Let's Talk Coauthoring: Drafting as a Duo
This is Part 3 in a series! To read Part 1 (Picking a Partner), click HERE. To read Part 2 (Starting Strong), click HERE.
Greetings, prospective coauthors! (As well as all of you readers who enjoy going behind-the-scenes into the writing and publishing process!) I hope you’ve had a productive and creatively fulfilling week.
I’ve just begun tinkering with something brand-new, and while this will likely be a solo project, I do have first-drafting on the brain. Which makes this a great time to talk about the drafting process for The Thirteenth Circle!
I wrote last week about about the importance of centralizing your conversations about your coauthored project: having a shared Dropbox, for instance, so that all of your documents related to the project are in one place and accessible/editable by each contributor. I also mentioned that MarcyKate and I created a shared document for drafting our manuscript.
Both of us like working in Scrivener, which is a writing app that has tons of useful bells and whistles. I won’t go into every single one of those bells and whistles here, but there are some great tools for working collaboratively. You can very easily divide your document into chapters, and then color-code or label those chapters by author or character (as well as by whether they’re finished, in progress, or yet-to-be-written). There’s an index-card view and an outline view, both of which can help you organize your thoughts. You can stash editorial notes, research links, character sketches, calendars, and other resources in their own folder within the document, so they’re right there when you need them. And of course, you can leave comments and questions, which can also be different colors—helpful when there’s more than one of you working in the document.
One thing we had to decide up front: who gets the document when? Back in 2017/18, at the start of our collaboration, I mostly had childcare in the mornings, whereas MarcyKate had the ability to work later in the day. So, we decided that I’d take ownership of the document before lunchtime, and MarcyKate was free to work anytime after noon. There was a bit of a learning curve—one or the other of us would forget to close out of the document at the end of our work session, leaving the other unable to open it—but we soon settled into a good rhythm.
Another big decision we made up front: alternating point-of-view chapters. Because this would be a partnership story, we wanted both girls to feel like main characters, with approximately equal time as narrators. (Fun fact: though we didn’t track it while drafting, the finished book’s word counts for Dani and Cat are almost exactly half-and-half!) Also, it was interesting to cut from one character to another mid-scene, showing how they were experiencing the same events very differently.
We mostly wrote chronologically, picking up where the other person had left off in the previous chapter. That said, because we’d done such a thorough outline using our beat sheets, it was possible to jump ahead and circle back. There was a lot of [UPDATE THIS LATER!] and [DOES THIS WORK FOR YOU?] in that very first draft. We left each other a lot of comments and questions, not only about how the plot was unfolding, but also about how we were writing the characters.
Because this was key: we each had control over our own character.
As I wrote, I was finding Dani’s voice. As MarcyKate wrote, she was finding Cat’s voice. But obviously, the girls appeared prominently in each other’s narrated chapters. So, I might write a line of dialogue for Cat that I wasn’t sure if MarcyKate would like or agree with. I’d tag the line (or the character detail, or whatever) with a comment: “Would Cat say this? Would Cat wear this? Would she respond like this, in this moment?” MarcyKate would do the same when she wrote Dani into her chapters.
Sometimes, the line or detail in question would be spot-on! Other times, we’d make a tweak. One example that comes to mind is that, early on, I dressed Cat in sneakers that she’d drawn all over with Sharpie. MarcyKate switched those sneakers to Doc Martens, custom-painted to look like the night sky. It’s a small, but significant change. You can even see Cat wearing those Doc Martens on the cover of the book!
Obviously, the further along we got in the drafting process, the more comfortable we felt with the characters, and the easier it was to predict how the other girl might behave or react in a given moment. Still, with our first draft, we each had final say when it came to our own main character.
Agreeing that you each have control over certain aspects of a shared project requires an amount of letting go. MarcyKate might make choices in her chapters that I wouldn’t have made, if I were writing them—but that was the whole point! We wanted each other’s unique voices to coexist in the same story. In a collaboration, you have to respect what each of you brings to the table.
So, to recap, for The Thirteenth Circle, drafting the book looked like:
A shared Scrivener document that we each could work in for certain hours of the day, closing it out for the other person to access
Roughly chronological forward progress, in alternating POV chapters—with the ability to skip ahead from time to time, as needed (thanks to our beat sheets!)
Plenty of notes and comments to each other, especially about how we wrote each other’s characters into our chapters
Autonomy over our own characters’ voices, responses, style choices, etc.
Not every collaboration needs to look exactly like this!
For instance, I heard from a friend who is working on a book with two other authors that they created an outline, each went away for a few months to write their character’s chapters, and then put everything together like a puzzle for editing. In other cowritten books, the characters’ POVs might not be so strictly divided between authors—I can think of one duology with two authors and three point-of-view characters. Or there might not be alternating chapters at all—just multiple writers crafting a single narrative.
Regardless of the specifics, I do think it’s helpful to see the nuts and bolts of various collaborations, because that can help you plan your collaboration in a way that works for you!
Now, remember—the first draft (or the zero-draft, as I like to call that very first explosion of words that often needs a lot of revision before it’s ready to show to even the most trusted reader) is just the beginning. Next week, I’ll round out this series on coauthoring with some thoughts on editing your first draft, together. And then showing it to other people, and deciding which bits of feedback to accept, together. And when you get a huge, HUGE revision request (as we did for The Thirteenth Circle), figuring out how to handle it, together.
You see the theme there: together.
Oh, and do you have any questions about collaboration that I haven’t yet answered, and/or tips you want to make sure I don’t forget? Leave a comment, and I’ll make sure to touch on those topics next week!
Until next time—happy writing!
~Kathryn