Hello, loves!
(Author’s Note: It is much easier to type without a cat lying across your arm. He’s letting me have one, though, and it’s bad luck to move a purring, sleeping cat. Or so I hear. Just saying. ;-))
All right, now that the cat has finally moved of His Highness’s own accord, I can get on with writing this post. If you’re wondering if I looked at the door to see if he was returning, why yes, yes I did. He’s my writing partner a lot of the time, if by “writing partner” you mean extra weight on your arms while you try to lift your fingers, but hey.
Collaborating with cats? Not recommended.
But I have been fortunate enough to successfully collaborate with two very talented authors, Morgan Noel and M.A. Innes (Shaw Montgomery). There have been a few attempts before that, but there has to be a certain kind of chemistry to actually make a collaboration work. (Sorry, Doctor. I love you, but your orange and white ass has officially been booted.) I’m not sure you know until you go in if it’s actually going to work or not, but once you start… you know pretty fast if it’s a match made in heaven or if it’s going to be more of a challenge. Or, you know, a completely different direction.
I’ve been doing role play writing for years, which is essentially back-and-forth collaborative writing. You create a character, nuances and all, and you throw them into a setting. It’s different from writing solo, because it’s often in someone else’s world… then you get the chaos factor of another person throwing wrenches all over your plots. As it is, characters go on and do their crazy thing of their own accord — and no, most of us authors don’t claim to be that sane — so when you add that extra dimension, you really don’t know what’s going to happen.
When we started Spoiled, for instance, Morgan and I thought it would be a ~25k word short, just something sweet but taboo. It ended up being double that size and really going into the characters’ heads, which led us to be able to write (if I do say so myself!) the very hot short Anticipation with those characters. There were times where we had to back up and say, wait, if this character does this, it’s going to throw off the entire storyline. Are we okay with this? Sometimes you have to say no and gently nudge the characters into another direction… Or shove them. That works too.
Which brings me to the way we do this. I know that everyone who collaborates does it differently. I hear some people write their own chapters and take turns, which I have to admire. But I have a really difficult time — especially starting out — writing “someone else’s character.” This probably comes from RP and the strict “no god-modding” rules — which means, don’t control someone else’s character…!
So how the hell do you do a collaboration, Raissa? I ramble incessantly until I’m way off topic, wonder when the cat’s going to come back, then get fussed at until I get back on track, of course.
Morgan and I have been writing together for a few years now, and my writing has come leaps and bounds in that time. We start out by working within the “RP” style. We each pick characters we want to take the lead on, work out the general plot (jfc getting Morgan to plot is like the proverbial pulling of teeth), and start to write. At first, it can be a little rough as you get to know your character and theirs, but it eases out; by the end, you can anticipate and write a bit more without “guidance,” which makes the process a little faster.
Oh, did I mention that you write at the same time? Sometimes this is a few paragraphs at a time, and sometimes this is line by line. This can lead to all sorts of shenanigans and commentary in the margins, so to speak, which is always hilarious. Shaw and I had all sorts of conversations beneath our manuscripts, and I wish I’d saved some of them. We did the same thing, coming up with a general idea and characters we wanted to take the lead on, then we started to write. She threw me a curve ball, I did the same with her, and that was part of the fun of Almost Strangers. I totally set up a difficult end for her — not on purpose, mind — and she just took it and neatly wrapped it up into a pretty little ending with a nice little bow. Magic, I tell you. Magic.
The end goal, of course, is for you not to be able to tell who wrote what line. Characters are a different story, mind, but there should be a smooth transition between lines and paragraphs, and the story should come together. It’s great having someone as invested as you are in a project, and it’s a wonderful motivational factor when someone’s waiting on you to finish something. Having the chance to write with Morgan and Shaw has been this amazing experience, and I am proud of what we’ve written together…
And I’m looking forward to more.
I hope this has answered some of the questions about the collaborative process, and I hope you’ll check out our collaborations to see what you think. Happy reading, everyone.
Love and other indoor sports,
Raissa <3
