As we draw ever closer to their appearance at this year’s James River Writers Conference, this dynamic duo has collaborated yet again to share with our members how they write as a team.
Collaboration is nothing new and it seems to be a trend with new authors and writing groups. There are teams like Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller, or the numerous pairing-up’s that Baen Books is known for that make collaborations look like a great way to create a bestselling epic. It’s also easy, right? You take the idea, split up or divvy the work, and then at the end — ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom — you have a manuscript, right?
Not by a longshot.
When authors collaborate, it’s different from team to team. What is essential in a successful collaboration is to tell a story—the same story—while remaining true to your own style. We both have unique writing styles, but we also have writing styles that are compatible with one another. It is that compatibility that led us to working together, and yeah, probably getting married.
No, we’re not suggesting you marry your writing partner or partners. We just got lucky that way.
But we digress…
With our idea fleshed out, the collaboration started immediately with talking through plot developments and twists. This doesn’t mean you have to tell your partner about everything you want to pull. We surprise one another constantly with either one-liner gems or revelations that we will go deeper into detail during the editorial phase. It is during the edits, when we smooth out our distinctive styles by editing one another’s chapters, that trust comes into play. We trust one another implicitly. We know that some things we write will make the cut, some will be removed, and some may be reimagined, provided we can keep the story moving and the plot solid.
Often times, you will hear about authors talk about the importance of trust in collaboration, but open communications trumps trust every time. What do we mean by that? Both of us have survived collaborations gone wrong, both of them involving a breakdown in the communications between our partners. While one of these instances was resolved more amicably than the other, we now understand the importance of planning for the worst-case scenario. What would happen if either one of us were “done” with either the series, or the collaborative process. No, we didn’t like talking about it; but it was important. In fact, it was imperative that we planned for that, just in case our writing relationship took a wrong turn somewhere.
Thankfully, after five years, we are still going strong.
There are plenty of benefits we’ve found in the collaboration process, but it’s making one another laugh, smile, and even shudder at what we come up with that have their own rewards. Maybe we have a subversive competitive streak between us, but we do try to ramp up the tension for both Eliza and Wellington. Whenever one of us completes a chapter, we genuinely look forward to what surprises await us. It’s that ability to bounce ideas back and forth, either in pre-production or during the editorial process, that makes writing the books fun for us, and hopefully for others when they read them. Collaboration, when done right, makes the writing process less solitary.
Join us October 19-20 at the Greater Richmond Convention Center to pitch your project, improve your craft, and meet fellow writers. Speakers will also include award-winning book designer and author Chip Kidd, National Book Award-winner Kathryn Erskine, best-selling and award-winning author Christopher McDougall, award-winning authors Cece Bell, Lydia Netzer, and Megan Mayhew Bergman, Book Doctors Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry, founders of Pitchapalooza, and agents April Eberhardt, Deborah Grosvenor, Beth Phelan, Victoria Skurnick, and Paige Wheeler.