The seed for the idea was planted a couple years ago. I was trying to remember something from the Illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, books I'd read ages prior. (They're an interesting read, intertwining just about every conspiracy theory you can imagine into one wild story.) In trying to find my answer, I ended up at the Wikipedia entry, and stumbled upon this little nugget about how they came to write the story while working together as associate editors at Playboy (where they handled numerous conspiracy-laden letters to the editor from their readers):
They had a lot of access to research staff. And so under the guise that it would be helpful writing articles for Playboy (I don't think it was really) they got into the Illuminati. Wilson would bung these memos to Shea as material came in from the researchers—like the memos in the book. When they got to memo 23, Shea said, "If we imagine a New York cop came across these memos, I think we've got the basis for a fine thriller!" So the next one Wilson wrote was episode one of the thriller. Shea replied with episode two. They were playing a game really. Like, I bet you can't continue this! The answer is, "No I can't, so we'll continue with this!"
Sounds like fun, right? Well, of course, you'd need the right partner for that sort of collaborative effort. Fortunately, I had just someone in mind - +Mark Palise, best friend, fellow would-be writer, and long-time brainstorming and editing partner. We had never tried to write anything together, but this sort of back and forth format seemed like it might just work.
I proposed the idea with the following guidelines:
- Each writer takes a turn, writing between one and two pages.
- Ideally, turns would last one day.
- No discussion about ideas for the plot or characters was permitted - the only discussion allowed was to clarify previously mentioned material or to correct things that directly contradicted something mentioned earlier.
Mark readily agreed and we were in business. From my perspective, I was intending to write my 1-2 pages on this project when it was my turn, and on alternate days I would work on finishing my NaNo project. I got to write with my best friend and be held to some level of accountability for writing output, all while establishing a daily writing habit.
The effort itself, while eventually fizzling out, turned out much better than I anticipated. It started innocently enough, but quickly ballooned into a wonderfully complicated mess of time travel and magic, alternate timelines and wrecked ones. With neither of us knowing where the other was trying to take the story, it kept taking unexpected turns. Each day's entry tended to end with a bit of a cliff-hanger, or by writing the other into a corner to see how he could weasel his way back out.
As I mentioned, the story eventually ran out of steam. I think the complexity of it did us in more than anything - we were having to re-read the material a lot in order to keep things straight, and we reached a point in the plot where things really needed to start coming together but instead continued to expand in scope. The effort was enjoyable enough that we took another crack at it, starting fresh, but that's a story for another day.
2 comments:
This sounds really cool :) I recently started a collaboration project with a friend of mine so it's nice to see that others have done/are doing this as well. I think it's a great way to improve your writing, as the process (I find) involves both teaching and learning from one another. It's also easier brainstorm ideas, and even if the project turns into nothing, it's worth the experience :) What happened to your second writing project, or is it still in the works?! Sounds like you had a pretty wicked story going the first time!
Both of our collaborations are on hiatus, unfortunately. Both have enough potential to one day revisit, though I think we'd have to shift more toward a true collaboration rather than the in-the-dark back and forth we'd done up to the point where we stopped.
And I agree - absolutely worth the effort.
Speaking of the collaboration, I think I'll start posting some of our initial effort just for kicks.
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