Friday, 1 August 2014

The Importance 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.

There are many different reasons for collaborating when writing. Writing groups often write stories collaboratively to help develop the skills of individuals. Academics often collaborate when writing articles. Experienced authors may come up with ideas that they feel would work best when collaborating with other published authors and these books are available for purchase, many of them from online outlets.

As with any other endeavor requiring co-operation between people, writing in this way offers both benefits and challenges. It means that there is an inbuilt editorial process going on as the work proceeds. Each author helps to encourage, support and challenge the other. This can help to stimulate the speed of production and increase motivation.

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.

The way the work is divided between the authors should be done as evenly as possible. Problems can result if one author ends up doing most of the work or another feels that his work is not appreciated. Sometimes a plot is created at the beginning but other authors may work individually on chapters, characters or sub plots and only then decide how to put them together.

Authors can often be quite egotistical and this means that collaborations can be difficult. It definitely may require putting aside certain convictions and ideas for the sake of the project. As long as there is a mutual trust and respect, this is possible. Sometimes, however, it is the collaboration of strong, egotistical authors that may produce the best results due to the fact that they challenge one another and each person is pushed to achieve his or her best.

There are websites where anyone can contribute to an ongoing story. This type of collaboration is interesting but as visitors to sites vary so much in talent and background, the results produced are often quite incoherent. Another example of collaborative writing is produced by developing the narrative between characters from role-playing games.

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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