Subject: That's sort of how I've done it.
Author:
Posted on: 2009-03-31 22:21:00 UTC
Mind you, I've only done two cowrites; we'd have an IM open in one window and a gdoc in the other, and write a few paragraphs before switching. Any questions about facts or the characterisation of the other person's agent was done in chat, and usually translated literally into the story.
There must be several ways to do it, but which one is the best?
Is the mission passed back and forth between the writers to allow all characters to react to each situation? Or is it split in sections? Or is the writing mostly done by one person, then sent to the other for verification and perfecting? Or do they each write their own story, then make a salad with the best ideas of both?
Way back in the dawn of time, when Trojie and I first started writing together (not PPC missions), we used to email word documents to each other. It got confusing as all hell, and we'd occasionally mislay bits. Then gmail brought out googledocs, and there was much rejoicing.
We'll usually find a mission first (Ansela is very good for this, as she is braver than me when it comes to trawling the Uber Pit). I have a dekko, assess the horror, and then send a link to Trojie. If she agrees to it, we copy and paste the entire thing into a googledoc and have a read through.
Then we go and beat our heads against a wall for a while. If there are a lot of charges that one of us will miss, for example if the fic's in a continuum only one of us knows, we'll go through highlighting charges so nothing's missed. This usually isn't necessary though; we pick up the charges as we go along.
When we're feeling brave, one of us will tag the other, and we get stuck in. We have an IM window open as well as the document, for throwing ideas about and reminding one another of important charges and what have you. One will write as much as they can, and then tag the other. And on we go, taking turns, until it's finished. Then it's proofreading and to the beta(s).
Googledocs is a very convenient way, if you have Gmail. Almost every PPC mission I write is a cowrite between me and Pads, and we do it using Googledocs, which is basically a word document stored online, which multiple people can see and edit at once (although it spazzes if you are both trying to write at the same time, so it's better to take turns). Gdocs is also really convenient for beta-reading, because you can just share the document with your beta-reader and they can make direct edits.
I've done it four ways: some of my joint missions were actually written by one author and then passed over for checking, some were written in real-time over IM programs (line by line, so like passing it back and forth), one was written line by line on a forum set up for the purpose (three authors, so we couldn't get on IM together much), and although not a mission, the early parts of the Reorganisation were split into sections and we each wrote our own parts. And there are other methods - some people seem to just do a commentary on the story together on IM and then write in the action later. So it really does depend. By far the /easiest/ is for one person to do all the writing and the other just to edit; possibly the most fun to write is real-time over IM. But, really, it comes down to choosing your own way.
hS
There's also gdocs. If both authors are collaborators, they can pretty much edit and write the story at the same time without having to worry about the size limit of IMs.
Mind you, I've only done two cowrites; we'd have an IM open in one window and a gdoc in the other, and write a few paragraphs before switching. Any questions about facts or the characterisation of the other person's agent was done in chat, and usually translated literally into the story.