Collabo DIY-A-Palooza Part 2: Defining Your Process

This is the second post in our Nuts and Bolts series.

We all have different work styles, and there’s no one right way to write. If your style conflicts with your partner’s, however, trouble is going to be the result. Nothing stalls out a collaboration better than toiling over a passage until you’re thoroughly pleased with it, only to hear from your partner that it’s not what the project requires. The upshot is, however much structure you do or don’t like in your writing life, a successul collaboration probably means you’ll need a bit more.

Because you and your writing partner are not Jen and Kent, your optimal process will not be exactly the Rune Skelley formula. But it’s a good place to start and can be seasoned to taste. So, here’s the very broad strokes of How To Do It:

• concept development (gotta find something you’re both really into)
• outline (can be more like a synopsis, as long as it’s organized)
• stubs (the Rune Skelley secret weapon!)
• composition (turning stubs into scenes)
• successive editing and revision passes (start with structure and pacing, then tighten up descriptions and dialog, and finally polish the prose)

All of the pieces are important, and we’ll talk about each of them again at some point, but the heart of the system is stubs.

Stubs are a lot like writing prompts, albeit very formalized ones. We’ve talked before about why we like them so much. Here’s the recipe.

• limit the scope to one scene
• specify the setting and characters (do this even if it feels too obvious)
• add continuity notes about clothing, how many bullets are still in the gun, etc.
• give bland, bald, simple statements of what everyone is feeling, which secrets they do and don’t know at this point, etc. (the stub must not be subtle, nor open to interpretation)
• summarize the scene’s job, e.g., “this is how Mary finds out Bob is dead,” or “establishes Zeke’s obsession with parakeets”

Why can’t you just jump right into writing the scenes? You can. The reason we recommend creating stubs first is the extra structure. We find stubs are an ideal way to divvy things up between the two of us, and they help us identify places where we might not have exactly the same vision before they escalate into “creative differences.”