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Comparing our experiences of the collaborative writing process, Part 2
Here’s another of our blind question-answering blogs about the process of writing Clovenhoof. We deliberately didn’t look at each others’ answers, and I find it interesting to see how we both pictured something entirely different at the start of the process, and we both experienced some grief / depression when it was all over. What…
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Clovenhoof – book launch party info
Clovenhoof by Heide Goody and Iain Grant Have some sympathy for the devil… Charged with gross incompetence, Satan is fired from his job as Prince of Hell and exiled to that most terrible of places: English suburbia. Forced to live as human under the name of Jeremy Clovenhoof, the dark lord not only…
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Creating Characters Collaboratively
In terms of creating interesting and viable characters, the first thing collaborators need to decide is how many central characters there are in the story. There are tracts on creative writing that say that any story has only one central character. It’s an interesting notion but an unhelpful one. Your novel will most likely feature…
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Know Your World
At a recent writing convention, I saw a panel entitled “Not Another F***ing Elf” in which four authors discussed the tropes of fantasy writing. There was an interesting moment in the discussion when it was suggested that many twentieth century fantasy writers copied the basic elements of JRR Tolkien’s Middle Earth without fully understanding them. …
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Building Worlds and Making Rules
What is world building? Any act of creative writing is an act of world building. The moment we begin to tell a story, we are inviting our audience into a world that is not theirs. It may have enormous similarities to that of the audience but it is not theirs. Even when I meet…
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Pigeon Park Press to publish ‘Clovenhoof’
We are very pleased to announce we will be publishing Heide and Iain’s Satan-in-suburbia comic fantasy, Clovenhoof, in September 2012. We will be posting details and images as they become available. We will be launching their first collaborative novel at this year’s Birmingham Artfest. Heide and Iain will (hopefully) be doing some workshops and readings at the…
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Writing methods compared and contrasted
Are our writing methods like chalk and cheese? Iain and I decided to compare our writing methods, so we devised a list of questions, and then each answered them WITHOUT peeking, just for once. The results are interesting. When we looked through our answers we realised that we could not have written Clovenhoof sitting side by…
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Editors v Beta-Readers
SCENE: Flat 2a, four-hundred-and-something Chester Road, Sutton Coldfield. Ben Kitchen sits at the table, painting war-gaming miniatures (Seleucid soldiers from Antiochus’s Indian campaign if you must know) and trying to ignore Nerys Thomas who has come downstairs to get Ben’s opinion on her latest lingerie purchases. In walks Jeremy Clovenhoof (Satan) clutching a lulu.com package…
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Curtain Calls and the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome
Now, I’m not a big theatregoer but I have a huge and perverse love for that most British of traditions, the Christmas pantomime. To explain the essence of pantomime to anyone who has never seen one is almost impossible but, roughly speaking, it’s a retelling of a famous fairytale through drama, slapstick and song in…
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Greater than the sum of our parts?
We’re both really pleased with Clovenhoof. It needs editing and polishing but it’s clear that we have created something that we’re really proud of. If it is greater than the sum of our parts, how did that happen? I’m not sure I have all of the answers, but here are a few thoughts. Different skills…