How to Collaborate -- and How Not To© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
Collaborations are the proverbial double-edged sword -- they can
hurt you even as they help you. They're fun to do, but they're harder
to sell than solo novels. If you get one with a big-name author
and no one has ever heard of you, the chances are the book will
sell pretty well and you'll make some money, but you'll do ninety
percent of the work and even though a lot of people will read the
book, no one will know who you are. If you get one and you are
the big-name author, the collaboration won't sell as well as your
regular work, you'll do ninety percent of the work, and the few
of your regular fans who read the book will complain that it isn't
much like your usual work.
And now the careful readers and the math whizzes among you will
be saying, "If Collaborator A and and Collaborator B each do ninety
percent of the work, that's one-hundred eighty percent. That doesn't
add up.
Unfortunately it does. Collaborations are much more work than
solo novels. They can be much more frustrating. They present special
legal problems. They can cost you in a lot of hidden ways.
And you're saying, "Yes, but my friend and I have this idea and
we still want to do a collaboration."
All right. If you're going to do one, here are the things that
I've learned that can help you, and the things I've found out the
hard way can hurt you.
-
Wait. Please. This is the most important thing that you can
do, right now, to make sure that you and your friend are still
friends after the collaboration is done. I lost a friend --
a good friend -- over a collaboration, and I might have lost
her anyway, but if we had written down, in advance, what each
of us would be required to do to complete an acceptable collaboration,
maybe we wouldn't have ended up never speaking to each other
again.
Here are the absolute minimum number of things you need to
agree on, in writing, before you start your project.
- Who owns each character and the universe you have created
(or each part of it), and whether either of you has the right
to do solo works in the universe or whether it can only be
used for collaborative ventures.
- What each of you may and may not do to characters owned
by the other.
- Who gets final edit on the manuscript or manuscripts, or
if this will change from book to book, how you will determine
in advance who will get final edit each time. (And I'm telling
you right now, you cannot both have final edit. Only one person
can ever have the last word. Figure out before you type the
first word who that person is going to be.)
- How you will divide the work itself.
- What will happen to the universe and its characters if one
or both of you want to drop out.
- How you will resolve differences if one of you does work
that the other deems unacceptable, inappropriate, or simply
wrong for the world.
- Whose name will go first on the cover. It's going to have
to be the same one every time, so figure it out now.
There is a further list of things that you'll need to work out
in advance if one or both of you have already sold solo works,
or has an agent and/or a publisher.
- Whose agent or agency will negotiate contracts and subrights.
- Who will deal primarily with the editor.
- Who will write outlines and treatments.
- How the money will be divided in both best- and worst-case
situations, and who will be the one who receives payment and
will be responsible for paying the other one.
An agent can help you with some of this stuff, but some of it
you're going to have to figure out on your own. It isn't fun.
It is important.
If you're like most potential collaborists, this little list
has startled you. None of us, when we're sitting down with a friend
hammering out story concepts and shaping our universe and characters
together, is thinking, "Now who's going to get first billing on
the book and who is going to edit whom, and what happens if my
friend turns out not to be able to finish his half of the work
so that I get stuck doing all of it?" We're just having fun, playing
around with the magic of creation, and all the things that can
and eventually will go wrong are still a million miles away. Please
believe me when I tell you that all the best intentions in the
world won't help you when things start going wrong. Then you need
to have things in writing.
- Write a good outline and stick with it.
This doesn't seem like such a big deal. You and your friend
share a vision. You've talked endlessly about it, you know who
your characters are and where you want them to go, and the fact
that you don't have the whole story worked out doesn't seem
relevant.
However -- from my own experience here -- the act of writing
changes the vision, and even with an outline you can end
up in trouble. My friend and I had agreed to write a book together
in a universe that I created in which the heroine was so strong
in her faith and her love of her fellow humans that she transformed
and redeemed the fallen angel who was sent to lead her astray.
It was supposed to be both a life-affirming and a funny book,
the start of a series of collaborative books in which humans would
interact with denizens from Hell and Heaven, and in which God
would demonstrate a seriously warped sense of humor. I wrote the
outline, she was to do the first draft, I was to do the final
draft.
Somewhere along the way, she veered seriously from the outline.
What had started out a fun and funny book turned very dark, ending
with the heroine seduced away from her faith, left hopeless and
broken and bound for Hell, with the fallen angel triumphant. When
I got her manuscript, I had a problem. As she'd written it, it
no longer set up the second, third, and fourth books, which I'd
sold at the same time with three other writers, all of whom were
already working on their books. I tried to rewrite it, but I couldn't.
It was too far from what I had to have, in both tone and content.
I ended up sending it back to her with a long letter explaining
why I couldn't use it -- I wrote a completely different solo book
in just under a month to meet the deadline, an exhausting experience
in itself, but made worse because my friend was deeply hurt that
I'd rejected her book, deeply hurt that I had written a letter
to her explaining my decisions instead of telling her in person
(a piece of sheer stupidity on my part -- my publisher told me
to give her the news in writing and instead of treating her like
a friend I did as he suggested and treated her as any other business
associate), and just plain hurt because. She never spoke to me
again, and I'll tell you, no book is worth a friend.
- Divide your workload clearly.
If one of you is going to do the even chapters and the other
one is going to do the odds, fine. If one is going to do all
the scenes with Elmira Fairclothe and the other is going to
write only from the point of view of Studly Stallionbritches,
that's okay too. If you want to write the first draft and
have your friend do the second, that also works. What you
don't want is to be bopping along on chapter three
and have your collaborator suddenly start having ducks because
you've stepped on what he saw as his territory. Nor do you
want to have your collaborator complain that you're a lazy
slob who's not holding up your end of the workload.
- Figure out why you want to do a collaboration in the first
place, and both of you sit down and work out what each of you
contributes.
The ideal collaboration is one in which the book you are
writing together is one neither of you could write alone.
If one of you is a brilliant mathematician and the other is
a professional-caliber sculptor and you're doing a book on
the mathematics of sculpture, you're heading in the right
direction. If one of you has vast knowledge of military history
and the other is equally proficient in all things magical
and fantastical and you're developing a huge fantasy series
that involves magical battles with well-thought-out tactics
and strategy, you're right on the money.
If, however, both of you are doing this because you think
it will be easier than writing a whole book by yourself, go
home, go to bed, and stay there until you come to your senses.
Good collaborations are not simply as hard as solo novels;
they aren't even merely twice as hard to write as good solo
novels. They are harder by a full order of magnitude.
- Remember your priorities.
This can be tough once you're well into the project, when
it stops being one big hoot and starts feeling like real work.
So give some thought to the question while you're still having
lots of fun. Was your goal just to do a fun story with your
friend? Was it to get both of you published? Was it to make
both of you financially independent? (Good luck if that's
the case -- collaborations are not usually the golden road
to riches.) Or were you aiming for something else? And what
is going to satisfy both of you? Just completing a whole book?
Selling it? Still being friends once it's done?
The deal is different for two established pros working together
than it is for two beginners. Agents frequently introduce potential
collaborators -- you frequently meet the person you're going to
be working with for the first time after you've already signed
the contract (though you both will have done a fair amount of
prep work before.) You don't have emotion or the potential loss
of friendship riding on your project if it fails. Usually both
of you already have a pretty good idea of how the business works.
It's less exciting, but you have less to lose -- and you can make
some good friends if you and your collaborators get on well.
If you've gone through this list and you know how you want to
divvy up the work and you've covered all your potential trouble
spots and worked them out in advance and you still want to do
the collaboration, you should do fine. Remember that joint projects
always take longer than you planned, always contain some surprises,
and rarely go turn out the way you expected. They can be fun if
you if you know this in advance and have already made allowances.
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