Writing Collaborations

Rhea Rose and I are friends and writing buddies. Over the years we co-wrote, produced and acted in a Fringe Festival Play (Snow White and Rose Red are in the Bar Having a Drink), spurred each other on to writing poems and stories and generally kept the writing spark alive.

We've never co-wrote a poem but we would each pick a word (or sometimes an image) and then write a poem with those two words in it. So at one point I said, "bad lemons" and Rhea said, "dragonfly" and two poems were born. Sometimes the poems come quickly and sometimes we drag them out but it inspired us to write new poetry with images we might not have thought to put together by ourselves.

We decided to co-write a story. Mostly we have writing styles that mesh. This is good for flow and style, but perhaps it makes us too interchangeable. Still, a story that's not completely plotted out gains new elements, ideas and directions from each person.

The first story is still out on its maiden flight. We decided to write science fiction because the market these days is glutted with fantasy. However, neither of us are hard science, major tech writers. The characters are still the most important aspect of the story. The first genesis took some work and a lot of discussion.

We set deadlines: You must get the story back to me by this date and you have to have written a page. Rhea started with a paragraph. Then I wrote about a page and we sent it back and forth until it was done. One of us would call the other going, "Uh, what did you intend by adding this thing?" Or, "I haven't a clue what you're talking about here. Explain it to me."

Once the story was done, we each took a turn reading over it from the beginning, fleshing it out, tightening it up, clarifying ideas and descriptions. Then I proofread it and sent it out.

We're now working on our second story and like the poems, we each chose an image. We then sat around for a couple of nights discussing the ideas, characters, conflicts and plot, getting an idea of what the story would be, thinking of the implications of the science. Will this work? But why are they doing that? And always reminding ourselves to keep it fairly simple. Don't overcomplicate the plot.

We're still in progress. I started the story from the notes we kept, and then sent it to Rhea. She wrote more and sent it back to me. I worked over it some more, with a bit of a Eureka moment about the plot. It's now back with her. I think this story will even be stronger than the last and I like where we're headed with it. Usually whenI start a story I know about how long it will be. It's not so easy to tell when two brains are thinking on it. If nothing else, it has us fired up and our creative juices are flowing.