Collaborative fiction
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The term refers to collaboration on writing works of fiction.
Collaborative fiction is a form of writing by two or more authors who take it in turns to write a portion of the story. A collaborative author may focus around a specific protagonist or character 'owned' by an author in a narrative thread, and then passes the story on to the next writer for further additions or perhaps a change in focus to a protagonist 'owned' by the next author. Alternatively, one author might write all the portions of particular subplots, and other narrative threads might be shared. Which author then integrates the whole and smooths the work into professionally submittable form depends solely on agreeements between the collaborators, as does whatever percentages of remuneration are earned by each party. Thus, since royalty payments may outlive the individual authors, these matters are generally agreed to in advance, using written contractual terms, while the collaborators are outlining and designing the fictional work. An example of a collaborative writer who uses this technique is Eric Flint, who as a [professional popular writer] has collaborated with another for well over half his works.
Originations
Collaborative fiction seems to have grown from two distinct sources. Traditional fiction writers and writing circles may experiment in creating group stories, such as Robert Aspirin's Thieves World and MythAdventures. The advent of the internet has seen an increase in such groups. For example, the Bean's bar forum, known as 1632 Tech, has been a prime force behind the many works in the popular alternate history 1632 series under the aegis of Eric Flint -- especially The Grantville Gazettes.The other source for collaborative fiction came out of the practices of table top and computer roleplaying gamers and related 'fandom' activities. Table top roleplaying has always been an exercise in collaborative fiction, but with more structured rules. Gamers of this variety may naturally wish to practice the more creative aspects of their craft without using the heavy structure of gaming engines. For computer roleplayers and genre fiction fans, much of the push has come from the effort to create fan fiction for popular characters designed by but not explored to 'satisfactory depth' by third party computer game, science fiction, anime, and similar companies.
A quote on collaboration in Fiction
This is an excerpt (quote) from author Eric Flint's website FAQ section [on collaborative writing]:
The first, so obvious it wouldn’t seem to require mention — but it does — is that you get along well with your partner. Being on friendly personal terms is pretty much critical. I won’t go so far as to say that no collaborations have ever worked between people who disliked each other… but not many, that’s for sure. The friendship may be closer or more distant, but it pretty much has to be there for a collaboration to work well. As my friend and collaborator Dave Drake once said to me, with his usual dry wit: “It does not bode well for a collaboration when you discover, halfway through it, that the first thing you do every morning is check the obituary section of the paper in the hopes that your co-author’s name will be listed.”
The other is that, with a little experience and “shaking down,” you and your partner(s) learn what method of work seems to suit you best. This learning process can get a little rough, at times, which is why friendship makes a big difference. Friends can growl at each other, now and then, when someone steps on someone else’s toes, without any big deal being made of it. The absence of friendship is likely to make those occasional little growls turn into… something else.
Mind you, it’s a complicated process — because it’s just as likely that a collaboration will turn into a friendship as the other way around. Of the five people I’ve collaborated with, on one project or another, two of them were friends before we decided to collaborate (Richard Roach and Dave Freer), two were completely unknown to me other than by name prior to the start of the collaboration (David Drake and Misty Lackey), and Dave Weber was a casual acquaintance. Collaboration between writers is a very close relationship in many ways, and so if you do get along it will most likely turn into a real friendship. That’s been my experience at least, with Daves Drake and Weber and Misty.
Professional Writers Eric Flint frequently collaborates with are listed and linked on his webpage. Others may be inferred in the listed works in the Ring of Fire and various Grantville Gazettes anthologies, where he has been both writer and editor.
Common rules deal in:
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There is no “standard way” in which two or more authors collaborate. It depends entirely on the partners involved and how they like to work together. A good collaboration, in my opinion, depends mainly on two things.Forms of guidelines
Collaborative fiction can be fully open with no rules or enforced structure as it moves from author to author; however, most collaborative fiction adopts some form of 'writers guidelines' on what constitutes an acceptable contribution.ORPG
In a collaboration to write an RPG plot team members create characters that are then thrust into the main RPG story. Most of the ORPG groups have a board of editors that approves characters and resolves disputes. Very few of them, if any, has used MediaWiki or Wiki technology to date. ORPGs can get very big and form a Massively multiplayer online game environment may include but is not limited to team writing.See also
External links
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