encounteredFelicity learned, years later, and after much heartbreak and broken promises, not to mention a sullied reputation and a destroyed credit rating, that she should have trusted her first impressions when she initially encountered the savvy Arch-Duke of Kiev, and not rushed headlong into fulfilling her girlish fantasies.
Bonus points for using the prompts in a single sentence!
Writing with a partner is what we focus on here, but we do realize it’s not the only way to get things done. We realize it, but we see it a little differently.
Jen is a serial collaborator. Her extracurriculars are collaborative in nature, and the stuff of legend. This has gained her a bit of a wider perspective on writing with partners. She can operate in a completely different mode for a while, and then return to the Rune Skelley paradigm with a refreshed mind. Her appetite for doing any writing on her own: zero.
Kent collaborates only with Jen, and has no interest in trying things with another partner. He harbors, however, the occasional non-Skelleyish inspiration and likes working solo on these side projects, so far all short stories. It’s usually that they’re not the right type of science fiction for Rune, although in at least one case it wasn’t science fiction at all. (That’s certainly not the right type of science fiction, so there you go.) These stories give Kent a chance to sing a few notes in a different key. He needs that outlet once in a while, and then comes back to the collaboration with fewer distractions.
You might feel nervous about entering into a collaborative arrangement. Doing so means you’ll need to learn how to mesh your writing personality with another, and that can feel like a threat to your individual voice. These fears are natural, but all you have to remember is that you’re free to sow some writerly wild oats whenever you want to.
Our critique group meets in a bookstore, and that inspired this week’s writing prompt. We were each assigned the title of an existing science fiction novel we had not read, and had to write the exciting synopsis for the back cover.
Kent’s assigned novel was Friends Come in Boxes
Pop goes the weasel.
Timmy shivered in darkness, a darkness in his own mind. A darkness reaching for his soul.
Pop goes the weasel.
Years before, he’d had the courage to turn the handle and release the jaunty little tune. To summon the smiling clown. And ever since, it had taken all his courage just to walk outside. Because now he knew.
Pop goes the weasel.
They say that friends come in boxes. But they don’t say whose.
Our critique group meets in a bookstore, and that inspired this week’s writing prompt. We were each assigned the title of an existing science fiction novel we had not read, and had to write the exciting synopsis for the back cover.
Jen’s assigned novel was 43,000 Years Later
An epic saga tracking the bloodline, the passion, the tribulations and joys of a single family through the most influential 43,000 years of man’s recent history.
It starts when Percival Gray meets the young, beautiful Persimmon Smith and romance blossoms. Follow through the years as their family grows and shapes world (and eventually galactic) events!
43,000 pages would scarcely be enough to contain the tale of what happens. Where will they end up 43,000 Years Later?
We talk a lot about the importance of having a careful outline when working with a coauthor, but today we’re going to talk about the time Jen did the exact opposite.
If you ever glance at the comments on this blog, you are familiar with our good friend Reggie. Before she moved away and left us bereft, Reggie was a member of our critique group. For a few glorious months, Jen and Reggie were both fortunate enough to have employment that left them a staggeringly huge amount of unsupervised internet time. Instead of taking up online poker, or developing porn addictions, they took to throwing stichomancy writing prompts at each other, dozens per day, with the goal of maximizing the absurdity. As was perhaps inevitable, they developed a shared cast of characters that roamed at will through all the prompt responses. What began as a lark rather abruptly developed into a novel. Jen roped Kent into writing one single scene so that it could be said to be truly coauthored by Rune Skelley. The female coauthors appear in the novel as a gay male couple writing an opera about the alleged protagonist. In rough draft form it was nearly 200,000 words, many of them filthy.
Some of you probably read the preceding paragraph and got excited at the prospect of such unfettered creativity leading to something so monumental. Sad to say, this is a cautionary tale.
The entire Saga of Hieronymus Warhol was written in small bites of insanity, completely out of order. That impressive (and bloated) word count is made up of snippets of micro-fiction, averaging less than 500 words. It has a cast of, literally, almost 100 characters, all of whom have peculiar backstories and character traits that the reader is expected to keep track of.
Once the many plot lines were tied together with an improbable bow, Jen and Reggie spent a few weeks wrangling the pieces into chronological order while laughing their asses off. It may be considered gauche to laugh at your own jokes, but that never stopped these two. After that came identifying the plot holes that needed to be filled (as opposed to the ones that were purposefully ignored), assigning the prompts to fill those holes, and then the Sisyphean task of editing such a beast. Entire characters were excised. Sub-plots were fed to the wolves. It’s a process that is still not complete, years later.
With great glee, Reggie and Jen submitted their ugly baby to the critique group and snickered at their consternation. And to this day, the still-unwieldy beast sits on Jen’s and Reggie’s hard drives, gathering digital dust and wondering why nobody wants to publish it.
If you’re an agent or a publisher and you’re interested in some highly experimental fiction about an insane artist, his many lovers and family members, a pair of centuries-old incestuous sibling sorcerers, several satyrs, a sex spy, a large, strange man, and university politics, drop us a line!
This week’s prompts involved comparing a person to an inanimate object, creating a metaphor and then extending it.
Kent’s object: Pool Table
Jerry had the same low center of gravity as the tables at the pool hall where he kept his “office,” and like them he usually had an 8-ball in one of his pockets. Unlike those tables, Jerry was on the level.
Granted, he was a loan shark (not a pool shark) and there were dozens of local legends about what that 8-ball was for. But he always stuck to the original terms of a deal, and never hurt people who didn’t have it coming.
He also upheld a sort of personal code against talking about his clients, understandably enough. But two underage hustlers had been dragged out of the river in the past week, both known regulars at Jerry’s establishment, and I had to know if they were also his personal customers.
Because if they were, that would put Jerry behind the 8-ball this time.
This week’s prompts involved comparing a person to an inanimate object, creating a metaphor and then extending it.
Jen’s object: Obscene Marionette
Sexually, Francine was an obscene marionette, preferring bondage games, and always allowing her puppet master to dictate her behavior, pull her strings, and force her to perform on a tiny stage in front of a young audience.
So you’re persuaded that a writing partnership is the right approach for you, and you’ve tracked down a like-minded coauthor. Now you just need to know how to get started. Over the last year or so, the Collaboration posts here have covered much of that, but in no particular order. Herewith, a more concrete take on the subject.
You will need workspace that accommodates both of you. In Rune Skelley’s case, that’s a single room with two computers. But if you and your partner are set up in separate buildings, even different cities, that’s fine too as long as you’ll be able to communicate frequently and effectively.
You will need a project that you’re both excited about. The project might come first, could actually be the catalyst that inspires two people to go into partnership. It might not be so spontaneous, though, so be prepared to devote some time to finding your common interests. Talk the ideas through and assess how they might allow each of you to play to your strengths. Excessive difficulty settling on an idea, or a sense that you’re “settling,” can indicate compatibility issues that might call for reexamination of the partner arrangement.
Technically, that’s all you need. Everything else you can improvise as you go along.
Realistically, there are a few other points you should address up front in the interest of a productive and efficient collaboration. It’s a good idea to understand each other’s work styles early on, because there will be differences. Some stuff is obvious, even cliched: one of you is a morning person and the other is a night owl; one of you is very detail oriented and technical while the other is an endless font of chaotic inspiration. Some of the most successful duos have contrasting personality types. Often it’s that very contrast that drives their creativity. Just keep in mind that the less energy gets spent on driving each other crazy, the more there is left to put into the work.
Future installments of this How-To will take up some of the less obvious ways you and your partner need to get on the same page. Here’s a preview of what to watch for.
you know that’s not allowedBurton frowned at the model landscape, then frowned at Spinrod across the table.
“Hey. There’s a cow on the roof. You know that’s not allowed.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
Spinrod frowned now. “Do you think anyone else will notice?”
Burton nodded solemnly.
Spinrod tapped his temple. “What if it wears a saddle. We could use the pommel exemption.”
Burton sighed. “That’s only for aquatic installations. How can you be so ignorant?”
misinterpreted the gestureAbout the Author
Rune Skelley has always been naturally athletic, even back in the 20th century, before such things were in vogue. For several years Rune enjoyed a writing partnership with the dark-haired and fleshy novelist Augustus St John, until a misunderstanding involving sign language. Rune attempted to sign, “I’m hungry,” but Augustus misinterpreted the gesture. This lead to their falling out, of which St John said dully, “It’s over.”
Rune Skelley’s smooth-edged skull echoes with the barking chorus of the muses. Rune’s ultimate ambition is to buy a small Pacific island.