Achieving a unified and consistent voice is a key issue for co-authors. Some might find ways to let their individual styles show through without becoming a distraction, but Rune Skelley strives for a single voice in the finished novels.

That’s with the novels. In the writing prompts on this blog, that’s not the case. Not the case at all.

Our comprehensive circumnavigation of the Skelleyverse over New Year’s was more of a learning experience than anticipated. We wrote the stuff, howsoever long ago, so we expected to have a pretty good handle on what it contains. Ah, well.

We couldn’t even always tell which were Kent’s handiwork and which were Jen’s, based on the content. (We kept the hand-written originals, and the penmanship or its lack gives us a definitive ruling.) It’s a bit of an odd experience to read forgotten words that came from your own pen. It’s even weirder to read a passage thinking you wrote it, and then be informed that it was in fact the other person in the room with you.

A similar thing happens with the collaboratively written material, sometimes. Specifically, Kent has a tendency to forget who wrote which parts of the novels. He must admire Jen’s prose, because invariably we discover the mixup when he tries to take credit for stuff she actually wrote.

Our standard of quality includes, among other things, making sure our critique group can’t spot the seams between Kent’s and Jen’s sections. The fact that one of the authors loses track of them is a very good sign that we’re achieving a unified voice.