While I am
not yet an expert at it, I have been co-writing a fan fiction that shall be
turned into an original story for about 9 months (for more information about
this, check the current projects tab). It started out as something fun to do,
but slowly became more serious. It is still very fun to do but the decision to
transform it into an original story and try to publish it, adds
responsibilities to it.
I have this
rule to never engage into business with a friend and I broke it. I am writing
with a friend and even though I do not care much about the money we may get
when we publish, it turns it into a business. That’s why I will not write
anything of the original version of our story before we made up a contract. A
contract is the basis of good partnership because it gives insurances. Things
like deadlines, who writes what, who earns how much, what about expenses and
what happens if someone does not want to continue anymore should be covered in
such a contract. It will put your mind at ease!
Co-writing
has both advantages and disadvantages. The best advantage is that you have more
brainpower to come up with interesting plot twists and solutions to problems. The
downside is that it can also make it a lot more difficult to agree on things.
It is unavoidable that each writer has their own view on the story and the
characters. That is why communication is very important. I have been talking almost
daily to my co-writer. Our conversations are not always about the story, but it
is an important part of our discourse. If you are too stubborn to give up on
your ideas, you should not co-write!
A big
disadvantage for me is that I am not a very patient person. Since we are still
writing round-robin at this moment, I sometimes have nothing to write until my
friend finishes a part. And this can be very frustrating! This is the only
project I am currently working on and beside school I have not much else to do
and this gives me quite some time to write. My friend, however, has a lot more
other things to do than I. I perfectly understand that, but, as I said before,
I am impatient. This difference in time we have to spend on writing might cause
some problems setting up deadlines. They have to be viable but at the same time
I do not want to spend years and years working on this.
We divided
the portion of work more or less equally. We all have our ‘own’ character to
develop, have about the same amount of point of views to write and we split up
the world building. This was fairly easy to do in our case, but when you both
want to write the same character or both to the same part of the world building
progress, it might be harder.
While
co-writing is a lot of fun with the right persons, it is a lot harder than
writing solo. Everything has to be discussed and you must count on each other.
It can ruin friendships. So far is had been a great experience for me, but if
you want to try it, pick someone who has the same views as you and expects the
same of a story. Be very careful and do not start a project with the first
person who is willing to work together without!
When I have
more to say about this topic, I shall write another blog. If you have
questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or ask them on twitter!
