-- or the fine art of collaborating.



I was asked a question over on the Black Library forum and decided it deserved answering properly, so for Corellion, he's my thoughts on collaborating.


Personally I really enjoy working with other creative minds and the act of collaboration takes one of the loneliest jobs in the world and makes it a team sport. I've collaborated with a few British writers including Steve Lockley and Gavin Williams, although none of these six stories has ever found its way into print, and Derek Fox, an old pro who's a great writer. We made it about 200 pages through a novel and didn't manage to take it over the line. These things happen. More recently I have been collaborating a lot with my good friend Stel Pavlou (Gene, Decipher and the 51st State (Formula 51 for Americans reading this) which has been an absolute treat because Stel truly brings out the worst/best in my creative side).

Actually I have missed one very important collaborator off this list, Michael Gilroy, who I seem to have lost during my travels over the last 10 years. Michael was one of my best friends. We wrote a lot together, even started submitting to publishers like Gollancz in the UK when we were working on our Pratchett clone humourous SF novel, and our horror/fantasy and... Michael was my confidence growing up. We sat in bars and libraries and on busses and spitballed ideas and they just grew and grew and we had some amazing outlines that we never actually wrote up as novels or stories. Michael decided quite early on that my passion for writing outweighed his. He wanted fun I wanted a career. It's been that way pretty much forever for me.

Anyway, with each of these collaborations I've used a different method.

With Gavin for instance we sat side by side at the computer and literally discussed every single sentence as it was laid down. Not my favourite form of collaboration but it was very interesting to see how another writer forumulates his ideas and lays them down.

With Steve Lockley it was more a case of Steve chiselling out the bones of the story and me trying to flesh them out into an attractive form. I've always enjoyed working with Steve - he's a very talented writer who deserves a much wider readership than he has at the moment. One thing about our partnership is we ALWAYS finish what we begin, making it a good partnership. Steve's an experienced collaborator which makes a difference. He often works with Paul Lewis, including on their novel The Rag Child, their novella, The Ice Maiden, and their childrens book The Quary. All very much worth tracking down if you haven't read them.

Derek was closest to being like Michael - we talked on the phone for hours and hours at a time coming up with an excellent story which we threw ourselves into with abandon. It's still sat on my harddrive here but both of us have become far too busy for anything to ever happen with Mouse's tale... it's a shame, but that happens with collabs.

Then there's Stel.

Stel makes me laugh. It's a bloody useful skill when it comes to working together. We've outlined a massive graphic novel with Robert Sammelin (who did the covers for Angel Road and Laughing Boy's Shadow) and most recently a YA novel, which was spawned from a phonecall that went on for 5 hrs by the end of which we had outlined the entire thing. We had the first 20,000 words written within 10 days and delivered to our agent for the project. Stel's like me. He's driven and doesn't believe in settling low. He has ambitions. Another great quality in a collaborator - he can take what I write and run with it making something better than either one of us would have managed alone.

There are a few different methods that can be used, one, The Hot Potato, is a lot of fun... This one is where you write up to a certain point and pass it over to your collaborator but you leave the action in a sticky situation and give no hints how to solve it... I love this method of collaborating. It all comes down to trying to paint each other into more and more outrageous corners and makes for a lot of fun when it comes to reading.

Then you have the simple outline and then taking chapters you both feel passionately about and sharing the rest between you. This works because if you know your story inside out you can write it non-sequentially, focussing on the core scenes and going back to put them together when and as you need. It can be a good way around writer's block as you can skip to a scene you are looking forward to doing.

You also have the famous collaborations like Raymond Fiest's, James Patterson's, and others, where the well known writer provides the synopsis/story and the unknown does the actual writing of their ideas. It's a way of making money that is a step above Ghost Writing in that you get name association with a well known writer and can hopefully launch your own career from that foundation - but you need some name recognition yourself to actually land the gig normally.

What you need to accept before the outset is something like 75% of all collaborations die miserable and painful deaths.

Me, like I said, I love it.

But then, I am weird.