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Four and a half things a good self-editor needs to do
So, one day, after lots of ideas have been passed around and plans drawn up and several chapters written and hacked about, the collaborative writers wake up to the realisation that they’ve written a novel. Or at least something that looks like a novel. But just as a pile of organs and limbs does not…
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Five habits of successful writing partners
Iain and I have been writing collaboratively for nearly a year now. We’ve written fiction and non fiction. We’ve planned, plotted and edited a LOT of words during that time. Clovenhoof, our novel is now very close to publication. We’ve learned a thing or two about how to play nicely together. Here are some top…
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Communication Tools
It is probably worth considering how much of a debt collaborative writing of the type we’ve been discussing owes to modern communications technology. Heide and I live twenty-three miles apart. Without word processing, e-mail, video conferencing and web-based file sharing, we would not be able to collaborate on fiction in the way we have. That…
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Novel writing processes
You and your collaborator(s) may have devised a setting, some characters and the plot of your story but this represents only the beginning of the creative process for collaborative writers. At some point, you are going to need to tackle the meat of your writing project, that is, the actual writing of chapters, scenes or…
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Cross Genre Novel Ideas – guest post by Tom Aston
We have a guest blog post, written for us by Tom Aston. Tom writes in an exciting cross genre which has been termed the “science thriller”, and he’s written a blog for us to explore the idea of how commercial these hybrid genres can be. His novel The Machine comes highly recommended by Iain and…
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Plotting your novel collaboratively
Before being written down, all stories are plotted out. Some writers plot in enormous detail, generating more words in plans and background text than in the finished work of fiction. PG Wodehouse wrote pages and pages of preparatory notes, sometimes greater in length than the novel he was to later write. Others plan lightly, perhaps…
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Finding a collaborative partner. Part 1 – using the internet
Can you find a collaborator on the internet? There is no reason at all why long-distance collaboration should pose a problem with the many tools that we now have at our disposal. Many of the same rules for finding a collaborator still apply. You should not leap into action and commit to a large piece…
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Print and Prejudice – A guest blog from Lexi Revellian
Lexi’s books, Remix and Replica We’re really thrilled to bring you a guest blogger. We’ve had many discussions with other writers about the merits of e-publishing on Amazon. I’d urge ALL of you to read what Lexi Revellian has to say. The guest blog below is a summary of her experiences, and you will find lots more detail…
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Know Your Characters – Mr & Mrs
Canada has given many great gifts to the world, lacrosse, instant mashed potato, the pacemaker, the electric wheelchair… and Mr & Mrs. Created in 1963, Mr & Mrs was a TV show in which married couples were tested on their knowledge of each other through a series of questions. The questions were put to both…
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Know Your Characters
Writers, both solo and collaborative, need to get to know their central characters well before writing a novel about them. And the first question is not ‘how well?’ because the writer needs to know the central characters very well. The first question is which characters do they need to know a lot about and which…