How Collaborative Writing Has Helped Me & Can Help You
For S.A. Crow’s Blog
When I began collaborative writing, I didn’t realize that was what it should be called. I come from a pre-internet world. So, internet forums were just beginning when AOL and dial-up were a thing. My first collaborations were on roleplaying boards or fan-fiction boards. We took either canon characters or our original characters and put them in scenes with other characters belonging to other writers.
I always called them hobby boards because there were so many variations! From MSN Groups to Yahoo Clubs to MySpace back to Yahoo GROUPS to Facebook Groups and Jcink forums - the list could go on. But these were not my only experiences. I’ve been lucky to find friends in these forums, too. Those friends have become my constant collaborators.
So, what is collaborative writing?
Collaborative writing could mean a lot of things. However, the actual definition should remain fairly standard:
Collaborative writing is the process of producing a written work as a group, wherein all team members have contributed to the content and the decisions that help to create that written work. You can have as many collaborators as you can handle, but you must have at least two working on the same project.
The best kind of collaborative writing I’ve experienced (and what I’ll cover here) is when two friends with similar passions come together to share their characters and ideas for creative writing. I was first introduced to this with Tracy and Laura Hickman, a married couple who both love and write fantasy. This couple also made me passionate about self-publishing, but that’s a story for another time.
My experience with collaborative writing…
As I said, I began collaborative writing on hobby boards or role-playing groups and forums. We went there to post our stories on forums where other writers could “tag” into our thread and write collaboratively with us. When these stories were edited together properly, you could create entire short stories - even novellas from them. The only issue I found with them was the head-hopping and overabundance of dialogue tags.
I was into this and got introduced to many writers and artists who were just beginning their online presence. We decided to meet up with many of them at GenCon Indy. We went back several times, and my mind was blown on one trip in particular. I left Tracy and Laura Hickman’s panel at GenCon, where they discussed collaborative writing with a new idea in mind. It was an idea I wouldn’t put into motion for another decade, but it was there.
Could I take stories that had been made through collaboration and publish them?
My primary writing partner and I have enough writing between us that we could probably publish several series containing multiple books about characters inhabiting the same world. All of it came from collaborative writing. Oh, and she’s not my only writing partner.
Collaborative writing can provide a forum for ideas and world-building.
The boards we began on were fanfiction, but they helped me create many stories and universes in my imagination. My current urban fantasy world was shaped by the combination of three different groups I once owned or wrote characters in. Several of my characters are based on characters from these boards.
When I began moderating those boards, people usually wrote in groups where I had come up with the settings. Fan-fiction aside, I had several forums over the years - fantasy, urban fantasy, and sci-fi - which were all nearly original concepts. And when I wasn’t building these worlds using the boards, I had writing partners, like Dawn, who wrote with me one-on-one.
And what’s fun? If you’re collaborating, you’re not the only one in charge of coming up with the setting or the ideas for the scene. I’ve worked with some amazingly talented writers over my time, and all of them could come up with fantastical settings.
Collaborative writing promotes teamwork and communication.
My writing partners and I love to surprise each other by throwing our characters into tough situations. But then we must work together to determine how they’ll get out of those situations. We must work together to keep the plot goal in mind and keep our characters moving toward it. Writing collaboratively cannot happen successfully if you don’t communicate.
This is especially important if you work with more than one other person. Everyone is an important cog in the machinery, and we must work toward the same goal. We’ve had stumbles over the years that have had us annoyed with one another. Every time it was about a lack of communication. So we’ve all improved over the years.
You also have to be comfortable with your partners. This is a relationship. You have to trust them and be patient with them and be respectful of each other. If you publish anything that was a joint effort, you must ensure the venture is handled well and be business partners, not just friends or writing partners.
Collaborative writing has helped me with social interaction and learning.
Being an introvert at heart, friends who co-author with me get me out of my own head. When we write, we have to interact and work with one another. We coach one another through the scene if we get stuck on something. We do research together, and as we’re going through the process of publishing stories here and there, we’re making decisions with one another.
I feel that collaborative writing helps build one’s confidence. You have an idea and want to present it, but…what if it falls short? What if no one out there likes it? Well, try it out on your writing partner first. We don’t hurt each other’s feelings, but we’re honest. When you have that kind of critique partner at your disposal, you’ll be more confident about sharing your work. After all, someone else already validated it.
We also learn from one another as we write together. We try on one another’s styles. We test various methods and have gotten better at our writing. The grammar and spelling have improved. Moving from one point of view to another has gotten easier as we take note of it. We point out one another’s bad habits (her use of the word ‘as’ and my need to repeat things), so we begin leaving those habits behind.
It’s been found through research in the college and university setting that collaborative writing helps students become better at articulating ideas and engaging their audience - all because they already have an audience they are trying to engage: their writing partner.
Collaborative writing makes editing easier.
With two sets of eyes looking over the page and reading everything, you catch twice the errors and make corrections quicker. It’s as simple as that. We also find that because we’re going back and re-reading before we add our portion to a scene, we edit as we go. Therefore, line edits aren’t as difficult in the end.
Also, when I write by myself, I am blind to my own confusing statements. I may come up with something that I believe makes perfect sense, but when my writing partner reads it, they get confused. So, if my writing partner is confused, my audience will most likely be confused. That’s another way we catch one another’s needed edits.
I suppose you could say, having a writing partner is like having a built-in alpha reader. You can assign each other editorial roles if you want to. Since they’re invested in the characters and the story, they want it to be as perfect and polished as you do.
Our world promotes collaboration.
Think about it. When I first began writing and reading published books, I thought of the career of being a writer and just always pictured it as a solitary endeavor. Now we have technology that not only helps with communication but also helps with teamwork.
Cloud-based technology is just waiting to be used - Word 365, Google Drive, Wiki software, and Dropbox are a few. Trackers and organization tools like Scrivener and Notion have group assignment possibilities. In forums, we can assign roles to all of our partners. Places like Discord and Jabber are multi-function communication platforms that allow us to communicate in either real-time or via typed chat.
All these years that I’ve had to deal with raising kids, taking various jobs, going to school, and doing volunteer work, I have also been engaged in collaborative writing in one place or another. It has kept my talent fresh, helped me hone that talent into a skill, and kept my mind full of creativity. I’m so thankful for my writing partners over the years.
Whether we’re posting fan-fiction, tagging one another on a serial piece, or writing the next best-selling novel (fingers crossed), when we write together, there is a special form of synergy felt by everyone involved. So long as you and your writing partners trust one another and communicate well, I suggest collaborative writing. If it becomes a business and you can agree on handling the business side of everything, give it a go!
Collaborative writing is rewarding on so many levels. If you get the opportunity, try it.
Rachel D. Adams is a prolific writer from the Southern United States who now lives on the eastern coast of North Carolina. Her writing began as a means of escaping reality and exploring her society's culture and hidden nuances through fiction.
Her genres have included RPG gaming modules, human interest stories for newspapers, poetry, fan-fiction, romance, erotica, high fantasy, science fiction, gothic, southern gothic, paranormal romance, and urban fantasy. Her characters are quite diverse. She is also a content writer for other websites and a published contributor on Medium.
If you want to see her other writing projects, find her other social media links, or sign up for her Newsletter to keep track of all updates and special offers, simply visit and explore her author website.
Coming in November of 2022 - the first book from our collaborations:
I love the idea of writing with someone