writer. A strong voice will carry just about anything. An inventive premise will hook readers, as will rich world building. Stories do need tension, sure, but the art lies in managing and manipulating it. Requiring that it go up and up and up, always up, makes it predictable and wearying.

The reason most advice fixates on things like rising tension has less to do with whether it’s a common deficiency and more to do with it being somewhat empirical. Readers are likely to agree on whether or not tension is increasing, whereas tastes and moods determine our assessments of things like voice. But just because they’re difficult to quantify doesn’t mean you can’t get better at them. Let your story flow where it must. Never artificially raise the tension.

For more thoughts on the scarce good and copious bad advice writers receive, you can view our “advice” tag. Also, Reggie Lutz has weighed in on the matter recently, so go check that out!