Different ways of writing with a partner, everything from just using another person as a sounding board when you’re plotting to one person writes the first draft, the other edits it, to each person writing one point of view, taking turns writing, to epistolary novels.
Writing can be a lonely business—sitting up there in your garret letting the words flow. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of authors who don’t write solo, they have a partner.
If you’ve ever thought it might be nice to write with someone else here are a few ways you might consider doing so:
1. A Sounding Board: With the least amount of input from the second person, an author can borrow the brain of another person in order to plot their novel and/or create multi-faceted characters. This is the way I do a lot of my writing. I come up with a concept and then talk it out with my husband (and sometimes my child as well). With their help, the plot is developed further and characters filled out into real people.
2. Writing/Rewriting/Editing: One person does the bulk of the writing, the other reads their work and edits it possibly rewriting bits and pieces. One of my coaching clients, David Hochhalter did this with his writing partner. He would write a few scenes, send it to his partner, Tom Crepeau, who would edit what David wrote and make suggestions and comments in the margins. David would then make changes based on those suggestions doing most of the writing himself.
3. Points of View: Jennifer Cruisie and XX wrote a wonderful series of novels together where Cruisie wrote the scenes that were in the heroine’s point of view, and XX wrote those in the hero’s. The scenes didn’t need to have the same voice and it was clear that the book was written by two people. This added to the story rather than detracted from it because you really felt as if you were seeing the events from two completely different points of view—which you were. To take that model one step further and you get collaborations such as that of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimon who wrote Good Omens together sending the manuscript back and forth, each author adding more to it. In this way they managed to create a coherent manuscript that had just one voice sounding as if only one person had written it.
4. Epistolary: There is nothing more fun than a novel of letters. Each letter is written by one author and in it they write their story (using dialogue and showing the events as they happened). The other author responds with a recounting of their life in the same way. The lives of the two authors are always nicely intertwined. A most wonderful example of this is Sorcery and Cecilia or The Magic Chocolate Pot. The book was originally written by two authors who were just having fun writing stories to one another through letters. It turned out so good, they decided to publish it!
5. Ghost writing: This is actually a form of co-writing where one person comes up with the ideas—the plot and the characters—and another does the actual writing.
Writing is such a wonderful creative task, but there’s no reason why you have to do it alone.