Archive of Our Own ^beta

How to do a co-write
(or why sometimes two heads are better than one)

As many of you may have noticed, RoseFyre and FanficAllergy tend to co-write a crap-ton of stories together.  This includes fanfic, metas, and original works.  So how in the hell do we do it, considering we live over a thousand miles apart?  Well, it’s complicated.

Physically, the answer is lots and lots of phone calls.  Multi-hour long phone calls.  All the phone calls.  We probably talk, on average, forty hours a week, sometimes fewer than that, but most of the time a solid forty hours a week.  That usually works out to five to six hours a day - some days it’s more, some days it’s less, but that’s the average.  In addition, we also email, IM, text, Skype, chat via Google Hangouts, and occasionally even see each other in person.  

So what does this say about how to do a co-write?  Does it mean you have to do what we do?  No.  But what it does mean is that you have to communicate.  A lot.  And it’s going to take time and effort.  You need to figure out a way that works for you and you need to set aside time to do it.  And it has to be a time that works for you both.

Why would we want to have another person involved in our writing process?  Wouldn’t it be easier just to write alone?  In some cases, abso-fucking-lutely.  There’s a lot of logistics and juggling that we do to make this work.  But for us, it’s worth it.  We’re able to write a lot more together than we can separately and there are other benefits as well that we’ll go into later.  

But first, let’s talk semantics.  

Types of co-writes  

**Please bear in mind that what we do is not typical, but we have tried each of the options listed and they can and do work.  Your mileage may vary as to what works best for you and what you prefer.**

Option 1: Round Robin.  One person writes a section (can be pre-set or until they hit a point where they can’t continue) and passes it onto the next.  If you’re two authors, it gets passed back and forth, but this can also be done in a larger group.  Both of us have experienced doing this and it can work, so long as there’s communication and there’s a clear idea of where each person wants to take things.   In addition, you have to trust that the other author will be able to write the characters consistently and that their writing style matches your writing style (or that everyone knows who’s writing each section and the writing style changes are not an issue).  Yes, that’s a long list.

In RoseFyre’s experience with one particular multi-person round robin, she worked with someone before her who was very responsive to her needs.  She knew where the person before her was going and approximately how it would end, and she was able to prepare for a significant period of time before her turn actually started.  She also worked with someone afterwards who was… well, responsive until she totally flaked.  She trusted that author to take over and do a good job.  However, once that author flaked, RoseFyre ended up completing that turn as well because she didn’t trust a newbie to keep her and the original follower’s vision.

In FanficAllergy’s experience with the same round robin, the person before her didn’t communicate at all.  FanficAllergy only found out what was happening a few days before the climax was published and was left essentially having to clean up the mess the previous author left.  The author who was supposed to come after FanficAllergy also never communicated what she wanted, even though FanficAllergy had asked ahead of time.  That following author ultimately ended up flaking, leaving a mess in her wake which FanficAllergy had to help the replacement author fix.

So if you do a Round Robin style of co-writing, make sure you can trust the other author (or authors).  You need to know they’re going to be able to follow through and not leave you with a mess you weren’t prepared for.  And you also need to be able to follow through and communicate with everyone you’re working with.

~*~

Option 2: Role-Playing.  One author writes the dialogue and actions for one character or set of characters, while the other writes the dialogue and actions for a different character or set of characters.  There’s some great positives and some great negatives to this.

The positives are you can have someone essentially be in character and the dialogue can flow naturally, almost as an improv.  The negatives, by that same token, are that you can sometimes end up with what’s called head-hopping.  Head-hopping, for the most part, is not a good thing.  It’s confusing for the readers to be in one person’s head and then suddenly in another’s without any type of scene break or even necessarily sentence break.  In the publishing world, this is called Omniscient POV (the most common is Third Person Omniscient).  It’s especially a problem if you’ve chosen to write in first person, because there are sometimes no actual clues as to whose head you’re in.  

Again, both FanficAllergy and RoseFyre have done this type of writing.  The best solution, in this instance, is to either pick a POV character’s head and stick with it, or go for a strict Third Person Limited perspective.  This can be a very fun way of writing, and it works very well if, say, one of you has a good handle on Peeta and the other has a good handle on Katniss.  It can be very organic, and you can end up with a lot of awesome realistic dialogue that way.  One of the pitfalls to this method is that the action and description tend to take a backseat and often have to be filled in later in the editing process.

This is not our preferred way of writing.   The Super Secret Diary of Ginevra Molly Weasley was tailor-made for this type of writing: two characters, all dialogue, no description.  We still didn’t choose to write it that way.  However, if it works for you, go for it!  Just be aware of what the limitations are and what the pitfalls can be.

~*~

Option 3: Alternating Typists.  One person types the majority of the fic while the other person gives feedback and dialogue and occasionally dictates a scene here or an action there.  The typist handles the majority of the description process, switching typists as agreed upon.  This often occurs at the end of a scene or chapter.  At that point, the other author (or authors) takes over the typist duties while the original typist throws dialogue, scene ideas, whatever, at them and the new typist fleshes them out.

We’ve also done this method.  In fact, this was our preferred method prior to working on Let Me Fly .  This can be a very fun method.  It forces all the writers (we’ve done this in groups ranging from two to five) to bear the brunt of the heavy lifting (the typist role).  And it allows for creative juices and interjections of good ideas from all authors.  It also works well when you’re drunk.

We still fall into this method sometimes; when we were writing our most recent smut scene, this worked better than our usual method.  It allowed us to break through the verbal block and concentrate on getting the words out.

However, this method is very suited to phone, Skype, and in-person.  It is not conducive to chat or email.  If your co-writer lives across the world from you and has a completely different schedule, this method and our actual method probably won’t work for you.  In addition, if one author is stronger at writing the descriptive processes than the other, you can end up with uneven scenes or chapters that have to be worked out in the editing process.

Which brings us to our actual method!  

~*~

Option 4:  Talker and Typist.    Fair warning: this option probably won’t work for 99% of people. The way this works is one author dictates the majority of the story to the other author, who does minor edits and makes the occasional wording suggestion as they go along.  This can seem very unequal, like one person is carrying the team, and depending on which side of the screen you are on, who that person is can vary.  Is the Talker the dominant?  Or is the Typist the dominant?  The real answer is neither.  And it HAS TO BE NEITHER!  Otherwise you’re just ripe for resentment and drama.  And no one wants drama.  We are not TNT.  

We did not start out this way.  Initially, we switched back and forth with the typing, with one person doing more description and dialogue than the other.  As we’ve written more, we’ve realized what works best for us is, amusingly, having FanficAllergy dictate the first draft to RoseFyre while she’s pacing or doing something else while RoseFyre takes dictation.  Probably a good 80-90% of the actual words in our stories come from FanficAllergy’s mouth or get added in later by FanficAllergy during the editing process (which we’ll get to later).

So how did we figure that out?  Because our earliest two co-written fics, It’s All Relative and The Super Secret Diary of Ginevra Molly Weasley , as well as earlier co-writes we’d done with other writers, tended to fit into the Alternating Typists method.

When we started Let Me Fly , RoseFyre was the initial typist.  Except we discovered that FanficAllergy was dictating most of the words.  Then, when we switched scenes and it was FanficAllergy’s turn to be the typist, RoseFyre wasn’t talking and FanficAllergy got frustrated.  And when she got frustrated, she started having trouble getting anything out.  So RoseFyre volunteered to take over the typing so FanficAllergy could pace.  And all of a sudden the words began again.  After approximately two chapters of this type of frustration thing, we abandoned having FanficAllergy type at all on the first draft and switched entirely to what we do now.

Apparently FanficAllergy has always worked this way, even since she was a little girl.  At the tender age of eight, she dictated her first story to her mother for her cousin.  If FanficAllergy can stand up, walk around, lay down, act out scenes, do a latch hook rug, or clean her house, the story will magically appear on the page as she’s doing it.  FanficAllergy tells herself stories while she’s doing chores she doesn’t want to do and RoseFyre listens and transcribes as FanficAllergy talks to herself in funny voices.

Repeatedly, FanficAllergy has asked if RoseFyre is okay with this, with the vast majority of the story being her words, and RoseFyre has repeatedly stated that this method works for her as well.  FanficAllergy does occasionally push RoseFyre to take a more active role to make sure that she still feels like she has a stake in this.  Which, she does.  These are her stories too.  But with other people… a lot of problems could come from what we do.  As a note, Not One Of Us is mostly RoseFyre with FanficAllergy just doing a few edits.  

If we were anyone else other than who we are, this would be an extremely unequal partnership.  However, because we are who we are, and because we understand and respect each other’s strengths, it is a much more equal partnership than what it actually looks like at first glance.

Full disclosure time!  In nine out of ten of the ideas behind the stories, the initial story idea also came from FanficAllergy.  That is the initial plot bunny.  For It’s All Relative , it was the question of what would happen if Wolverine was the genetic ancestor of every living X-Man?  He’s the oldest mutant we see in the movies, after all.  In the case of Let Me Fly , it was “I think we should write a threesome fic, and this is how it could work while still remaining in the canon universe.”  But they’re quick essentially thesis statements, not complete stories.

From there, RoseFyre starts coming into her own.  When it comes to the actual plotting, it’s very much a fifty/fifty equal stake.  RoseFyre is the questioner.  She asks questions about everything in regards to the universe.  Shit you will never ever see ever, she asks questions about.  For example in Let Me Fly , we know exactly how the plague started, where it started, and who the first people killed were.  You will almost certainly never ever find that out in our story.  Occasionally RoseFyre will ask a question and FanficAllergy will say “we don’t need to cover that, it’s not relevant,” but most of the time the question either is relevant or it adds insight into how we’re going to end up writing the scene.

Then we generally start with a very, very basic outline.  All of our stories, for the most part, have an outline associated with them.  Even if it’s just “this is the shit we want to cover.”  Then we go back to the beginning and start outlining again in earnest, complete with shit that’s happening off-screen that’s going to affect on-screen stuff later.  For co-writes, outlines are essential.  All authors have to know where things are going and what direction the story needs to go in.  It doesn’t have to be detailed, but it does have to exist.  Everyone needs to be on the same page.  And if you don’t trust someone enough to share your ideas with them, why are you interested in co-writing in the first place?

So, back to outlines.  We have a shit-ton of outlines.  And in the outlines, FanficAllergy’s memory, while good, is nowhere near where RoseFyre’s is.  Part of her job is to remember all the crap we said and/or did so that we don’t contradict ourselves.  This happens in the outline phase and then again later when we’re writing.

As you can see, both of us have equal stake in the outlining process.  Some of the ideas and scenes are FanficAllergy’s, some of them are RoseFyre’s.  We’d be hard-pressed to remember who came up with which one.  Especially since half of the time we talk the story out before we ever start our timeline/outline.  

After that, we move on to the actual writing, with FanficAllergy talking and RoseFyre typing.  But saying that RoseFyre merely takes dictation is underselling what she’s actually doing.  As FanficAllergy is dictating, she often forgets words/phrases, jumps around, skips stuff, changes tenses, gets lost, etc.  As we’re writing, RoseFyre is also translating FanficAllergy to English (did we mention that FanficAllergy has a very idiosyncratic way of speaking and also has an illness that causes her to have aphasia randomly?  Because she does) and at the same time editing it to make it correct.  Occasionally RoseFyre will stop and ask a question of “do we want to add this?” or she’ll interrupt and go “we should probably do this” or “I think this would be better.”  Then we pick back up again.

What we end up with is a very rough draft of a chapter.  The core stuff is there, but it’s nowhere near ready for publication.  This is because FanficAllergy, when she dictates, tends to focus on dialogue and acts out what she’s saying, complete with different character voices.  RoseFyre does not usually need to ask who’s speaking, unless new characters are being introduced.  Katniss does not sound like Haymitch and President Snow does not sound like Peeta.  And yes, FanficAllergy does switch back and forth with the voices.  

Then comes the first round of revisions.  RoseFyre starts first and goes through, filling out the details.  Then FanficAllergy takes her turn, correcting the spots where RoseFyre misheard her, fleshing out scenes, taking out her speech idiosyncrasies, and adding in the physical gestures that she did while dictating, which RoseFyre can’t see because we’re talking on the phone.  She also concentrates on removing.  What can we take away?  What don’t we need?  Where don’t we have clarity?  Then RoseFyre comes through at the end with one final technical and continuity revision.

At that point, what happens depends on the type of story.  For fic, we either post immediately or send it to a beta, whose suggestions we discuss.

In the case of original fiction, we then do an edit where the two of us go through together on the phone, talking out changes, looking for repeated words, phrases, and actions, and in general try to create the tightest piece of writing we can before we send it off to our editors.  We use a minimum of two editors for everything original.

So, if it sounds like a lot of work, it kind of is.  But at the same point, we are able to write five times as much as we’d be able to write separately because of this method.  That’s because we know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and we play off of each other.

By the way: for co-write logistics, when outlining or writing or making spreadsheets, use Google Docs.  Google Docs is your friend, even if it’s sometimes on crack.  Multiple people can see and edit a Google Doc and that is so useful when co-writing.  It’s also safe from computer crashes and has a lovely feature that allows you to see what edits another person has made.  Seriously, use Google Docs.  If you take nothing else away from this, use Google Docs for co-writing.  

So how do you work with a co-writer?  

First, and number one most important, you have to lose your ego .  No matter which method you choose, you have to lose your ego.  This cannot be a vanity project for one person.  It has to be a collaborative effort.  If you’re not willing to listen to your co-writer, why have one at all?  

As an easy way to find out if co-writing is even an option for you, see what happens when you have someone you like constructively criticize your work.  When they offer good suggestions, how do you take it?  If you get defensive and start getting all up in arms without acknowledging that you might be wrong.  Do you have a beta?  Do you listen to your beta?  Or is your pre-reader/beta there just to give you praise during the writing process?  That’s not a beta reader, that’s a yes man.  If all you want is someone to praise your work, co-writing probably will not be for you.

Secondly, know your weaknesses.  Know your strengths.  Find somebody whose strengths fill in your weaknesses.  You have to be honest with yourself about where you need improvement and be willing to listen to the other person.  This can be hard, but it can also make you a better writer.  There is no room for diva behavior in co-writing.  

Third, you need to be able to argue and disagree effectively with your co-writer without one or both sides taking insult.  We luckily started off our friendship with an argument.  No seriously, we’re not joking.  In another fandom, in another life, the two of us were part of a group that was doing essentially a round robin that led to a number of issues - and in our case, one argument.  The substance of the argument wasn’t important.  What is important is that we were able to express our thoughts effectively and come out of it with respect for each other.  

You cannot be afraid of conflict and you cannot be unwilling to compromise.  Sometimes you will disagree on how a story should go.  Pick your battles.  What is important to you?  What can you live without?  Because they may or may not be the same as your co-writer.  Be able to effectively communicate why something in the story needs to follow your vision as opposed to your co-writer’s AND listen to what your co-writer has to say in return.  

In Let Me Fly we had a disagreement about how sexually involved Peeta and Gale actually would become, both how fast and how much.  (At one point while writing this meta originally, we paused, picked up our ongoing disagreement, and ended up adding to our outline.)  In one instance, the core of the argument was if Peeta and Gale would kiss at all other than the kiss in the proposal (basically would they keep kissing).  One of us argued that they should and the other didn’t think that they would.  We talked it out, both us listening to the other side and conceded that the other had valid points.  In the end, we decided that Gale and Peeta would continue to kiss when they felt like it but only after they had a conversation about it and then Peeta tested the boundaries.  The argument lasted for almost two years before finally being resolved in November of 2016.  The results of which you can see in Chapter 51.

However, nowhere in this argument did we yell at each other, make it a personal attack, or disregard the other’s opinions.  Nor did we ever stop talking.  We spoke, we listened, we compromised, and at the end of the day, we still respect each other and are working together.  Even though we disagreed.

Fourth, you have to have a compatible schedule, and you must set aside time to write.  This is not to say that you have to set aside all your time, especially if you’re not looking to make money, but you’ve got somebody else counting on you and you are responsible for being there when you say you will be and communicating if you’re not.  In addition, ‘writer’s block’ cannot be an excuse not to write.  There is always something you can work on and there is someone counting on you to do the work.  

We do work around work schedules and family obligations, as well as social commitments, but even when we were only writing fic, we always set aside a minimum of ten hours a week to write, outline, or revise.  Now that we’re working on getting published, this number has gone up significantly, and social commitments no longer take automatic precedence over our writing time.

Fifth, be prepared to learn a lot about your co-writer, including more personal shit than you ever wanted to know.  Writing a sex scene?  You will know about your co-writer’s sexual experiences and preferences, as well as the attributes of their various partners.  You’d be surprised how often your co-writer’s personal experiences will end up being relevant to the story.  Someone lose a parent or grandparent?  Has your character?  That’s going to come up.  Is someone a good cook?  Watch the food porn come out.  You need a drunk character?  How do you get drunk?  (Assuming you get drunk at all.)  This personal shit can come in handy.  Especially when one of you has experienced something and the other hasn’t.  This also works with areas of study, in addition to personal experience.  

So what are some of the reasons to co-write?  The first can be just as simple as characterization.  Some authors have a better grasp of certain types of characters versus other authors.  Another is plotting purposes.  Some people can come up with generalized plots all day long, but getting the nitty gritty out can be tough.  Some people can write words all day long, but without that outline, they have nothing to go on, and they might be babbling and going off on tangents.  It becomes the other author’s responsibility to yank them off those tangents, otherwise you end up with entire scenes describing the grasses of the prehistoric steppes.  

Another reason to co-write is that you’re getting constant feedback.  If one of you isn’t feeling something - a scene, an idea, a character - you’ll know it and be able to address it.  Take a sex scene, for example.  Sex scenes are difficult to write and during the writing of a sex scene, having the other author come in and go “that’s not sexy” or “that person’s a virgin, they’re not going to be able to do that” or “where did the clothing go?” is important.  You basically have a built in reader/beta as the words are coming out.

And perhaps most importantly, it can be fun!  You find out that you can do shit that you never thought you were able to do.  Neither RoseFyre nor FanficAllergy thought we’d ever be able to write 250,000 words in less than five months.  Yet we have.  We never thought we would have as well-regarded of stories as we do.  And we’re actually able to get our ideas out and we’re able to challenge the other to improve our skills.  

In addition, both of us dreamed of one day getting published, but it didn’t happen in reality until we started co-writing.  For us, it was the right choice.

Basically, co-writes are awesome when you’re writing with the right person.  But be willing to communicate with that person more than you ever expected.  

TL:DR --  Google Docs good.  Ego bad.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Everything else is personal choice.  Any questions?