(no subject)

[serindrana]

David's parents are going away for a week! YES!

Going to switch my day off to Monday so I can do some baking/long term cooking for the week. :)

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cherith and I have embarked upon two great quests: One, turning our Cauthrien/Teagan RP (War is Never Cheap Here) into fic (which is going smashingly - we're up through almost chapter four, in under a week from the start of the RP). Two, coming up with cowritten original fiction.

I am excite.

To any writers on my f-list (lookin' at you, heddychaa), any experiences with/tips on cowriting? How do you divvy up writing responsibilities? Do you write the scenes together, or only plan them?

With Cauth/Teagan, the way we wrote them leant well to just removing whoever's POV we needed to remove via editing (and then, more edits for style, coherency, etc), but I'm not sure that's the best way to continue for an original piece, especially since it'll likely have a broader cast.

(Also, we need to come up with a name for our joint writing account on LJ.)

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I have a tumblr! :D

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I really want to replay Heavy Rain but it's at home...

Comments

[heddychaa.livejournal.com]

I think it will depend on you and your co-author to be honest, and what dynamic works

AJF and I do a lot of things
- we plot together, starting with a general beginning-middle-end and then elaborating to scene-by-scene as we go
- we go on gdocs at the same time and write together (often editing one another's lines as we write, or finishing each other's sentences, but that's because we mesh well enough to do that without hurt feelings or messing up one another's grooves)
- sometimes we will write scenes on our own if inspiration hits us (this has only happened a few times, for the most part everything we've written, we've written while the other person was at least there to watch). for those scenes, the other person may go back and edit
- we discuss not only plot, but we also go "okay we're writing X scene, what is Sean's motivation? what is Cormac's motivation? what POV works best here? do you really think he's in a place to feel this way yet or can we look at it from this angle"?
- we both have our sort of places of expertise within the story. we both write the main characters equally, but for example AJF does almost all of Finnbheara's lines because she just does it better haha and my representation of him is almost never quite as nuanced or funny as hers. we definitely don't alternate characters or have control of characters like you would in roleplaying. I find stories written like that aren't terribly seamless. I think both writers need to be equally involved in all aspects of the novel

Definitely schedule times to be online together, even if only one person is writing while the other is just reading along, or if you are both working extensively. It doesn't have to be super rigid, usually we just say "hey I have to cook dinner, you up for writing tonight after six? I have a few hours free" and that's how we do it. The most important part is to push each other through slumps. We had a couple times where we were both blocked at the same time, or both too busy to write, and we just had to keep talking it out until we knew where to go next.

Keep open lines of communication on what you're writing and why, be willing to compromise, choose what hills you want to die on when you're insistent about certain plot points. And yeah, you really do have to check your respective egos when it comes to another person editing or changing or altering your work, or disagreeing with how you want to run things, because ultimately you're in it together and both your names are on it.

Um.. anything else? haha

[serindrana.livejournal.com]

That's all super helpful! :) And all makes a ton of sense. The RP-to-fic thing is only working because of the way that particular RP is writing up - we both have a decent idea of the characters, and when we streamline it, we can both go in and add things in either character's POV. But that's definitely not something I'd count on in any other sort of co-writing, and it's only REALLY decent because, hah, fandom.

Gdocs is seriously the best. We actually started RPing there - so we're both super familiar with the other person watching us write to begin with. I sometimes even fix spelling mistakes/grammar errors while she's typing, so I don't forget them for later. :)

(Also, I am so, so excited to see THH when it's done! I've been reading every excerpt you've posted up. ♥ )

[heddychaa.livejournal.com]

Gdocs is SO awesome. When it's working, anyway. Although I should say if your'e writing something novel length, you may want to do separate docs for chapters because too long of a doc gets really slow and buggy.

(Thank you so so much! I really hope we find a publisher for it and people like it and want to read it!)

[serindrana.livejournal.com]

Haha, we are SO aware of that - we have one doc that's 46k words. Luckily, it's done now, but if it had gotten much longer...

(♥ I will so be buying a copy. And reccing it to everybody I know who might be interested.)

[cherith.livejournal.com]

I am also excite.