Co-writing a book: Collaboration and Co-creation for Authors

Co-writing a book

Collaboration and Co-creation for Authors

Joanna Penn

J Thorn

Contents

Introduction

1. What is co-writing?

2. Benefits of co-writing

3. The difficulties of co-writing

4. Finding the right person to co-write with

5. Before you start: Written legal agreement

6. Practicalities and process

7. Excerpts from our Risen Gods co-writing diary

8. What happens if it goes wrong?

9. Other types of collaboration and co-creation

10. Tips for multi-author boxsets

11. Tips for managing a 10 author collaboration

12. Thoughts on a co-writing project with four authors

Afterword

Risen Gods

American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice

Appendix 1: Example agreement

About Joanna Penn

More Books and Courses from Joanna Penn

From J. Thorn

Copyright Page

Introduction

Co-writing can be an amazing experience when two minds come together to create something new in the world. Or it can be a painful process that ends in disaster!

So, who are we?

J. Thorn is a bestselling horror and dark fantasy writer, co-founder of Molten Universe Media and a podcaster. He has worked in a number of collaborations, including a ten-author story and a post-apocalyptic series.

Joanna is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author (as J.F.Penn), blogger and podcaster at TheCreativePenn.com, award-winning entrepreneur, professional speaker, and author of non-fiction. Until she met J., Joanna considered co-writing just a little outside her comfort zone due to control-freakish tendencies

In 2015, we co-wrote Risen Gods, a dark fantasy thriller set in New Zealand. The first draft took us 19 days, proof that two can achieve great things. The result is a mind-meld between a couple of very different authors and the book gets great reviews from readers.

In 2017, we collaborated again on American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice, along with two other authors, Lindsay Buroker and Zach Bohannon. The four of us boarded the Amtrak train in Chicago to New Orleans and wrote a dark fantasy story in a week of writing and story meetings together. It was … intense.

In this book, we share our tips on how to successfully co-write a book and avoid the pitfalls along the way. We also include excerpts from our private co-writing diary, honest notes written every day that we used to communicate, plus quotes from interviews with our co-writers. We hope that this will help you with your own collaboration journey.

We also had a no-holds barred discussion about the co-writing process, which you can watch or listen to, or even read the transcript: TheCreativePenn.com/cowriting-thorn-penn

1

What is co-writing?

Co-writing is essentially writing something with another person and is common in the publishing industry through different models. For example,

Big name authors who co-write with 'lesser known' authors e.g. James Patterson with Maxine Paetro, and many others. This model has proved popular and expanded to many of the top-selling authors e.g. Clive Cussler and Janet Evanovitch

Authors who regularly write as a pair and separately e.g. Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, and in the indie world, Bella Andre & Melissa Foster

Authors who write together but use one name e.g. Nicci French, a crime writer who is actually the husband and wife team, Nicci Gerrard and Sean French

When co-writing together, there are a number of ways that the author roles can work:

(1) Each author takes a completely separate role

Assuming a distinction between the drafting and the revising process, authors can collaborate by taking different roles in the co-writing process. For example, in Shadow Witch, J. Thorn created a general outline, Dan Padavona wrote the first draft and J. Thorn revised. This is similar to the model that James Patterson uses with his co-writers. If both authors can recognize their preferred tendencies in the writing process and team up accordingly, taking separate roles allows them both to play to their strengths.

We did a version of this in American Demon Hunters: Sacrifice, where each of the four authors wrote a separate character, maintaining their individual voice, even as the story progressed together. More specific details in Chapter 12.

(2) One author acts as the 'conductor'

This process is suitable for a multi-author project and was used by J. Thorn in The Black Fang Betrayal, a ten-author collaborative story. One author, the conductor, takes the lead and outlines the entire story, then sends individualized prompts to the other writers. When they send their scenes back, the lead author fits them into the global story. J. goes into more detail about his lessons learned and tips for managing so many authors in Chapter 11.

(3) A/B drafting and revising

A/B drafting and revising is the co-writing process where each writer 'takes turns.' This can be by