My Agents have used the help of an intern in some of their sporkings; the intern was written by a friend of mine who occasionally appears on the Board.

The first time around I wrote the story with her looking on and providing snippy dialogue for me to use. The second time I had her write bigger portions of the mission.

I've also collaborated with EileenAlphabet on a mission, in which we mostly wrote entire scenes and put them in one after the other, and then going through the other person's scenes to make sure they're getting our characters right. In that case, it does require more trust of the collaborator's ability to carry the plot where you need it and to get your characters there intact, but it works quite well in the end.

1: The easy way. My probably-longest PPC mission, Woodsprite of the North, was technically a co-write between myself and Selene's author (back when Selene had an author). In practice, however, it was written by me, then sent over to her to edit and make sure I'd not done anything stupid.

#2: The medium way. The first six or so chapters of The Reorganisation were cowritten. We actually wrote a scene at a time - looking at Chapter 1, I can tell you that I probably wrote six of the eight scenes, but the longest two - the very first scene and the conversation between Blue and Imbolc - were written by Vemi, my coauthor at the time. I think we just emailed a Word document back and forth.

#3: The hard way. A handful of my missions, such as The Child of Susan Sto-Helit, or Two Worlds United, were 'true' cowrites. I actually sat down over IM (I think Vemi used AIM, while Constance's author Kaitlyn used MSN) and wrote them line by line, going back and changing things when either of us weren't happy with what the other wrote. You can tell this sort of cowrite by the 'compound conversation' phenomenon - where dialogue consists of one character saying three different things, the other replying to each in order, and so on...

#3.5: The easier hard way. Brown DragonRider of Pern was a three-way cowrite done 'the hard way'. It took years (any idea exactly how long, Neshomeh, if you're reading?), but wasn't done through IM. I actually set up a guestbook on one of my websites specifically for us to write the story in. The basic method was the same, though - line by line, with occasional corrections along the way.

(And for the record, I understand Jay and Acacia used method #3)

hS

It's not that hard, actually. As I partecipated in some collaborations already, I'll tell you how it goes.

Part 1: The physical means, and I think the best one around is Google Drive. With it, not only a single document can be shared real-time within the collaboration team, but you basically need only a Gmail/Google/Youtube account and a computer or tablet with internet access... which doesn't even have to be your own, as the file is hosted on a server like email. And also has a built-in chat to allow the collaborators to work together. (Or start talking about random things and forget about the story. Believe me, it happens)

Part 2: Bouncing off ideas to build the basic plot of the story. No more to be said here, just exchange ideas.

Part 3: The actual writing. Can be done by writing a few lines each (very useful when each collaborator is using his own characters), or take turns writing longer bits. The latter is most useful when dealing with time zone difference, and in that case the comment function is vital: it allows to comment, write down ideas, ask for suggestions about a sentence or scene, and so on.

If you want an example, look at my missions. Interlude #1 was written with the first method, as Astral Void and I managed to get enough time zone overlap to do it. Collaboration #1 and #2 were done with the second one, as the piece was longer and there was lees overlap time with Firemagic.

To bring the point home, I'm Italian, Astral Void is Australian and Firemagic is American. And yet, collaboration was possible. And fun. Collaboration is fun.

...is that two or more people have editing access to the same Google Drive document, and they open it up at the same time and tag-team, usually writing their characters specifically and switching off on canons, deciding beforehand who wrangles them, or deciding on the fly. (I've mostly done the last.)

For instance, take PPCers Anna and Bobby, who write agents Samuel and Deanna. Anna might start out like this:

Samuel bounced a baseball off the wall of his RC and tried to be uncomfortable. Unfortunately, he clearly wasn't uncomfortable enough, because--

[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!]

Samuel yelped in shock, took a step backwards, and tripped over the footstool behind him. He toppled to the floor and lay there, moaning.

Then she might switch to the built-in chat in the doc:

A: Your cue, Bobby!
B: 'K!

And Bobby would turn to the doc:

The RC's door opened, and someone laughed. "Hey, Sammy, how're your ears?"

Samuel glowered up at Deanna. "Fine. My back's the one that's hurting."

Deanna grinned and leaned down, offering a hand to her partner. "Ready to hurt your brain too?"

"Never." Samuel accepted Deanna's hand and hauled himself up with her help. "Let's get on with it."

That's just the basic bouncing-two-characters-off-each-other thing, and it gets more complicated once you add a story that you need to work on in conjunction with working with your partner. I can't really describe that process, but the two-character-bouncing is just RP. In a Google Doc.

You don't have to write with a partner if you don't want to, though; you can easily make two agents and bounce them off each other like I did with Samuel and Deanna there.

if it looks like i stole those names straight from supernatural it's only because i did