Tips for collaborative writing

In case someone out there is reading this (unlikely, I know), and is considering a collaboration, here are some tips:

1. Establish your setting before anything else, preferably by yourself. I thought having the group decide together would be a good idea, but it lead to much confusion, and a lot of conflicting ideas.

2. Before recruiting any partners, I recommend writing a prologue by yourself, and maybe even a chapter or two. This will set the tone of the story, establish narrative voice, and let collaborators experience the setting and see the main character(s) in action.

If everyone just tries to write according to their notes of what was discussed in planning sessions, they will all come up with very different and wildly conflicting pieces of narrative; it will look like each portion of writing is from a completely different story, with a similar theme.

3. Keep notes on your setting, and *make everyone memorize it* or at least refer back to it often. With my group, we made a list of things we wanted and didn't want in the story; everyone agreed to it, but when the writing commenced, a good portion of the rules were disregarded, probably because they were forgotten. Make sure everyone is familiar with your world.

4. Make a spreadsheet of your characters, with details about them. This is fairly straight forward, and not likely to be a problem. Our group had: name, occupation, unusual physical characteristics, relationship to the main character. That's a good starting point. You can also add things like motivations, fears, etc.

5. Finally, when choosing a writing partner (or multiple partners), plan a writing schedule, and make sure the people you work with will be around. If you partner(s) keep dropping off the radar, you might as well write by yourself.

All 5 of these tips are important to successful collaborative writing, but first 3 are crucial, so don't skimp on them.

There. I have imparted words of wisdom. (Hopefully.)

Happy writing!