Tuesday, July 29, 2014

The Nature Of Collaboration Fiction

By Sharron Cantu


One may wonder why team writing endeavors are undertaken. It seems contrary to the benefit of being an independent author and presenting a unique book without suffering the influence of others. However, there are various benefits that can be found in collaboration fiction. Sharing creative control almost harks back to oral tradition where individuals all contributed to stories.

Collaborative works are produced for a number of different reasons. They can be attempted as an educational exercise thus helping all the participants to develop their writing skills. Writing groups often produce such stories. It is also done for commercial purposes where experienced authors decide to work together for various reasons.

Writing together has a number of benefits but it also creates various challenges. One of the main benefits is that each author can benefit from the talents of the others. They can also challenge one another and thus stimulate increased creativity. The synergism can be very motivating.

A major difficulty when collaborating is to integrate all the efforts in such a way as to produce a consistent style. In order to do this there must be a level of mutual respect and egos have to be put to one side. One author may have stronger skills in one area than another and it makes sense when collaborating to use the particular talents of each author. One author may be better at driving a story along whereas another may be better at working on finer details like fine tuning dialogue and settings.

In this type of project, the work is divided up in many different ways. Some efforts may involve only a limited amount of collaboration such as authors each writing sub plots and one person being designated to weave them all together. At other times, a general plot outline may be brainstormed at the beginning and specific characters or chapters assigned to each writer.

Various problems can arise when a group of authors collaborate on a story. One person may feel that the workload has not been evenly distributed or that his or her suggestions are consistently ignored. Another may want to take over and tell everyone else what to do. A clash of egos can result in disaster.

The world of gaming has resulted in some collaborative writing. This is probably due to the role-playing nature of many of these games where characters constantly interact with one another. Other attempts in collaborative storytelling have been done at online websites where a story is begun and then driven forward by visitors to the site.

Works produced in such a way where each author has relinquished total control have the potential of being better than what can be produced by each individual. On the other hand, there is also the possibility that the final effect is inconsistent and unsatisfying to read. Like any other type of fiction, there is a place for it and the best attempts are rich, creative examples of what is created when authors work together.




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