This week: Collaborations Edited by: Max Griffin 🏳️🌈  
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| Have you ever tried writing a story with a partner? It's extra work and--assuming you sell the story--it's half the pay. So, why do it? Well, for one thing, when it works, it's fun. For another, though, working with another author can broaden your perspective and and add depth to your own writing. Besides, there are more ways to collaborate than co-writing a story. |
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Some collaborations are famous. Michael Jackson joined with Eddie van Halen to produce Beat It, for example. The collaboration between Hitchcock and Bernard Hermann is legendary—we can’t think about Psycho without Hermann’s score playing in our heads. Broadway musicals include famous collaborators like Rogers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Lowe.
Collaborations in literature are less common, though. True, Goodreads has a list of 169 collaborations, but almost none of them approach the fame of the ones mentioned above. In their top ten, I only recognized one, The Twelve Chairs, and that only because of the early Mel Brooks film based on the book.
Still, there are examples of literary collaborations. The Mote In God’s Eye, which Robert Heinlein described as “possibly the best science fiction novel ever written,” was a collaboration between Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. In fact, Niven has been a prolific collaborator, as his Amazon page shows.
Daniel Nathan and Manford Lepofsky wrote as Ellory Queen in publishing nearly thirty projects listed on Wikipedia. For another example, this one from the fantasy and shared universe worlds, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have collaborated on many, many Dragonlance novels. (Thanks to my colleague Breanna for this last example. See below on how peer reviews improve your writing.)
Besides co-writing fiction, there are other ways that authors can collaborate. For example, a wide range of authors--including my friends Brad and Sue Sinor--have written works set in Eric Flint’s shared 1632 universe. Greg Bear. Gregory Benford, and David Brin have all written in Asimov’s Foundation universe.
Of course, copyright considerations often mean that the author’s consent—or that of their estate—is necessary when writing in a shared universe. Those considerations no longer apply to the Sherlock Holmes stories, and innumerable authors and screenwriters have written stories based on Holmes. If you want to write about a certain mouse, however, you probably need to keep your story private to avoid a lawsuit.
For another example of collaborations, Ezra Pound made significant editorial contributions to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Eliot recognized Pound’s contributions, which cut the work nearly in half, by dedicating his masterpiece to him.
Author peer review groups offer another meaningful way for authors to collaborate. These groups give authors the opportunity to exchange peer reviews and share writing techniques. For me, these exchanges have resulted in partnerships that have had a deep and enduring influence on my style and on my approaches to plot, characterization, and symbolism. I count myself as fortunate to have had such extraordinary partnerships in the seventeen-plus years I’ve been on Writing.Com. Dawne, Traci, Tim, Carol, Breanna, Alan, Kate, Rachel, and many others—you know who you are, and I’m eternally grateful for the wisdom you’ve shared. For a discussion of how the mechanics in these groups might work, see "About Crosstimbers Novel Workshop"
I’m no longer active as a working mathematician, but when I was still busy proving theorems, I collaborated with many others in the course of my research. Indeed, my CV includes numerous co-authored articles. For a variety of reasons, I’ve been less successful with co-writing fiction despite several attempts. Years ago, I did co-write one short story with my friend Carol St. Ann. I did the plot--well, I copied the plot from the play Cyrano de Bergerec--but it was Carol's zany sense of humor that made the story work. In terms of novels, I found a bit more success, this time with Alan Scott who permitted me to co-write with him two novels in his Psionic Detectives universe. It was a blast working with him, and I learned a lot about crafting a mystery in the process. If there’s interest, I’ll be glad to write more about how that particular collaboration worked.
The point here is that there is more than one way for authors to collaborate. Collaboration can be fun, can enrich your abilities as an author, and can result in powerful new stories. It’s work, but it’s worthwhile work.
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For Authors: December 18, 2024 Issue [#12892]
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