Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve long seen the sense in finding a ‘writing consultant’ of source. Someone to bounce ideas off of, someone to glance over your work and offer suggestions, someone to pretty much talk shop to about your own work who will be both honest and willing to shove you to your fullest potential. Though it’s possible to do such things on one’s own, it helps to have a second set of eyes that isn’t quite as attached to the work as you yourself are. They catch things you overlook, are able to tell you whether what you’re trying to accomplish actually worked, whether all that you wanted to say actually got said. Finding a good writing consultant can be tricky in and of itself – someone who knows your style, your views, understands how you write and your thought process while writing. I’ve been lucky enough to find an excellent one myself – and she’s an English major to boot, which helps with all the grammatical slips I make on occasion. 
Writing something with her rather than getting her help improving my own writing, however, is a different matter.
Recently we decided to co-author something together. We’ve been bouncing plot points and themes and such off of each other for several days now, and we’re both excited to get started with the actual writing. But I’m seeing subtle differences between discussing my own writing and our writing.
Part of the reason we decided to do something together was because our writing styles are very similar. Though we both have different strengths, the way our prose sounds and flows tend to be similar. This probably stems from the fact that we have similar taste in authors and reading material, and that’s reflected in our own writing. But it seems to me that such similarities are important when it comes to co-authoring pairs. That way, there can be less worry about it sounding like two authors trying to write the same story, and more about the story itself.
That, too, is another difference. With my own writing, I’m more free to disagree with the opinions of others, including my writing consultant. I can write as I see fit, and though I would be wise to listen to the advice of others with experience, I don’t have to take it if I don’t think it would work well with what I’m trying to accomplish. Writing something with another, the both of you have to be pleased with where it’s going. There’s more give and take involved. I may want to write one scene one way, she might want to do it another – and we’ll never get anywhere if we can’t find something in the middle we’d both feel satisfied with.
Similarities in writing style and thought process can help eliminate part of that, but I’m sure we’ll come across several parts in which we have differing opinions in the approach. Judging from what we’ve discussed thus far, though, I’d say we’ll definitely be able to find something in the middle we can both work with.
Writing is a collaborative process no matter how you look at it. What one writes needs to be readable. And whether it’s the public at large or a small few who give their advice for improvements, their thoughts should be taken into account when pressing forward at the work of developing one’s craft. Co-authoring isn’t for everyone, nor is it for every pair. But find something that works, and it can be a lot of fun. Despite the fact we haven’t actually written anything yet, we do have our plot mostly sorted out, and I can tell that working on this project will be quite different from working on my own individual stories. There’s advantages to both, though, and lessons to be learned.
I look forward to seeing what co-authoring leads to.
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
