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    Co-writing a book: Collaboration and Co-creation for Authors
    Co-writing a book: Collaboration and Co-creation for Authors
    Co-writing a book: Collaboration and Co-creation for Authors
    Ebook78 pages39 minutes

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

    By Joanna Penn and J. Thorn

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    About this ebook

    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!

     

    In this short book, bestselling authors J. Thorn and Joanna Penn share tips on how to successfully co-write a book and avoid the pitfalls along the way. It includes excerpts from their private co-writing diary, honest notes written every day on a fiction project that will help you on your own journey.

    Updated 2017 after a four-author novel collaboration.

     

    In this book, you will discover:

    • What is co-writing?
    • Benefits of co-writing
    • The difficulties of co-writing
    • Finding the right person to co-write with
    • Before you start: written legal agreement
    • Practicalities and process of co-writing and co-creation
    • Excerpts from Risen Gods co-writing diary
    • What happens if it goes wrong?
    • Other types of collaboration and co-creation
    • Tips for multi-author boxsets
    • Tips for managing a multi-author collaboration
    • Appendix 1: Example agreement

    If you want to improve your writing skills and your productivity, co-writing might be the right thing for you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Creative Penn Limited
    Release dateNov 24, 2015
    ISBN9781519922977

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      Book preview

      Co-writing a book - Joanna Penn

      Co-writing a book

      Co-writing a book

      Collaboration and Co-creation for Authors

      Joanna Penn

      J Thorn

      Curl Up Press

      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

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