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Notttingham Festival of Words – running our collaborative writing workshop
We’ve run our collaborative writing workshop a few times now, so we were looking forward to its first outing of 2013 at Nottingham’s first Festival of Words. There was a system of pre-booking, so we asked the day before how many people had booked onto our workshop. Two, they said, and one of those hadn’t…
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6 and a half collaborative novels worth knowing
`From the best to the worst, to the most magical collaborations to the most underhandedly devious, here are 6 (and a half) co-authored books that you ought to read (or know to avoid!) Good Omens http://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Omens-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0552137030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361439904&sr=8-1 A 1990 book, co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, in which the Antichrist is a scabby-kneed scamp in…
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What are you bringing to the party?
An extract from “How To Write A Collaborative Novel” by Heide Goody and Iain Grant – published by Pigeon Park Press in 2013 Have you ever been at a party or other social situation and spoken to a married couple who seem bizarrely mismatched? The kind of marriage that seems horribly one-sided? Have you, once…
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Getting to know your co-writer
An excerpt from ‘How To Write A Collaborative Novel’ by Heide Goody and Iain Grant, to be published by Pigeon Park Press in 2013. You’ve found someone who has the time, inclination and ability to collaborate with you. It’s celebration time! Mission accomplished. What’s stopping you from starting right away? Well, just stop and think…
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Are you collaborating with the right person?
An excerpt from ‘How To Write A Collaborative Novel’ by Heide Goody and Iain Grant If you’ve found a candidate for your collaborative endeavour, what aspects should you examine before you leap into a project? Think about who they are and what they do. Get some understanding of these, and then compare with who you…
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Finding a writing partner
You need to find someone who not only wants to write, but wants to write collaboratively with you. If you’re planning to split the writing in an even way, then they should be matched with you in terms of ability, experience, and perhaps some other ways that we’ll explore later. By the way, for the…
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Full Fathom Five – What can it teach us?
I recently ran a short story project with the members of Birmingham Writers Group. The concept was pretty much identical to Ten To One but it was a short story (12,000 words) called Full Fathom Five. In Full Fathom Five, five people each handled a character apiece and wrote in chapters of approx. 500 words.…
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6 reasons why you should NOT write collaboratively
An extract from Heide and Iain’s forthcoming book, “How To Write A Collaborative Novel” Good reasons why I wouldn’t like to collaborate: I can’t commit the time Give this some careful thought, dear reader. Being a writer involves a commitment of time. How much time you commit to writing depends upon what kind of writer…
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6 good reasons and 3 bad reasons to write collaboratively
(an extract from the forthcoming book, “How To Write A Collaborative Novel” by Heide Goody and Iain Grant) There are lots of reasons to collaborate. Indeed, to remangle a frequently mangled Shakespearean quote, some people are born to collaborate, some achieve collaboration and others have collaboration thrust upon them. Of the reasons that people give…
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Testing the water – how do you know you’ve found the right collaborator?
What do you do if you and a potential collaborator have found each other, but you’re not sure if you are ready to commit to working together? You write some test pieces. This might sound like a lot of hassle if you want to dive in and create the finished article, but if you imagine…