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Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Info Post
By Sharron Cantu


Most authors do not even consider the possibility of working together with other authors. They see this as being contradictory to being able to express their own vision. However, there are those that have produced collaboration fiction with great success. Where control has been shared successfully, the result can have a richness of many voices and sometimes surpass the efforts of each author working individually.

Academics often have to collaborate with one another in the writing of academic articles and papers. However, it is in the field of fiction where this type of writing as particular challenges. Such a collaboration may be attempted by a writing group as a way of developing the skills of participants and this can help them a great deal. Many collaborations are attempted for commercial purposes too, where experienced authors decide to work with one another.

As with any other endeavor requiring co-operation between people, writing in this way offers both benefits and challenges. It means that there is an inbuilt editorial process going on as the work proceeds. Each author helps to encourage, support and challenge the other. This can help to stimulate the speed of production and increase motivation.

A major difficulty when collaborating is to integrate all the efforts in such a way as to produce a consistent style. In order to do this there must be a level of mutual respect and egos have to be put to one side. One author may have stronger skills in one area than another and it makes sense when collaborating to use the particular talents of each author. One author may be better at driving a story along whereas another may be better at working on finer details like fine tuning dialogue and settings.

In this type of project, the work is divided up in many different ways. Some efforts may involve only a limited amount of collaboration such as authors each writing sub plots and one person being designated to weave them all together. At other times, a general plot outline may be brainstormed at the beginning and specific characters or chapters assigned to each writer.

Authors can often be quite egotistical and this means that collaborations can be difficult. It definitely may require putting aside certain convictions and ideas for the sake of the project. As long as there is a mutual trust and respect, this is possible. Sometimes, however, it is the collaboration of strong, egotistical authors that may produce the best results due to the fact that they challenge one another and each person is pushed to achieve his or her best.

There are websites where anyone can contribute to an ongoing story. This type of collaboration is interesting but as visitors to sites vary so much in talent and background, the results produced are often quite incoherent. Another example of collaborative writing is produced by developing the narrative between characters from role-playing games.

Works produced in such a way where each author has relinquished total control have the potential of being better than what can be produced by each individual. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that the final effect is inconsistent and unsatisfying to read. Like any other type of fiction, there is a place for it and the best attempts are rich, creative examples of what is created when authors work together.




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