Writing Corner: Cooperative Writing

One of the biggest challenges in writing, I have found, is writing with someone else. It can be very productive but cooperative writing comes with its own set of challenges.

Writing is by nature a solitary act since it is the process of taking a story from your brain and putting it on paper (or screen). That is why most writers write alone.

I have tried probably about a dozen times in my life to write a story with someone else and only on a few occasions did it really succeed. Let’s look at some of the pros and cons of cooperative writing and then some ways to go about it if you want to try.

Pros:

1. Increased Productivity

The first and biggest pro of cooperative writing is productivity. If you can write 5000 words a day, then two people could theoretically write 10,000 words a day. In this way, you could produce a story or book much faster. This is one reason why textbooks are often written by many people: if each person writes a chapter, a 500-page textbook can be done much more quickly (not to mention the wider range of knowledge that brings).

2. An In-House Sounding Board

Every writer can use an editor and even every pair of writers. However, with two people, you have a second set of eyes on the story at all times, so each writer can let the other one know if something isn’t working. Sometimes just a bit of outside perspective (especially by someone who knows the story very well), can be very useful in making a stronger story.

3. Better Ideas

If you attend a lot of meetings in your job, you know that more people are not necessarily better for generating good ideas and getting things done. It’s more productive to have a meeting with 3 people than 30 people. However, two people can often have better ideas than just one since there is a difference in perspective and experiences. One person often thinks of things in a way the other never would have considered.

Cons:

1. Inconsistent Styles

Every writer has their own style and way of expressing themselves. When two writers work together, they have the extra challenge of melding their styles into one, since you would not want to end up with a book where Chapter 1 reads like Agatha Christie and Chapter 2 reads like Michael Crichton. This would be jarring for the reader. It takes patience and humility to compromise and find a common ground. Writers also have different methods of writing, so one who just writes as they go and one who plans everything meticulously would have a difficult time working together.

2. Stepping on Each Other’s Toes

Writing cooperatively is like a three-legged race. It’s possible but you have to be very intentional about staying in sync, not just with style, but also who the characters are, what the plot is, who is doing what in the writing process, etc. For people used to doing everything themselves, this can take a lot of effort and it’s not for everyone.

Ways to Write Collaboratively

There are no rules about this, of course, and each collaboration will find the best way to do this best, based on their personalities. However, here are some ways that I have found that work.

1. A Single Writer

This is the most minimal way of writing collaboratively. In this way, the two writers meet and discuss the story and characters and everything else that goes into the story. Then one of them goes and actually writes everything down. The other can read the work as it progresses and give feedback and help guide it.

The advantage of this is that there is one writing style and there are not two writers having to meld their written work together. This is fundamentally an unequal partnership though, so it is only useful in certain situations.

2. Writing Successively

I tried this once when writing a novel with a friend and it worked fairly well. The idea is that one person would write a chapter or a set number of pages, then give it to the other person, who would write the next part. The advantage of this is that both writers build the story from the ground up, which helps keep the momentum. The drawback is that you have to either plan very meticulously or do a lot of editing later to smooth out the jagged edges since two each writer may tend to pull the story in a specific direction, especially if they haven’t planned it out ahead of time.

3. Assigning Parts

This is similar to #2 except that the story is all planned out ahead of time. Then each writer takes their sections and writes them and then they’re put together later. This would cut down on some of the jaggedness of plot in #2 but would be even more difficult in my opinion since as a writer I rely on earlier parts of the story to know who the characters are and what they want. Two writers who knew each other well and had written a lot together could probably pull this off, though.

4. Simultaneous Writing

I have never tried this one and don’t think I would want to, but it’s an option. This is where two writers get together in a room and just talk out the story together, while one of them writes it down. The advantage is that the style and tone would be more homogenous since they are writing it together. A drawback might be that it would be slower to write. It takes a little more time to talk out things than just write them, although with practice you could go faster.

In summary, to write well collaboratively, the two writers must know each other very well but also be very similar in style and personality. Just because people are friends doesn’t mean they could write well together.

If you do try to write something with another person, it’s important to be very transparent about how you work and your expectations. Have you ever written anything with another person? If so, let me know what worked for you.