Let's Talk Coauthoring: Starting Strong
This is Part 2 in a series! To read Part 1 (Picking a Partner), click HERE.
So, you’ve decided you want to coauthor a book. You’ve picked your partner(s). Everyone is excited to get to work.
Now what?
The beginning of a collaboration sets the tone. You’re figuring out not only what you want to create, but also how you want to work together. Before you write a single word, make sure you and your coauthor are on the same page.
Starting Strong
The first thing MarcyKate and I did after we’d agreed to give collaboration a shot (and had exchanged a few more excited emails) was schedule a video-call. This was back in 2017—pre-Zoom—so we set up a time to Skype. Now, depending on your circumstances, you could of course meet in person: a library, a coffee shop, even someone’s back porch. But MarcyKate and I live in different cities (and we were both new moms at the time), so a video-call was our best option!
By this point, we had the basics of our book idea: two seventh-graders, one modeled on Dana Scully and one modeled on Fox Mulder, investigate their hometown’s mysterious crop circle phenomenon for a science fair. They don’t necessarily want to work together, but they do want to solve the mystery—which means teaming up.
Among the things we didn’t know:
Any specifics about the crop circle phenomenon
Whether aliens were, in fact, involved (no spoilers—you’ll have to read The Thirteenth Circle to see what we ended up deciding!)
Why these girls were being forced to work together
Why they both desperately wanted to win the science fair
The characters’ names
That’s right—at the beginning of our collaboration, we simply called the characters “Mulder” and “Scully.” It took a couple weeks of us chatting for both of them to have names of their own!
I don’t recall exactly how long we brainstormed on that first Skype, but it had to have been more than an hour. We tossed out idea after idea. We jotted every idea down, no matter how inconsequential or farfetched. We asked a million “What if?” questions about different ways the story could go. We riffed on common themes and plot points from “The X-Files”—for instance, Scully often failed to witness crucial evidence, frustrating both her and Mulder (who’d seen everything he needed to see to believe).
MarcyKate and I also talked about how, logistically, we could make this happen.
Step one in terms of logistics was to centralize our conversations about the project. After our call, we created a shared Dropbox folder. This Dropbox would become home-base for our book. It included:
Our notes from the epic video-call, compiled into a single document that we could both access and add to
Any research or links we thought the other person might find useful or interesting
The shared document we’d use for drafting (more on that next week)
A trio of beat sheets
Wait, what is a beat sheet?!
Oh, only the single most important brainstorming/outlining tool we used in writing The Thirteenth Circle. (I’m only slightly exaggerating!)
At the start of our collaboration, MarcyKate introduced me to beat sheets, which are a screenwriting tool popularized by Save the Cat author Blake Snyder. A beat sheet breaks a story down into a series of fifteen sections, called “beats.” If you follow Snyder’s proposed story structure, filling in all of the important beats of the story, you should end up with a satisfying plot.
Of course, there’s lots of wiggle-room in how you fill out the beat sheet. You can make it as vague or as detailed as you want, and nothing is set in stone. (It never is, when you’re writing a book…) This is meant to be a guide, not a mandate. It’s one way to get a first draft out of your head(s) and onto the page.
MarcyKate and I worked together to come up with three distinct beat sheets:
One for the book as a whole: main plot events, big reveals, subplots, etc.
One charting the emotional arc of Dani, my character (the “Scully”)
One charting the emotional arc of Cat, MarcyKate’s character (the “Mulder”)
The beat sheets gave us our road map.
We knew what we were writing toward—as well as which characters needed to narrate which scenes. We knew where each character’s emotional highs and lows fell within the story. We also planned out where various subplots might interrupt the overarching crop circle mystery plotline, as well as where instances of levity might be needed to keep things from becoming too serious.
I had never outlined this extensively before!
Writers are often categorized as either “plotters” (heavy-duty outliners) or “pantsers” (someone who writes by the seat of their pants). I often joke that I’m a “plantser”: I like to know a few major moments in the story up front, but I also like to explore as I write my way toward those scenes.
However, when writing with a coauthor, I think it’s vital to plan, plan, plan. For one thing, you’re less likely to wander off in a direction that messes with what your writing partner has been working on. For another—back to logistics, again—having a clear outline, in the form of the beat sheets, allowed us each to work independently.
When we teamed up, MarcyKate had multiple books under contract. Meanwhile, I had a manuscript out on submission to editors and was revising something else. We were also, as I said earlier, both new moms. Over the course of our collaboration, our responsibilities outside of our shared book ebbed and flowed. The beat sheet kept things moving. If MarcyKate was on a deadline and couldn’t touch our book for several weeks, I could keep writing. If I had a sick kid and no childcare, she didn’t have to stop and wait for me.
I’ll share more about our back-and-forth drafting process next week. For now, suffice it to say, having a plan and sticking to it kept us on track—not only in terms of our book’s actual plot, but also in terms of our ability to make steady forward progress.
So, to recap! These are my tips for starting a collaboration off on the right foot:
Brainstorm together: Bounce ideas off each other. Ask each other a million questions. Overall, get on the same page before starting to write.
Centralize your conversations: We had a shared Dropbox and a lengthy email chain. Maybe you want to work in Google Docs, or create a Slack channel, or text back and forth, or meet in person weekly to touch base—whatever works for you.
Outline, outline, outline: Use beat sheets…or don’t. But plan. Future-you will thank past-you for the map through the drafting wilderness.
Do you have anything to add, when it comes to prepping for a collaborative project? Please comment with your tips!
Next up: drafting!
Have a great week,
~Kathryn