Booklife

Here’s the ninth interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge are big — huge! — comic book readers and collectors. They have been since their childhoods and their love of comics has shaped their writing and their visions of the world.

Together, Kessler and Kittredge co-write the Icarus Project series, which began with Black and White and continues with Shades of Gray in June 2010.  The books pit two former best friends against each other in a blend of super-heroes, humor, romance and suspense.  Fortunately, Kessler and Kittredge have managed to stay friends throughout their collaboration on the series.

Jackie Kessler writes dark fantasy and paranormal novels, including the online serial Hell to Pay from her Hell on Earth series.  Her first young adult fantasy, Hunger, written as Jackie Morse Kessler, will be released in October 2010. 

Caitlin Kittredge writes about “mages, werewolves, superheroes, steampunk monsters, fairies and demons.”  Her five book (so far) Nocturne City series, featuring a detective who is a werewolf, began with Night Life in 2008 and continues with the recent Spell Bound.

Below, Kessler and Kittredge talk about trust, communication, and having fun.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?
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Jackie Kessler: Hey, you only have to write half a book. On a more serious note, having a collaborator is like having your very own crit partner who also writes the book with you. You brainstorm the plot and the characters, and as you write it your collaborator is right there to make it better. And collaborators can complement each other’s distinct strengths and help fill in any possible weak spots. 

Caitlin and I lived on different coasts when we decided to write Black and White, so we relied on instant messaging and emails to brainstorm and pass the manuscript back and forth. Basically, we hammered out the concepts behind the two point of view characters [POV] (and who would write which character), a few of the supporting characters, and a chunk of the history/world building. We had a master synopsis to remind us of the important points. And then we wrote. Caitlin kicked it off with the prologue and chapter one; then I wrote chapter two, she wrote chapter three, and so on. At various points, we stopped to reorganize what we had, and by the end we were writing a one-sentence summary of each of the remaining chapters so we could tie everything up. The draft took us 10 weeks, start to finish.

Caitlin Kittredge:  Benefits are myriad.  You get another POV, you have a ready-made sounding board for ideas, the writing process a totally different experiences that forces you to think outside of your normal parameters, and you get to see what your co-author comes up with… it’s like getting a sneak peek just for yourself!  Jackie and I outline extensively via IM chat and a master synopsis, and then pass chapters back and forth, alternating our POV characters.  I think it works for us because we’re both organized to a degree, but we also don’t have a problem being total pantsers if we come up with a cool idea just chatting back and forth.  Several important twists in both Icarus books came up spur of the moment, and it was great being able to incorporate them with another person’s feedback.

Jackie Kessler: It works as long as the co-authors communicate with each other. Some collaborative teams have a primary and secondary relationship, where one person writes the draft and the other person revises it. Caitlin and I didn’t do that. She wrote all the Iridium chapters, and I wrote all the Jet chapters. We did, however, give each other feedback and suggested edits on the other sections. The process worked very well for us.

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How does it positively affect the final product?
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Jackie Kessler: Black and White and its sequel, Shades of Gray, were absolutely collaborative projects. Caitlin and I worked together to create a world with superheroes chock full of neuroses and emotions and history. If either of us had set out to write a superhero story solo, it would not have turned out as strong or as complete as the two books we wrote together.

Caitlin Kittredge:  How it affects the final product is, well, pretty large: Neither Shades of Gray or Black and White is a book I would have written on my own. Collaboration by its very nature alters your voice and finished novel — and when it’s a good relationship, you’re left with something that’s truly a unique product that couldn’t have come from either of you alone.

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Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?
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Jackie Kessler: The process would have fallen apart without communication — and without trust. You have to trust your coauthor, or it won’t work at all. And then you have to live up to that trust. Collaborating can be a blast — just make sure you and your coauthor get that it’s all about the story. Be willing to let go of some control — again, it comes down to trust — and you’ll be amazed at the result.

Caitlin Kittredge: If you aren’t having fun, you’re probably doing it wrong.  That’s the short answer. 

You can’t be a control freak.  You really can’t.  Collaboration is give and take, and compromise and, well, collaboration.  It should be fun, not stressful, so if you’re somebody who has a hard time accepting input during the drafting stage, collaborating may not be for you.  If you have golden word syndrome, or simply hate crits, it’s going to be more difficult. 

Collaboration is a way to make your writing different and bigger and better and more entertaining — it shouldn’t be an ordeal that you emerge from wondering why the hell you did it in the first place.  Above all, especially if the collaborator is your friend, remember to leave the book issues with the book.  You can disagree over plot points and remain friends. I promise.

Other than that — brainstorm, communicate, and try something you normally wouldn’t solo.  Collaboration is awesome!

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the eighth interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.  I should note that Matt Forbeck was integral in the creation of the Shared Worlds camp.  He has been extremely generous with his ideas and expertise since the beginning.  Many thanks, Matt!

Both Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb are legends in the gaming industry, an industry that thrives on collaboration, ingenuity, and… creative playfulness. 

Known as The Nicest Guy in Gaming, Matt Forbeck has done work for everyone from Atari to Wizards of the Coast.  Forbeck’s CV reads like a case study in creative diversification.  He “has designed collectible card games, role-playing games, miniatures games, board games, and logic systems for toys and has directed voiceover work and written short fiction, comic books, novels, screenplays, and computer game scripts and stories.”  Most of Forbeck’s fiction is set in shared universes, though his recent novels, Amortals and Vegas Knights (forthcoming), take place in a creator-owned setting.

Jeff Grubb is a master of world-building and collaborative design.  A civil engineer turned game designer and writer, Jeff Grubb has written fiction set in the Warcraft, Spellcraft, Magic: The Gathering, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Marvel universes.  (Of his novels, he is the most proud of his novels The Brothers’ War, Lord Toede and Azure Bonds, which he co-wrote with his wife, Kate Novak.)  Grubb worked on the creative teams that designed the Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Al-Qadim, and Spelljammer campaign settings.  Recently, Grubb’s been playing in the Guild Wars universe at ArenaNet.

Below, Forbeck and Grubb talk about collaborating in general and on their forthcoming novel, Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon, in particular.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing? How do you do it? When does it work? How does it positively affect the final product?

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Matt Forbeck:  Having worked on many games, I’m used to being part of a large team of people brought together to get a job done. However, Guild Wars 2: Ghosts of Ascalon is my first collaboration on a work of fiction. ArenaNet hired me to write the book, and I wrote the first draft myself. As we worked our way through revisions, though, it became clear that this wasn’t something I could best handle on my own. The world of Guild Wars is just too big for me to get every one of the details right, and it would have taken years to become a qualified expert on it. This is doubly true since the Guild Wars 2 game still has yet to be released.

Fortunately, ArenaNet had just such an expert on tap in the form of Jeff. Of course, Jeff’s not only an unlimited font of knowledge on all things Guild Wars, he’s also a fantastic writer. I’ve known him and his work for years, and we’re both part of the same writers’ group, the Alliterates, although he’s with the hip Seattle branch while I hang with the Midwestern originals. Because of this, the collaboration worked well. The book is, I think, better than anything either of us could have created alone.

Jeff Grubb: The advantage of collaboration is that two heads are better than one, and your collaborator is guaranteed to be just as involved in the book as you are. Matt writes some of the best combat scenes I’ve seen, and the overall outline and characters are his. I’ve got the insider knowledge and deeply understand the races and histories. Together we both do dialogue well. It is a melding of strengths to produce a good final book.

I call this the book that swallowed me. I was there at the start, working out the plot with Matt and the rest of the creative staff, but in a support function — a shadowy figure pulling strings and making suggestions. As time went by, I became more and more directly involved, such that I was soon writing large sections, like the parts in the Charr territories and some of the folktales. Eventually I joined the book fully for a final draft.

This is not always the case — my work with my wife, Kate Novak, came about when I started explaining the plot to her on a drive to Milwaukee. By time we got there, I had a co-writer and one of the characters had changed gender. With Kate, we worked from a tight outline (much like with Matt), and I barreled through the first draft, and she handled the revisions. Working with Ed Greenwood on Cormyr: a Novel had a different approach — since the book broke down into present and past sections, we split the chapters, then switched up and rewrote each other.

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Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

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Jeff Grubb:  The best advice I can give to any collaboration is to hammer out the outline first. Know where you’re going with the book, so that if you’re splitting the initial writing tasks or alternating, there are no (well, fewer) surprises down the road.

Matt Forbeck:  Jeff’s right that you should have a good outline to work from, but I find that’s the case with any work of fiction. It always helps to know where you’re going before you head out, and that’s even more true when you’re traveling that road with someone else at your side.

It’s also important to keep the lines of communication open and make good use of them. You want to be sure everyone’s happy with the end results, and that’s easier to do if you make sure that you’re not working at cross purposes at any point in the process.

If you don’t have a thick skin about criticism, be sure to develop one fast. You need total honesty in a collaboration to get the best results. It doesn’t have to be brutal though. Be as kind with your own criticisms as you would want your writing partner to be with you, and hopefully you’ll receive the same kindness in return.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the seventh interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Mary Buckham and Dianna Love both write character-rich, plot-driven novels of suspense.  With Break into Fiction®: 11 Steps to Building a Story that Sells, they condense years of writing and teaching experience into an accessible and straight-forward method geared toward aspiring writers who want to “develop a budding idea into a full-fledged novel with depth, emotion, and dynamic pacing.”

Mary Buckham writes romantic-suspense novels, including The Makeover Mission and Invisible Recruit.  She co-founded WriterUniv, which offers writing classes via e-mail or newsgroup.  She gives seminars and presentations on writing throughout North America. 

New York Times Best-selling author Dianna Love writes action-adventure novels, including two Bureau of American Defense novels with Sherrilyn Kenyon.  Like Buckham, Love travels the continent giving workshops on writing.

Below, Buckham and Love talk about how they collaborated on a book despite the fact that they live across the country from each other (Washington and Georgia, respectively).

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

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Dianna Love: I’ve had the great fortune of collaborating on both fiction and nonfiction.   In both situations, we meet and work online, and use up a lot of “any time” minutes. 

I think a collaboration works when the authors have one goal in mind – the book.  Sounds simple, but you must really trust your writing partner and your instincts at the same time, which is not easy for many writers and can damage the final product.  Trusting your writing partner’s strengths affects the final product by taking a fiction story to a whole new level and resulting in a nonfiction book like Break into Fiction® becoming the new standard in teaching writing. 

Mary Buckham: The benefit of collaborating is to challenge you to expand your writing abilities and really learn what are your strengths and your opportunities. As Dianna and I dug into analyzing stories and analyzing our own writing to create the Break into Fiction® template, teaching program and book, we had to move beyond our own world views and assumptions. That’s growth and adds immensely to any final product!

Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

Dianna Love:  The first and foremost piece of advice I would give is not to choose a writing partner because it’s a friend or someone you’ve known a long time or someone who was “willing” to collaborate.  Both of my collaborations have come more out of accident than a decision to co-write a book.  Sherrilyn Kenyon and I were touring when the discussion of her series came up and we started talking about taking her stories to a high concept level.  I brainstormed something off the top of my head that she got excited about and asked me to co-author the series, bringing my dark/edgy thriller voice to her snarky/sarcastic signature voice.  We decided to try one book and if we didn’t kill each other, we’d try another one.  The good news is we are still best of friends. 

Mary Buckham and I met at mystery writing conference in Boise, ID in 2005 and found we both analyzed stories to determine what made some more powerful than others.  We developed the Character-Driven™ Power Plotting program we taught across the country.  We were fascinated that in addition to unpublished writers attending our retreats, we had a significant number of published authors who wanted a simple way to figure out quickly if their stories would hold up or was full of holes.  Having built the program with both plotters and pantsers (seat-of-the-pants writers) in mind, we didn’t realize what the overwhelming response would be and finally decided we had to put this in a book since we couldn’t teach everyone.  That’s how we came to publish Break into Fiction®. 

The only other advice I’d offer is that if you have any reservation in discussing any part of the collaboration from agents to money to who does what parts to promoting…think twice about doing it.  A collaboration is very similar to picking the person you marry.  You shouldn’t go into it without a lot of thought, but once you get a good partner it can work for a lifetime.  I’m blessed with great partners who are talented writers. 

Mary Buckham: I think it’s vital to find a writing partner with the same work ethic and long range goals that you possess because there’s always stages in a project where one or the other gets called away to put out bigger fires, or one or the other could easily turn away and focus on other projects. But if you have discussed intentions, expectations, and see that the other backs up their words with their actions, then you should be in a good situation. 

Best intentions don’t get a book written. Great writings partners can and do create amazing books!

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the sixth interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Neither Christine Matthews nor Robert J. Randisi likes to collaborate.  Their second co-authored novel The Masks of Auntie Laveau, begins with one protagonist saying to the other, “’Don’t you dare bring me back to this wicked place again.’” It’s easy enough to imagine Matthews saying these very same words to Randisi. 

Yet, Matthews and Randisi, who are husband and wife, have collaborated on three novels and a growing number of other projects.  That’s right.  They don’t like it, but they’ve done it, and they keep on doing it.  Why?  I’m not sure.  But they sure do it well.

Christine Matthews is the penname of Marthayn Pelegrimas, a prolific writer of speculative short fiction.  As Christine Matthews, she is the co-author with Robert J. Randisi of three mystery novels featuring Gil and Claire Hunt and the author of the story collection, Gentle Insanities and Other States of Mind.

The author of more than 540 books, Robert J. Randisi writes across the genres, though he is probably best known these days as the founding president of The Private Eye Writers of America and as the author of the Rat Pack Mysteries.

In 1982, Randisi created The Gunsmith action-western series and, under the name J. R. Roberts, has written at least a novel a month ever since.  Though he claims that no one has read every book he has written, including himself, he does point to The Ham Reporter as a personal favorite.  The Ham Reporter tells the story of Bat Masterson in the years after the legendary lawman left the Wild West to become a sports writer back East.

Below, Matthews and Randisi talk about the benefits and the pitfalls of collaborative fiction writing.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

Robert J. Randisi:  The benefits depend on who you’re collaborating with. If you are working with someone more famous than you, then you benefit from that.  However, if you’re writing with someone less known than you, then the benefit is theirs, not yours. If you’re working with a celebrity, your benefit is their celebrity.  Their benefit is your writing skill and experience. 

How you do it again depends on who you do it with.  With another writer you’ll try to split the writing 50-50. With the three books I’ve done with Christine Matthews we worked differently on each book.  Sometimes one person would just write until they got stuck, then pass it on.  Other times one person would be in charge and call the tune. Sometimes one person plots, the other writes, or both plot and one writes 

It works when you respect each other’s input.

And if you respect each other’s input it positively affects the final outcome.

Christine Matthews:  The obvious benefit is having to only do half the work.  Since I live and work with a writing maniac, we decided from the start that he’d have to work at my speed. We sat down to plot the book (loosely) and I started writing it.  When I hit the wall…or was just bored…I tossed it over to Bob.  Because of his photographic memory and the fact that I’m only human, I would type over his pages into my computer so I could get a feel for where he was going with the story and to edit.  When that was finished, I’d start writing from that point.  Back and forth we went until the books were done. Since our styles are so similar, we can’t tell which parts I wrote and which are his. Our two brains affected the book positively in the plotting. Sitting down and talking through the story was the most fun.

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Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

Robert J. Randisi:  First, I don’t know why you’d set out to collaborate. I’ve written with Christine Matthews because we are a couple, we live together, and I didn’t know what we could share that would be more personal. Other couples may feel the same.   

But I don’t think I’ve ever known a writer who “set out” to collaborate. It’s almost like hanging wallpaper–a deal breaker for relationships.

Christine Matthews:  To be honest, I don’t really see any advantage to collaborating, other than efficiency (if you work well as a team) and sharing the load. I think it can cause more problems than pleasures. Writing is a solitary endeavor…at least it should be.  So unless you have great love for your partner or an over abundance of patience… don’t.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the fifth interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Comics writer and editor Roy Thomas is a legend of the Silver Age.  He succeeded Stan Lee as editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics and he brought sword-and-sorcery to comics in grand fashion by introducing Robert E. Howard’s iconic characters, Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja, to comics readers. 

Since the 1960s, Thomas has written scripts for Avengers, Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, Thor, Doctor Strange, and many more.  He’s tackled adaptations of classic novels, such as Moby Dick, and epic poems, such as The Iliad and The Odyssey.  He’s written for the big companies (DC and Marvel) and for numerous independent companies.

After more than forty years in the business, Thomas seems to be as prolific as ever.  He often co-writes with French writer Jean-Marc Lofficier and with his wife Dann Thomas.

Below, Thomas gives his take on collaboration and emphasizes the value of knowing who you’re working with.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

Roy Thomas:  It seems to me that since no two writers are alike, you can often get more than 100% of a writer via a collaboration. Of course, there’s also a chance of watering down individuality, but it’s a tradeoff, and it seems to work very well especially in media which, like TV and film, and for that matter comics, are often if not always collaborative by necessity. 

I started doing collaborating as a way to keep alive creatively at a time when I’d been doing a lot of work and could use some additional inspiration… Dann, for instance, because she was almost totally unfamiliar with comics, would often come up with something I wouldn’t have thought of.

Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

Roy Thomas:  I haven’t written collaborative straight fiction, really… though Gerry Conway and I did once collaborate on a few chapters of a never-sold Kull novel… but my best advice is to know your partner.  Know if he/she responds best to suggestions if they’re worded tactfully, or humorously, or if bluntness is just fine. 

Most teams, if they’re meant to survive and thrive at all, will arrive at this meeting of the minds by trial and error.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the fourth interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.  It’s also important to note Steve Perry is one of the writers whose advice helped turn a classroom experiment into the innovative summer camp, Shared Worlds.

Novelist Steve Perry wanted his daughter to learn a trade, so he helped her write her first novel.  The author of more than fifty books, Perry has written numerous media tie-in novels, including some set in the Conan, Star Wars, and Net Force universes.  However, he is most known for his creator-owned Matador Series, which includes The Man Who Never Missed and The Musashi Flex.  He is particularly adept at writing martial arts scenes.

Steve Perry has co-written with William Gibson, Michael Reaves, Tom Clancy, Larry Segrif, Dal Perry (his son), and S. D. Perry (his daughter) among others.

S. D. Perry co-wrote her first few novels with Steve Perry while still in college.  She writes mostly media tie-in fiction, including novels set in the Star Trek, Aliens, Predator, and Resident Evil universes. Her novels are known for action made all the more exciting by rich characterizations.  She has collaborated with Britta Dennison and Steve Perry.

Below, the Perrys talk about various methods of collaboration and the excitement of having different voices.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

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Steve Perry:  Ideally, a collaboration would be half as much work. Practically speaking, it usually doesn’t parse out 50/50. Sometimes writers of equal ability do a piece; sometimes there is a senior/junior writer, and in either case, the project can be divided up differently.

I’ve been junior writer, senior, and equal; worked with several other writers, and there are all kinds of ways to do a collaboration. Method I’ve used the most is for one writer to do a complete draft and for the other to rewrite it. I’ve also traded alternate chapters, and sometimes each writer has a favorite character they mostly fill out. Some writers play to their strengths — one might do fight scenes, another love scenes. Varies according to the wants and whims and skills of the players.

Michael Reaves and I would sometimes joke when we were on panels that I did the nouns and he did the verbs. He and I started because he had an idea for a big SF book and hadn’t written anything like it before; he’d been doing fantasy novels.

My daughter and I began collaborating because I wanted her to learn a trade to help support her while she went to college.

My son and I did a book because he wanted to try it, and if you can’t help your own kids, what’s the point?

Other writers I’ve co-written with have come up as stories we bounced off each other, or as WFH [work for hire] projects in which I had more time or different skill-sets they wanted to use.

Somewhere in my files, I have a copy of an unpublished story I did twenty-odd years ago with William Gibson. It’s not a bad story, though I suspect neither of us would want to see it published now. I keep threatening to sell the ms on eBay as a collector’s item. Even a half-Gibson story might be worth something…

S. D. Perry:  In my collaborations with my father, the benefit was that I was a novice and he was helping me along, getting my name out there–and teaching me how to work quickly and cleanly. I believe I wrote first drafts in our collaborations, and he “fixed” everything ’til it looked professional. I had a similar experience with my other collaborator (Britta Dennison), only the roles were reversed–she was new and I played editor. Britta and I actually divided up characters in the books we wrote together. I think having different voices in a book can be exciting… And I think it helps to have another pair of eyes looking at continuity.

Steve Perry:  In theory, a collaboration gives you a story or book or movie that neither writer would have produced alone and is better for it. Your co-writer will bring something to the table you might not have considered, and the tale will shine brighter.

Sometimes this works great. Sometimes, you wind up with a project neither writer loves, but that still works. The old joke about how many drafts it takes to do a collaboration is that you pass it back and forth until both of you are equally dissatisfied with it.

Positives are that, if you have two published writers, you might get both their audiences. Negatives are, if you are equal partners, you get half as much money. And if your collaborator misses a deadline, you might have to hustle to make up for it.

Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

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S. D. Perry:  I suppose my advice would be to set out clear guidelines before you begin a project–who’s responsible for what, who will deal with submitting, etc. I’ve been lucky–in both of my collaborative relationships, I’ve dealt with talented, easy-going authors who were open to working things out, to shifting responsibility as needed. I’ve heard horror stories, though, of teams falling apart, of one writer unable to complete his or her part, of secret discussions with editors where one of the team was left out… 

I guess I’d say if you have any doubts about your partner, draw up a simple contract that you can both sign, spelling everything out. Or, you know, don’t work with anyone you don’t feel you can trust.  

Steve Perry:  Decide who gets the final draft before you start. With a junior/senior arrangement, this will usually be the senior writer.

Or agree to agree on everything, which is passing hard, but, I suppose possible. Somebody has to have the final say.

At some point, you have to finish, and if you aren’t willing to let it go without making changes every draft, you’ll never get done. I once collaborated on a short story long-distance with a friend who was a working pro. Every time I’d send him a draft, he’d kill my favorite darling, and I’d put it back next draft, and kill one of his. This went on for several drafts — longer than either of us would have done had we been writing it alone.

Finally we got to a stopping place and I sent it off.

First magazine we sent it to bought it. I called him up to tell him. He allowed as how he had some more changes he wanted to make.

No, I said, you don’t understand. They bought it. They will be sending us a check. It’s done.

It can be absolutely delightful, collaboration. And if you are ever going to work in the movies or TV, you have to learn how to do it, because nothing you write there is ever graven in stone. If you can’t allow somebody to rearrange your words, cut or add to them, you can’t be a scriptwriter, because that’s how it works. A producer can tell you that you’ve written the best script he has ever seen, it’s terrific, it’s wonderful!  And if it makes it to the screen, you can bet the farm it won’t do so exactly as you had it. ‘Tis the nature of the beast.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the third mini-interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Whether writing together or alone, Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear tell great big stories of native North Americans, of adventure and romance, and of rich characters and compelling situations.  And they do so with seemingly unerring historical accuracy. 

Before writing full-time, Kathleen O’Neal Gear served as the State Historian of Wyoming and as the Archaeologist for Wyoming.  Since the mid-1980s she has written numerous novels alone and dozens with W. Michael Gear.

Also a trained anthropologist, W. Michael Gear worked as a field archaeologist in the 1970s and 1980s.  He sold his first novel in 1987 and has since written more than a dozen alone and even more with Kathleen O’Neal Gear.

There most recent novels are Children of the Dawnland, a young adult novel, and The Coming of the Storm, which is the first in the Contact: The Battle for America series.

Below, the Gears share some advice on how to work well as a writing team.

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Jones:  What are the benefits of collaboration?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:   Having two imaginations weaving the same story can create magic, and that’s the primary benefit of collaboration.   When everything is flowing, there’s a tangible energy you just don’t get when you write alone.

W. Michael Gear:   Having Kathleen evaluate everything I write helps keep perspective on the novel. There have been times I was so profound I just knew what I’d written was going to rock the Pulitzer committee back on its heels and redefine Western literature.  Kathy, of course, returned the draft all marked up in red with a note saying:  “This is real fecal material.”  Though, she used a much shorter noun of Anglo-Saxon derivation.  That fact is if I was so brilliant that I lost her, I’d lose the reader, too.  Time to rewrite for clarity.

Jones:  How do you do it?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:  We discuss plot every morning over breakfast.  What are the characters doing today?  What’s the major obstacle each person will face?  What’s the goal for this chapter?  At night, we read each other’s work, make suggestions, then the other takes over and starts rewriting. We end up handing the manuscript back and forth until we’re both happy with it.

W. Michael Gear:  While the above sounds technically correct, I tell the reader that all the parts they liked were written by Kathy.  Anything they thought was clunky, ponderous, or dull was my contribution.

Beyond the storytelling, each novel is a serious attempt to educate the American people that they have a stunning fifteen-thousand year cultural heritage.  Right here.  On our continent.  We argue about which archaeological data should be included and the best way to interpret our nation’s cultural heritage.  Many of the novels are used as texts, or supplemental texts, in university courses, so we have to be right. 

Jones:  When does collaboration work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:  It works especially well for character creation.  Since we’re a male-female team, our characters undergo an interesting process of definition.  Each becomes a blend of masculine and feminine traits that, we think, results in a more realistic character.  Every woman, after all, has a male side, and every man has a female side.  That’s what makes people interesting.

W. Michael Gear:  A writer is always so close to his material that all he can see are the trees in front of him–and they look just fine. Having co-author forces him to step back and really look at the forest.  That’s when the bare spots become visible and the densely worded thickets can be thinned.  We want the reader to fall seamlessly into our characters’ world and become so engrossed they don’t come out until the final page.

Jones:  Can you share some advice (and maybe words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:  If you’re a couple, beware.  True collaboration requires that you give up your ego.  You have to trust your partner’s talent.  If he or she says there’s something wrong with the story, then there is.  Fix it.

W. Michael Gear:  This is a bigger subject than we have space for here. Most collaborations get in trouble when one party isn’t perceived as doing his share of the work.  Work out in advance who does what, and by when. Put it in writing, and pay particular attention to the contract. Co-authoring a book is a business agreement. Treat it like one. Anticipate everything: illness, death, divorce, responsibilities for promotion, pay-out, agencies, responsibilities for revisions, who has editorial contact, how to handle legal disputes–and a hundred other details.  Relying on a co-author’s good will and verbal assurances only ends up making lawyers rich.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

The novelist Maan Meyers is not a real person.  S/he is the combined voices of the novelists Annette and Martin Meyers. 

Annette Meyers is best known for the Smith and Wetzon mystery series and Martin Meyers for the Patrick Hardy mystery series.  Together, as Maan Meyers, they collaborate on historical mysteries set in New York.

“You have to be a particular type of person to collaborate,” says Annette Meyers.  “I am not that type of person.  I would never say to Marty, ‘Hey let’s write a new Maan Meyers short or novel!’   I am a very bad collaborator.”

Yet, despite this, Annette Meyers has co-written seven very successful novels and numerous short stories with Martin Meyers.  Below, Meyers talks about how Maan Meyers works.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

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Annette Meyers:  The singular benefit is the work that’s created, but that depends on whom you’re collaborating with.

Marty and I do talk about the project and throw out ideas.  But we found early on that we couldn’t work in the same room.  We worked out a routine of my writing the first chapter, printing it out, giving it to him.  He rewrites and then writes the second chapter.  It is not in any way easy.  We don’t agree on the writing process. Our styles are different.  I use long sentences.  He uses short choppy ones.  I use paragraphs.  He likes one sentence paragraphs.  I like to work from beginning to end; I am very organized and literal.  Marty works like an actor; he does set pieces and hands them to me.  Sometimes they have little or nothing to do with what we’re working on.  It drives me mad.

The strange thing is that on our second book, The Kingsbridge Plot, he wrote one of his set pieces on a cockfight.  I was exasperated and put it aside.  Then when I read the first 20 or so pages of what we’d written, I saw that the novel didn’t open with a “kick,” that it was in fact dull.  That’s when I remembered the wonderful set piece of the cockfight and we put it in and it became the opening of the book!

So we don’t work well together.  At the end, we have a final negotiation.  “I can keep this, if you keep that” kind of thing.

Our editor at Bantam used to ask for a one page description of our next book so she could authorize the advance, and I’d ask Marty for a little of the research (he did most of it on the earlier books because I was working full time), he’d give me 35 pages and after I had my fit of exasperation, I had to sit down and cull that information into three or four paragraphs.

Here’s the most interesting part of our collaboration:  When I read the galleys of our first collaboration, The Dutchman, it was amazing.  It was a third voice.  Not his, not mine. 

The voice of Maan Meyers.  And it worked.  And it was exciting and awe-inspiring.

We are working right now on a Maan Meyers short story that was commissioned for an anthology.  Marty loves the collaboration.  But it is very difficult for me.  I am a writer who writes in my head.  I like going solo.  I am an obsessive person who needs to have control of my thoughts and words.

All that said, I am very proud of the seven great history-mystery novels and all the short stories we created as Maan Meyers.  Neither Marty nor I could have written these on our own.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

In celebration of Shared Worlds, Booklifenow will be talking with a handful of writers who collaborate on books.  Shared Worlds is a creative writing summer camp for teenagers interested in collaborative creativity.

Over the next week or so, we will hear from Annette Myers, Mary Buckham and Dianna Love, Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear, S. D. Perry and Steve Perry, Christine Matthews and Robert J. Randisi, Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb, Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge, and Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini.  These writers represent many styles and genres, including mystery, historical, fantasy, and science fiction.

Today, Kevin J. Anderson and Ed Greenwood discuss what’s best for the story and the importance of leaving your ego at the door.  Anderson and Greenwood have never collaborated with each other, but they both have long and rich histories of collaborating with others. 

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Kevin J. Anderson has written (and co-written) extensively in the Star Wars and Dun universes.  He is the author of The Edge of the World and the forthcoming The Map of All Things.

Ed Greenwood has written across the genres, but is best known for his many fantasy novels.  He is the author of Falconfar and the forthcoming Elminster Must Die: the Sage of Shadwodale.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?

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Kevin J. Anderson:  I collaborate with a writing partner because he or she brings something to the project that I can’t do myself.  I have written a dozen major novels with Brian Herbert (who has a philosophy degree to my physics degree) and the two of us bring a level of ambition to a Dune novel that neither of us could do individually.  My wife is a noted YA author, so when we work together our work is targeted toward younger readers.  My books with Doug Beason are cutting-edge techno-thrillers because Doug has had a career in the military and long experience working on major high-tech projects.

Ed Greenwood: Collaborations are far less lonely than writing alone, and bouncing ideas off each other and playing to the strengths of one collaborating writer where another has weaknesses can build great creative energy and make collaborations fun.

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How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?
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Kevin J. Anderson:  We brainstorm the project carefully together, write a detailed outline/blueprint that we each work from (chapters divided equally), and after we do our own drafts, we edit each other’s until the manuscript is smooth and seamless.  

Ed Greenwood:  I deliberately do collaborations differently every single time, by asking the other writer(s) involved how they want to do it, and then agreeing to whatever they’d prefer. For me, the fun of a collaboration is in trying all the various ways of collaborating. I seem to be most comfortable in letting others handle the meta-plot (outline), and I concentrate on dialogue, characterization, and description (“putting the flesh on the bones”).

For me, collaborations succeed when they produce a good story first and foremost, and when all parties involved enjoyed the process. In the case of living collaborators (as opposed to a living writer finishing something left incomplete by a deceased writer, where the goal may be to craft a story as if the deceased writer had lived to do it all), I think a collaboration really works when the result is a “better” story than either writer might have produced solo, and that doesn’t seem to be the work of just one writer or the other.

A good storytelling team improves together, so their tales become better as they all/both benefit from working with others.

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Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?
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Ed Greenwood:    Make sure you have time to devote to a collaboration. A collaborative effort is never “half the work” of a solo project.

Always make sure that all parties involved in a collaboration communicate freely and fully at the beginning so everyone is agreed on who’s doing what, how, and by when. If something isn’t working, say so, right away. It’s not fair to others to keep them in the dark about your parts not being done due to continental drift, the death of your cat, or other vicissitudes of life – - or that right in the middle of doing this gothic vampire novel on possessed poodles you got a great idea about pink airships and are squeezing them in, too (or worse: instead). Everyone involved in a collaboration (including the editor and the publisher) should be in agreement on what is being created (length, genre, tone, and story elements). If a publisher wanted a noir mystery and the collaborators produce a parody or a cozy mystery instead, or when fantasy is desired hand in something that the publisher thinks is space opera, no one is going to end up happy.

Nobody likes nasty surprises. They are welcomed still less when reputations and schedules and creative flows are involved. So be up front about everything, and try to be sensitive about the way others work. If they need quiet private time to create, don’t e-mail or phone them every night to update them on your progress and ask about theirs. Unless you want to drive them mad and make them hate you forever, which is seldom a sane career or personal goal.

Kevin J. Anderson:  You have to leave your ego at the table, don’t get proprietary, and do what’s best for the story.  Work well as friends in addition to being partners.  Brainstorm a lot, share your ideas, and most of all learn from it.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magainze.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Accept that you can’t please everyone when writing about a character of another gender, race, or religion.  Avoid using the first image that comes to mind and steer way clear of stereotypes.  Don’t take the easy way out.  Challenge your own assumptions when creating characters even remotely different from yourself.

In other words, forget the blue scales and spaghetti noses.

Below, three novelists talk about their experiences writing “the other.”  The questions were provided by Nisi Shawl, co-author with Cynthia Ward of Writing the Other: Bridging Cultural Differences for Successful Fiction.

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Nisi Shawl: What is your best and worst experience writing a character of another race, sexual orientation, age, ability, religion or sex?

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James O. Born/James O’Neal is a Florida law enforcement officer and crime writer.

Writing police novels there are a number of characters from all walks of life.  I usually try to base them on someone I know personally.  My series about the ATF features a young agent whose parents were born in Uruguay and I have had many people tell me I captured the Latin concept of family.  At the same time my worst experience was writing a Panamanian military officer who plans to commit an act of terror against the U.S.  It is a fine line to write a character from another ethnic background in a negative light.  It is now considered politically incorrect.  You will always upset someone.  But there is often no choice.  Someone has to be the antagonist.

You cannot make everyone happy.  I was once at a book festival where a woman approached me and said that I wrote the best female characters she had read by a male author.  The very next woman who spoke to me, less than a minute later said that I had no idea how women thought.  I couldn’t argue that point.

Ed Greenwood is a prolific Canadian writer, best known as a fantasy novelist and game designer.

My best experience in writing a character of another gender was a short story about a shy, withdrawn, rather awkward teenaged female. Several reviewers and dozens of readers were absolutely certain that the story must have been written (could only have been written) by a shy, withdrawn, rather awkward teenaged female – - so I deem that tale a success.

My worst was a project I backed out of, in which a television production company wanted several science fiction writers to each design an alien race for them, for characters to be used in an ongoing science fiction series. The problem was, they started shooting scenes, doing cheapie makeup jobs on actors to give them a different-hued skin and scales or floppy ears or weird spaghetti-tube noses, and they repeatedly changed “what the aliens looked like” without telling us writers (or showing us the rushes, which had to stay “top secret.”) And then castigated us for designing alien races that didn’t look, behave, or speak like the characters they’d filmed.
In the end, we all bailed, after the first few of writers were fired for this “incompetence.”

Tobias Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer.

As a mixed race, but white looking dude, who grew up in the Caribbean, raised somewhat British and somewhat Caribbean, but now living in the US, I’m usually playing off people who are pretty different than me every time I sit down to write, and that’s always a great experience.

My worst experiences always come from noticing little dominant culture assumptions that seep in anyway. I wrote a story set in Africa once, and it was set out in a dry, dusty, war-torn Africa featuring aid stations and jeeps with guns mounted on top. Places like that exist, but I realized later I reached for the first image a lot of people reach for, thus perpetuating it. I vowed that my next story set in Africa would be set somewhere like Lagos, that has skyscrapers and a financial district.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magainze.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.