How to Collaborate With a Co-Writer
Writing a book can be a chore. Many thousands of words are required, and only so many of them can be “the” or “very.” It should come as no surprise that, faced with such a task, an author might decide to share the writing load with another. There are advantages and disadvantages to sharing a book with a co-writer, and we’d like to share some advice that we found useful in hindsight following the completion of our first book together. Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson co-wrote How to Defeat Your Own Clone, and Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution.
Writing a book can be a chore. Many thousands of words are required, and only so many of them can be "the" or "very." It should come as no surprise that, faced with such a task, an author might decide to share the writing load with another. There are advantages and disadvantages to sharing a book with a co-writer, and we'd like to share some advice that we found useful in hindsight following the completion of our first book together.
Order a copy of How to Defeat Your Own Clone, by Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson.
SHOULD YOU WORK WITH A CO-WRITER?
For many, writing provides a unique opportunity to express one's individuality while working in complete solitude. When you write with a co-author, this no longer applies. You can still write bits and pieces on your own, but the final work will be a collaborative effort, and you're going to have to make some compromises along the way. On the plus side, now you've got someone to bring you beer. Before deciding if you want to write with a partner, you should weigh the pros and cons.
Start by asking yourself this question: Have you have ever found yourself passionately engaged in a completely pointless argument with someone who you are not sleeping with? If so, we suggest you avoid writing with another. When considering a potential co-author, imagine that person doing the following:
- Finding your third favorite joke in the book completely unfunny, and insisting that it be removed.
- Completely losing interest in a nebulous problem that you're obsessing over.
- Deciding that the half-chapter you've been editing for the past two weeks "just doesn't flow" and should be scrapped, after insisting two weeks previously that the same half-chapter is essential and needs to be written.
If none of these seems likely to stir you into a murderous rage, co-writing may be for you. Consider a few of the benefits of having a co-author:
- An extra set of eyes can help unblock your writer's block.
- Free editing (which makes you look even better when you send it to your real editor).
- You only have to write half as many words.
HOW CAN TWO PEOPLE WRITE WITH CONSISTENT VOICE?
Depending on the work, the presence of multiple voices may be jarring to the reader. It's best to know something of your would-be co-writer's style before you start and to consider the book's format. Between us, Terry likes to write sentences that look like they were constructed by Escher, and Kyle has a fondness for conversational slang, though we both possess a sort of cheerful cynicism. Since we had similar attitudes, we didn't find it too difficult to mesh our styles.
We met weekly to discuss our progress, often pointing out passages written by one of us that we thought required the services of the other. While a section of the book may have originated with one of us, it went through several back-and-forth edits and rewrites, and through this became something that contained elements both of us. When it works, it's alchemy. When it doesn't, it's usually because one of us was too in love with their own writing to let the other in to play. We also found that using a synchronized editor like Google docs helped keep us coordinated. A brief warning - if you use Google docs, don't bother using most of the fancy text formatting; you'll only have to redo it when you move to Word or another editor.
HOW SHOULD CO-WRITERS HANDLE DISAGREEMENTS?
We suggest a duel at ten paces. With some simple research, you can get your handles on Revolutionary War-era one-shot pistols. Besides that, the easiest way to handle disagreements is to avoid them. Before signing anything, you'll obviously have to agree how the workload and the money will be split. That's the easy part. You should also consider your expectations for how the book will develop. For example, if one of you wants weekly meetings, while the other would prefer setting the book aside for six months and burning the midnight oil for the last three, the former will be constantly anxious at the lack of progress or the latter will feel hectored. Agree on the process before you begin.
Everyone has obligations that could interfere with the writing and promotion of the book. Disclose those obligations to your writing partner, editor, and (eventually) publicist. If you can't travel to promote the book, don't keep it a secret from your cowriter.
You should also decide whose name will appear first on the cover. We suggest picking the author with the most unusual last name. It'll be easier for people to find it online.
In the end, working with a co-writer has a lot of benefits, and as long as you're not the eccentric reclusive type, it can be a lot of fun, too. Just make sure that when you start basking in the limelight, you leave at least half of it for your well-deserving partner, providing you didn't just kill them in a duel.
Kyle Kurpinski and Terry D. Johnson co-wrote How to Defeat Your Own Clone, and Other Tips for Surviving the Biotech Revolution. Kyle (website) works for a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area and spends his free time thinking about how his projects could be incorporated into the plot of a sci-fi action movie, hopefully starring Bruce Willis. Terry (blog) is currently a lecturer in the bioengineering department at UC Berkeley.
