The question partly arose from starting Secretary and wondering how the hell y'all managed to keep it straight. I ventured a guess that the first chapters were as you say, trade off, because of the way the endings and beginnings worked. But later on I did begin to wonder--so that answers that question!
Co-written, just me and one other, are usually quite tightly plotted before hand, two main characters, I take one, the other person the other and we split minor characters depending on who they're with in the scene. The tags are much shorter, sometimes a few lines, sometimes a few paragraphs, and we pass them back and forth, email or a private LJ post.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Other commentors said they split up characters, but I would think it would be so difficult to keep a sense of the story that way. But if you're back and forthing it that often--and not being really specific about how long each chunk gets to be--it seems one could almost...work up a rhythm.
Which is kinda what you seem to be saying for how Secretary was--developing its own style that was a combination of all of you. It seems like that's the only way to do it, or else it'd just sound like lots of different people talking at the reader through a single uneven story.
Editing we both do, taking it turns. One of us will read it through, pass a cleaned up copy over, get it back even cleaner.
This also makes a lot of sense to me. I'd be afraid if I was the only one editing. I have a tendency to make things mine when I edit. I can control myself when I beta, but if I had written half, I think I'd go even farther and then it'd feel like I was taking over something that didn't belong entirely to me.
WG and I wrote our novel, 110,000 words of it, in five weeks.
Wow! At that rate, you guys could publish a whole lot very quickly!
Thanks for your thoughts--this is really helpful, and also fascinating.
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Co-written, just me and one other, are usually quite tightly plotted before hand, two main characters, I take one, the other person the other and we split minor characters depending on who they're with in the scene. The tags are much shorter, sometimes a few lines, sometimes a few paragraphs, and we pass them back and forth, email or a private LJ post.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Other commentors said they split up characters, but I would think it would be so difficult to keep a sense of the story that way. But if you're back and forthing it that often--and not being really specific about how long each chunk gets to be--it seems one could almost...work up a rhythm.
Which is kinda what you seem to be saying for how Secretary was--developing its own style that was a combination of all of you. It seems like that's the only way to do it, or else it'd just sound like lots of different people talking at the reader through a single uneven story.
Editing we both do, taking it turns. One of us will read it through, pass a cleaned up copy over, get it back even cleaner.
This also makes a lot of sense to me. I'd be afraid if I was the only one editing. I have a tendency to make things mine when I edit. I can control myself when I beta, but if I had written half, I think I'd go even farther and then it'd feel like I was taking over something that didn't belong entirely to me.
WG and I wrote our novel, 110,000 words of it, in five weeks.
Wow! At that rate, you guys could publish a whole lot very quickly!
Thanks for your thoughts--this is really helpful, and also fascinating.