Every so often a writer runs across someone else’s story that has at its heart an idea they think is brilliant, but which they also think that writer has mishandled for some reason. Most of the time, the writer can take the part of the idea that speaks to them, shake off all the “wrong” bits and pieces, and write their own story. Now and again, though, the idea is so unusual and recognizable that this just isn’t possible.
When the story in question is one that’s been finished and published, that’s usually the end of the matter. Very occasionally, you see a book come out that’s clearly spun off from someone else’s, but it doesn’t happen often, plagiarism laws being what they are.
Three or four times in my life, though, I’ve seen writers so taken with someone else’s story that they’ve proposed a collaboration. In three cases, the story was unfinished and the original author was stuck. In two of these, the original author had a very sketchy, flawed partial draft, while in the third case, the original author didn’t really have anything but the idea and some notes. In all three cases, the original author was eager to work with another writer who could bring skills to the project that they didn’t have.
None of these attempted collaborations worked out well. And when I say “didn’t work out well,” I’m not talking about something as simple as “the project was never finished.” I’m talking broken friendships and threatened lawsuits levels of not working out well.
Why?
None of these projects were ever true collaborations, no matter what the authors in question said to each other. The original authors had conceived their stories; they each had a specific vision of the story they wanted to tell, but they couldn’t get it down on paper. The second authors came in with their own pictures of where each story could and should go. That was what excited them – the possibilities they saw that the original author was “neglecting,” rather than the story that the original author was trying to write.
The two sets of authors were looking at the same material and seeing radically different things. It’s as if they were looking at a clock with two hands the same length, one pointing at twelve and the other at three, and the first author said “The clock says three o’clock” while the second said “The clock says quarter after twelve.” The two visions were incompatible, and neither writer was willing to give up what they saw as “the real story.”
In several cases, what the original author really wanted was for someone to take their seriously flawed material and “pretty it up” without actually changing it at all. This is a task that would be difficult-to-impossible for even the most brilliant ghost writer; it’s definitely not what you’re going to get from a collaborator, and there isn’t a hope of getting it from someone who comes to you with their own ideas of what the story needs in order to be “fixed.”
True collaboration requires both of the collaborators to, well, collaborate – meaning that they are both willing to adjust their vision of what the real story is and where it is going … or at least, that each of them can accept it when the other person throws them a curve ball that upends their plans. Neither one can think of his/her version of the story or the characters as “the right one,” much less “the only one,” not even if one writer is an experienced professional and the other is an unpublished amateur.
Communication and flexibility are vital. If Writer A thinks the story is headed for tragedy, or that the heroine will end up with the hero, while Writer B thinks the story will have a happy ending and that the heroine will end up with the sidekick because the hero is gay, there are obviously going to be problems if they don’t talk fairly early on.
Exactly when and how the collaborators work out their competing visions depends on the process. Some of the basic things (like whether it’s a comedy or tragedy, or the major characters’ ethnicities and sexual orientations) probably need to be settled up front, regardless of process. Plot and background can be done up front or on the fly, depending.
The main thing, though, is that both parties are willing to compromise at every stage of the process, whether it’s about plot and characters and style, or whether it’s about the process itself. I’ve worked on collaborations where I and the other writer sat down and hashed out in detail what needed to happen in the next section before one of us sat down to write it; collaborations where we planned everything out and then the other person handed me a draft that was significantly off-plan; and collaborations where the two of us never, ever discussed plot beyond a vague initial outline (because the other writer absolutely couldn’t talk about plot without losing interest).
My best experiences with collaboration have been when both writers approached the work as a game (literally, in the case of Sorcery and Cecelia), where the objective is to surprise and delight the other writer, without worrying about publishability. Even the attempts that didn’t work out were worth doing, if they started off this way.
The other thing that needs to be settled up front is whether the other party is actually serious about doing the project.
I’ve tried collaborating several times. In almost every case, my “co-author” has functionally vaporized the first time it came to them having to contribute anything concrete — and if not the first time, then certainly the second. At this point, I don’t think I would agree to a collaboration with anyone who didn’t have at least one completed novel under their belt, and I would also be asking some pointed questions about their process and writing schedule. Not that they’d have to have any particular kind of process or schedule — but they’d better have something in place, and enough experience to be able to have a meaningful conversation about it.
It still irks me, because a couple of those ideas would have been pretty cool. But they were very much conceived as the products of two minds, so completing them solo is not on.
Never collaborate unless you couldn’t work alone.
Also, be prepared to do 90% of the work. The other writer will do the other 90%.
Actually, this is the advice I was given that put me off it. 0:)
When one writer is taken with the other’s idea, I wonder if the best option wouldn’t be two books, one in each direction.
Of course, then you have the chance for two books unfinished, plus twice the hard feelings.
I dunno. I certainly had a lot of ideas early on that I wasn’t up to doing, but if I put them aside long enough (decades, sometimes), eventually I got myself to where I could do it.
Maybe patience is the solution?
Patience and obstinacy are useful!
So is respect for the other author, in the case of collaborations. (…or in most cases, really.) I’m cringing at the idea of another author walking over and telling me that my story idea has great potential, but that I’m not seeing or developing any of its potential properly and that *they* (as the more skilled/experienced/talented writer) are here to rescue the story by rewriting it to suit their own vision. My answer to that wouldn’t be “Let’s collaborate, then!” I’m hoping that even the badly failed collaborations didn’t start out quite THAT badly…
The collaborations I’ve read about that seemed to work well seem to have all parties laying out rules beforehand: as it might be, this is my character, that is yours; or I do plot, you do character, and what we argue about is where those meet.
My experience in other fields is that the best time to decide what happens if the project falls apart (and write it down!) is up front, when you’re still great friends and you don’t think there’s the slightest possibility it will fail.