Collaborative Plot Development
Hey everyone - I’m your guest author, Helen Corvis. Steaphan and I are writing a serial fiction together called “In the Arms of the Void”, available on Kindle Vella. I wanted to share my thoughts on our process and hope you enjoy this blog series about co-authoring tips. If you prefer an audio version, you can check out Steaphan and my’s podcast here (Spotify / Apple)
Plot development is one of the most exciting parts of co-authoring. It’s where the action happens and being in that process with another person is wonderful and occasionally terrifying. It’s that moment where you think to yourself, “Am I really about to say this? Do I dare write it? What if it’s stupid?”
Well good news, it doesn’t matter if it’s stupid because a lot of co-authoring is about making things happen. Just look at Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman. They only co-authored one of the most famous books ever, Good Omens. But before anyone gets to that magical place where their book spawns a radio show, television series, and some day a movie - you really need to establish the process of how you are working together.
There are many ways to peel this orange, for instance:
One person does all the writing, the other the editing; or one person does scenery and the other the dialogue.
Each author writes a separate character’s POV and they swap perspectives throughout the story
You both write it all AND you both edit it all- TOGETHER
Now Helen, you may say, doesn’t that last one sound a bit much? And I would respond, Yes - dear reader. Yes it is. And that is exactly what Steaphan and I chose to do. And because we are nerds, we started it all with a spreadsheet.
Our shared spreadsheet is the foundation of our collaborative process, and when it comes to plot development, it was strategic in ensuring we had a reference for all past decisions and future plans for our story. The first thing we tackled was world building. To be honest, we didn’t really decide how much world building would be in the text itself but we knew we needed a common framework for the story to occur in. This would also allow us autonomy in writing; if we understood the values, traditions, weather, economy, family structures, and belief system of our worlds, then we could make independent writing decisions about how our characters would behave in certain scenarios. If our main character happens to have some leisure time, what will they do with it? Well, if they follow societal norms, then we probably know the answer. If they are a rebel or we want them to be surprising, then we still know the answer - they’ll deliberately go against norms.
The next part of our process was to agree on what events must occur in each chapter to advance the story. Even though I said we create the story together, that doesn’t mean we actually write together at the same time. Steaphan and I prefer to plot out the major details of each chapter in advance but only 2 or 3 chapters at a time. Besides deciding on critical events, the items we identify in advance are: which character’s POV is this from, what other characters will be involved, the timeframe that it occurs in, and what location(s) are being used. This allows us to each work on separate chapters without conflicting (much) and gives us creative space. We each write the initial draft of a chapter before sharing it back for the other author to co-write. This lets us discover how the story is going to unfold and it’s a lot of fun to see what extra details get added. I gave one of our characters a goldfish which Steaphan liked a lot more than I expected! And then after each chapter is created, we go back to the spreadsheet and note any new words or technology that we created, so we don’t lose track.
And of course, we have a recurring meeting where we check in with each other to discuss how the writing turned out. It gives a chance to discuss plot holes and if we need to make any changes. This is also the same meeting we use to agree on what happens next. So in this way, we can define what our expectations are from each other and what we want to accomplish. Most importantly, we document all of this in our spreadsheet.
There are many ways to co-author, and I hope sharing ours is helpful to you. Remember, art is what you create along the way (not just the thing you get at the end).
Helen Corvis