Pippa Middleton's writing tips

You might find these useful

Pippa Middleton was kind enough to share her writing tips with us. Well we think it was her. It is possible that Clovenhoof got hold of some headed notepaper. They do sound like the genuine article, so here they are for everyone to enjoy:

1. Show where the end of a sentence is by using a full stop.

2. A dictionary can help you find the correct word.

3. A thesaurus can help you find other correct words, or bon mots.

4. You can make poetry sparkle by using words that rhyme with each other.

5. A computer makes a handy alternative to pencil and paper. You can even print out your writing!

6. Convey a sense of place by describing the scenery.

7. If you're writing fiction, try using your imagination.

8. If a piece of writing doesn't seem quite right, try changing some of the words.

9. Avoid spelling mistakes, they can make people think you're not a proper writer.

10. You can practise dialogue by talking.

11. To add extra drama to your story, have things happen to your characters such as an unexpected turn of events.

12.  Show who is talking in a scene by using the word ‘said’ and the person’s name.

13. Use describing words to tell your readers more about things.

14. Give your written work a title so people will know what they are going to read.

15. When you have written everything you want to say, stop.

And Then There Were None – stories in which characters get bumped off one by one

SPOILER ALERT. If you have not read or seen the film adaptations of And Then There Were None or The Hunger Games or seen the films The Thing, Exam or Identity, then this article will ruin the end for you. You have been warned.

And Then There Were None –

And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie wrote the archetypal diminishing roll call story in 1939. It was originally published with a racist title (this was 1930’s England, folks!) which was then changed to a considerably less racist title and then again to the title we currently know it by.

In the story, ten people are invited to an otherwise deserted island where they are then bumped off one by one by an unseen assassin. The manner of their deaths more or less conforms to the couplets in a children’s nursery rhyme (although how “a big bear hugged one” equals having a clock dropped on your head is a stretch too far for me). The characters quickly realise that the U. N. Owen who had invited them to the island is in fact “Unknown” and that their mysterious host (and the killer) is one of their number.

After nine deaths, Vera Claythorne is the only left alive but she is not the murderer. How can this be? Realising that she will no doubt be charged and executed for the murders committed on the island, she hangs herself. Only in a postscript is it revealed that one of the earlier deaths was faked and that the justice-mad Lawrence Wargrave was able to carry out the last killings “from beyond the grave” before killing himself for real.

Agatha Christie is rightly considered a very important and very entertaining writer. However, she wasn’t really big on description or introspective analysis of human emotions. The characters arrive, get killed off one by one in rapid succession and the solution is revealed. It’s a short and pacy read and it’s no wonder that it has been adapted several times.

And Then There Were None. I mean Two. –

And Then There Were None (1974)

This is my favourite film adaptation of the novel. It’s relocated to the Iranian desert, it’s chock full of the celebrity international actors of the day (Gert Frobe, Adolfo Celi, Elke Sommer and Herbert Lom) and it has the alternative ending that Christie herself created for the stage version of her play.

I like it especially because of the Italian soundtrack and because Charles Aznavour’s character gets bumped off in the first ten minutes.

The alternative ending was a direct attempt to give viewers a happy ending but it does work. In the film, when it appears that Vera (Cylde not Claythone is this version) is the last one alive, Wargrave appears to drink poison and reveal his wicked and twisted plan BUT Vera  is not alone! The death of Hugh Lombard (Oliver Reed) was also faked and now there are two people left alive at the end to corroborate each other’s stories.

The film ends with Wargrave (Richard Attenborough) doing the most genuinely brilliant impression of a man choking to death I’ve ever seen. And he looks so disappointed to find his grand scheme undone. Poor fellow.

And Then There Were Two –

The Hunger Games

Have you read the book? Have you seen the film? If you’ve answered ‘no’ to both of these questions then you belong to a very rare group of people. You should form a club and have badges and a secret handshake. The latest Twilight/Harry Potter/(insert Young Adult book-film sensation here) is a simple story, lightly and clearly told and very entertaining. I’ve known grown men steal the book from their teenage daughters and sit up all night so they can finish reading it.

It has also been said more than once that Suzanne Collins novel is a knock-off/homage of several other stories. It is the American Battle Royale. It is The Running Man with the Schwarzenegger character played by a teenage girl. It is Predator with the Schwarzenegger character played by… oh.

Collins can deny having ever heard of Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale (for shame!) but it doesn’t matter. The trope had been well-established for decades and, besides, they are different books with different themes. As a book with a sympathetic central character and written for young adults, Collins’ biggest challenge was perhaps to get the heroine, Katniss, and her is-he-isn’t-he boyfriend to be the last two standing without either of them coming off as vile murderers. She manages it, although some might criticise how the reader’s sympathies are manipulated to achieve that end.

And Then There Was One –

Exam

British cinema can be divided into three main categories:

a)                Hugh Grant rom-coms set in an England that does not exist outside Richard Curtis’ head;

b)                Gangster movies set in a London that does not exist outside Guy Ritchie’s head and;

c)                 All the other ones (which you’ve probably not seen).

Exam falls into category c. Written and directed by Stuart Hazeldine, Exam follows eight job applicants as they sit the final exam for acceptance to the ranks of a major corporation. They are sat at tables in a sealed room and are given 80 minutes to complete the examination before them. All pretty straight forward until they realise their exam papers are all blank. What follows, in roughly real-time, are acts of vandalism, abuse, torture and death. One by one, the characters storm out, are bullied out, forcibly ejected and shot.

At the end, the successful candidate and the real nature of the exam are revealed. It’s real-time narrative and single set location add to the tension of the piece. It’s clever, if unbelievable, and it’s the only entry on this list of mine in which characters don’t have to die to be removed from the narrative.

And Then There Were Two (or is it One?)

John Carpenter’s The Thing

John Carpenter’s The Thing is an adaptation of the John Campbell novella, Who Goes There?, more than it is a remake of the 1951 The Thing From Another World. In this story, the characters are eliminated one by one by a shape-changing life-devouring alien being, dug up from the Antarctic ice and ultimately transported to a US science station. The alien is able to take on the form, memories and mannerisms of the individuals it devours and so the story has notable shades of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers about it.

However, on closer scrutiny, The Thing is more similar to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None in that it shares the isolated setting (and the helplessness and terror that goes with that) and also has a killer who is “one of us.” Even though the nature of the killer becomes known to the characters relatively early on, the alien’s chameleonic nature means that everyone is a suspect. The men at the science station eventually turn on one another and innocent people are killed.

The Thing is a superlative example of prosthetic special effects 80s body horror. We are treated to an hour and a half of alien-human hybrids, a chest cavity that bites off arms and a severed head that sprouts legs and runs away. In the end, two people are left alive, freezing to death in the remains of their destroyed home but are they humans or aliens? They finally surmise that they can’t both be aliens or else they would reveal their true natures to one another. Either one is alien and the other its final victim or they are both human and facing death by hypothermia. Nihilistic stuff.

And Then There Were One. I mean Two. I mean One. Oh, I see, there was no one there in the first place –

Identity

Identity starts out as an And Then There Were None clone with ten people trapped at a Midwest motel during a rainstorm. They include a petty crook, a limousine driver who used to be a cop, a cop who is clearly not a cop, the prisoner he is transporting across the country and a couple with their young son. In separate scenes in a nighttime courthouse, we are told that a serial killer is being brought to the courthouse that night for a final hearing before his execution.

What then follows is the standard bumping off of the characters by an unknown killer. Each corpse is found with a motel key in their hand, the first with the number 10 then 9, then 8…

SUPER SPOILER ALERT!!

And then Identity plays its major twist card which, depending on your tastes, is either brilliant or stupid. The serial killer prisoner is wheeled into the courthouse and he’s none of the characters we’ve met before. So what on earth do the two narratives have to do with one another? It turns out that our ten motel-based characters are the different personalities within the killer’s schizophrenic mind.

The doctor treating the killer has put him on a drug regime which is forcing his multiple personalities to confront one another. The intention is that a single personality will emerge but the big question is will the final surviving character be a good person or the psychopath who made the Multiple Personality Disorder sufferer kill and kill again?

In the end, it is a virtuous young woman who survives the carnage, protected from Ray Liotta’s not-a-cop by John Cusack’s used-to-be-a-cop. Having a pretty, white girl as the last survivor is perhaps the biggest cliché in these kinds of stories so it is at least refreshing to have the killer (who faked his own death) pop up at the end to dispatch her with a gardening implement.

And Then There Was One, possibly. Who knows? –

Ten To One

Oh, it’s revealed that this blog is another savage ploy to promote Pigeon Park Press’s collaborative writing project, Ten To One.  We’re currently gathering writers who would like to take part. The idea behind the project is that ten writers will write a novel together, each of them handling the chapters relating to one of the major characters. However – and here’s the twist – after each round of chapters, a character (and writer) will be voted off the project by a combination of public vote and judging panel.

We’ve not decided on what kind of narrative it is yet. It might be an And Then There Were None murder mystery but, more likely, it’s going to go into far more exciting territory. Time, space and all reality are ours to play with.

If you’re reading this blog before 31^st March 2013, then you still have an opportunity to get involved as a writer. If you’re reading it after that date, you won’t be able to join us as a writer but you certainly will be able to keep up with news and stories related to the project.

For more information, go to: http://pigeonparkpress.blogspot.co.uk/p/ten-to-one-collaboratively-written.html

To be kept up to date, ‘like’ our Facebook page at:  http://www.facebook.com/#!/TenToOneNovel

Interested in getting involved? Mail us at:  info@pigeonparkpress.com

Sitcom collaborations - guest blog by Keith Lindsay

writing a sitcom - with or without a partner?

Pigeon Park Press are hosting a sitcom writing workshop on 6th April, details here.

The workshop will be run by Keith Lindsay, who has very kindly written a guest post for Idle Hands.
Over to Keith:

 
To be perfectly honest all Situation Comedy is collaboration; yes there’s an initial script that may or may not have been written by one person but before the show hits the small screen there’s much creativity to be added to the mix. From the director and the actors, through the make-up, wardrobe and set designer to the final editor, there are many talented people who have a share in getting you to laugh.

That said, comedy, more than any other genre lends itself to collaboration during the writing process. It’s pretty obvious really, writing comedy means, first and foremost making yourself laugh and the bonus of having a writing partner who also laughs at the jokes is that it is less likely that you are not simply a sociopath, albeit only fifty percent less likely.

Initially at least then two heads are better than one, or if you’re a hydra six heads are better than one. However finding a writing partner isn’t that easy, you need to search out someone whose company you can stand for long periods of time, someone who shares a similar sense of humour with you and someone who has skills that compliment your own.

When I jumped into the whirlpool that is comedy writing I did so with a partner, his skills were, a great ear for dialogue, no fear of the blank page and more importantly he could type: my skills were ability to create characters, tell good stories and my ego. The fact that those skills eventually became interchangeable is probably the reason we eventually split up, much like many marriages.

Once you have a partner it’s up to you to find how the writing process works best for both of you. Galton and Simpson, writers of Hancock and Steptoe and Son, say that usually one types and one walks around a lot, in the same room I should point out. My first mentors Marks and Gran (Birds of a Feather, The New Statesman, Goodnight Sweetheart) had their own version of working in a room together. Laurence and Maurice would sit at their own computers with the same page open, one would type a line or a stage direction in and the two of them would discuss its inclusion in the script until a decision was reached – in or out. These could be pretty long discussions.

Of course there are those writing partnerships who don’t need to be, or can’t be, in the same room for the writing process, my partner and I were one such partnership. Oh we tried, but found that we spent too much time arguing over the minutiae, like how to spell Ok, and not enough over whether a joke or character worked or not.

We quickly found what worked for us was for me to create the basic character bible and plot and then hand them over to Martin so that he could write a first draft; no fear of the blank page remember. The draft completed it was then my job to re-write it and, as Martin used to put it, leave out all his best lines.

Yes it led to arguments but it did not lead to one of us being banged up for murder as working in the same room must surely have done.

And for those who like their irony; many years later when I wrote with the late great John Sullivan on his spin off from Only Fools and Horses, The Green Green Grass, I was the one to write the first draft which John would then turn into a proper John Sullivan script. Ironic maybe, but still one of the best experiences of my life.

A writing team who also decided absence made the script grow funnier were Richard Curtis and Ben Elton when they worked on Blackadder together. Elton and Curtis would take three of the six scripts each to write and after writing each one would post it to their partner. Once received and read they then employed to double tick system; if a joke got two ticks, one from each writer, it stayed in, if only one, well ‘they’d discuss’ it.

So I’ll repeat, you have to find a system that works for you and doesn’t clog up the already overcrowded criminal justice system.

The other thing that should be said about partnership writing is that you shouldn’t expect it to necessarily last forever. I’m not trying to naysay the practice just because I no longer write with a partner, but because for every continuing Marks and Gran marriage there are divorces, or at least separations, for the likes of Grant and Naylor, Renwick and Marshall and Linehan and Mathews.

My advice would be to find ways to enjoy your collaboration, find the fun in it for as long as you can and, just like a marriage, work at it. If you can, then the work you produce will be better, your quality of life will be better and should your wife/husband/life partner begin to suspect you of having an affair you’ll know you’re doing it right.



Keith R. Lindsay

Notttingham Festival of Words - running our collaborative writing workshop

We've run our collaborative writing workshop a few times now, so we were looking forward to its first outing of 2013 at Nottingham's first Festival of Words.

There was a system of pre-booking, so we asked the day before how many people had booked onto our workshop. Two, they said, and one of those hadn't confirmed. Oh.

We came up with some other ideas. If we only got a couple of people, we'd still try and give them value, and maybe we could even fit in some other activities. No worries.

We arrived at the venue nice and early so that we could have a look around and see what was happening. We met some familiar faces, had a cup of tea and went to set up.

The Newton building is a wonderful environment with stunning classrooms and hi-tech lifts that you could play with all day if you weren't due to run a workshop...

It didn't take long to set up. Iain tweeted a picture of the empty room as a joke as the start time rolled around and nobody was there. Then we started to wonder if anybody was actually coming.

After a brief delay, that I suspect had something to do with the logistics of getting around events that were spread across a fairly large area people started to arrive. Eleven participants in all, which is a superb number. We were surprised to find that five of them were from Germany. They were in Nottingham as part of a cultural exchange project.

After  a brief preamble, we started the first activity, which is intended to help collaborators find their common interests by working through a selection of story ideas. Once they'd honed their personal list, they compared with a partner's and then talked about what sort of story they might write based on the overlaps. A quick zip around the room. Yes! Everybody had the brief outline of a story.

[Our German delegates had, for the most part, an excellent working knowledge of English (far better than our knowledge of German) although one Anglo-German pairing became a little unstuck so their story (of a love triangle between a trapeze artist, an alcoholic ringmaster and a clown) had to be conveyed through drawings. Now, that’s a whole other workshop… - Iain]

Then they had a few moments to decide on the cast list. What essential two or three characters were needed at the core of the stories?

To flesh out these characters, we all played the index card game. We wrote character traits on cards. Some of them were straightforward like "enjoys loud music" and other stretched off into bad habits or mad idiosyncracies. "Licks lamp posts " sparked some interesting discussion!

[we are sooo stealing that ‘licks lamp posts’ story for Clovenhoof 2  - Iain]

Batches of cards were then swapped, so that each group had a fresh set of traits to use for their characters. A few small items of vocabulary were questioned. I mimed what it means to walk with a skip for our German friends. I declined to mime somersaults. A few minutes later Iain said to me "I just mimed skipping!" Were they having some fun with us? You decide!

After some more discussion, each group had a very good idea of what their characters were really like. Were they ready to be tested? One set of collaborators agreed to be tested. They answered questions about how one of their characters would react to a given situation, without hearing their partner's answers. It wasn't a clean sweep, but given that they had only just met (each other as well as the character) it was impressive.

Here is a blog written by one of the particpants:

http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/review--festival-of-words-i/id/5707

6 and a half collaborative novels worth knowing

`From the best to  the worst, to the most magical collaborations to the most underhandedly devious, here are 6 (and a half) co-authored books that you ought to read (or know to avoid!)

Good Omens

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Omens-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0552137030/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1361439904&sr=8-1

A 1990 book, co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, in which the Antichrist is a scabby-kneed scamp in middle England and Armageddon is going to happen whether he wants it or not. Teaming Pratchett, the comedy Discworld author, and Gaiman, the creator of the Sandman comics, (each blockbuster genre-writers in their own rights) the Good Omens partnership is a collaboration dream team.

Good Omens features a fairly hefty ensemble cast of characters including the Antichrist and his gang, the last witch in England, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the angel and demon charged with bringing about Armageddon. This cast allowed Pratchett and Gaiman to divide the work up easily. Apparently, Pratchett wrote most of the Antichrist stuff and Gaiman concentrated on other elements. However, quite understandably, they each took control one another’s characters and, before the end, there were whole sections which neither could honestly lay total claim to.

Funny stuff, especially the sections with Aziraphale (the angel) and Crowley (the demon), Good Omens is eminently re-readable. But you probably already know that.

Draculas

http://www.amazon.com/DRACULAS-A-Novel-Terror-ebook/dp/B0042AMD2M

Written in 2010 by Jeff Strand, F Paul Wilson, Blake Crouch and Joe Konrath, Draculas is a horror novel that takes collaboration to a new level with four collaborators, each handling an equal part of the narrative. Put simply, the plot involves an outbreak of vampirism at an isolated US hospital. The vampires of the story are not the pasty, fey creatures of the Anne Rice novels or the Twiglet Saga. These vampires are ravenous zombies-with-fangs, chomping their way through all wards. There are no sacred cows in this story and, for certain people (myself included), that just adds to the humour. The vampire clown and his balloon animals was a personal favourite.

The key to the success of this collaboration was the single isolated location and four mini-casts who can find their own perils and adventures within the given set. Certain characters, heroic and villainous, weave through all sections of the narrative, turning a portmanteau story into something more cohesive. It all comes together in the end, an intense horror ride powered by four fertile imaginations.

What To Do When Someone Dies

http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-When-Someone-Dies-ebook/dp/B002RUA588/ref=sr_1_2_bnp_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361440189&sr=1-2

I could talk about this or indeed any other Nicci French novel. Why? Well, because all Nicci French novels stay within certain boundaries. Contemporary British (often suburban) setting? Tick. Woman in jeopardy? Tick. Murder, death and betrayal? Tick.

Nicci French is actually husband and wife team Sean French and Nicci Gerrard. They have quite openly set out to write crime fiction of a certain type. Their work does not try to place itself specifically in any one time or place but focuses rather on character and interactions of the villains and victims of their stories.

Their working style involves them writing alternating chapters and then editing and rewriting one another’s work. This method allows them to write a full length novel far quicker than the solo writer, turning out sixteen novels in as many years.

Lion Boy

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lionboy-Zizou-Corder/dp/0141317264

Written in 2004, Lion Boy is a children’s novel simply bursting with creative ideas. It follows the adventures of Charlie Ashanti, a boy who can talk to cats, as he races across a curiously old-fashioned modern day Europe in pursuit of his kidnapped parents. It’s a story of dark conspiracies, backstreet bohemia or the baroque and the spectacular.

Zizou Corder is in reality a mother and daughter partnership between journalist Louisa Young and her daughter Isabel Adomakoh Young who, at the time of writing Lion Boy, was barely into double digits age-wise (she’ll be twenty this year). It’s hard to imagine how much actual writing input a ten year old can have on a 70,000 word novel but the storyline has the mark of the kind of wish-fulfilment and fantasising that any child might indulge in.

Other collaborations have used as similar approach with one person providing the ideas, the other doing the writing duties. However, this usually happens when a well-known author, perhaps entering their twilight years, relies on a younger ‘carefully selected’ collaborator to bring their ideas to fruition. Nothing so cynical with Zizou (which, incidentally, is the name of the family’s pet lizard).

Naked Came The Stranger

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Naked-Came-Stranger-Penelope-Ashe/dp/1569802629

I will admit I have never read this book but perhaps you can forgive me. This is perhaps the original example of a deliberately awful collaboration.

The story goes that, disappointed by the low brow and uncritical works that passed for literature in late sixties American, journalist Mike McGrady set out to prove that any kind of erotic trash could be a success. He engaged a team of twenty-four journalists to write a work that was worthless, incoherent, inconsistent and chock full of purposeless sex. Each contributor wrote a chapter apiece with little concern for what had gone on before and what would follow later.

The book was a commercial success. Did this prove McGrady’s point? It’s hard to say because the hoax was revealed not that long after initial publication. It’s appeal is possibly akin to that of a car crash; we can all rubberneck at the carnage but no one can really say it’s a good thing.

Atlanta Nights

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Atlanta-Nights-Travis-Tea/dp/1411622987/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361472675&sr=1-1

Another deliberately diabolical collaboration but this one written with a different purpose. Back in the days when the distinction between vanity publishers, traditional publishers and legitimate print on demand companies was perhaps blurrier than it is today, James D McDonald took exception to PublishAmerica’s claims to be a traditional publisher when it seemed to have an undiscerning attitude to what works it accepted and whose money it took.

Determined to prove that PublishAmerica would publish any old tat, as long as someone else was paying, McDonald gathered together a band of SF and fantasy authors to write the biggest pile of poo ever committed to the page. The flaws in their book were astonishing and included:

·         Characters who spontaneously changed gender or died and then reappeared without reason.

·         Separate chapters that were word for word copies of one another

·         Two separate chapters written by two independent authors from the same given synopsis.

·         Two chapter 12s

·         No chapter 21

·         A chapter of computer generated gibberish using words from the previous 33 chapters.

The awful concoction was presented to PublishAmerica who did indeed accept without any suggested edits. The team had made their point and actually stopped before going through with the deal. However, what does amaze me is that the book is now available to buy for real, it’s cruddy credentials made clear to all.

Ten To One (this is the half!)

Oh, look. This has all been a way of shamelessly promoting our collaboratively-written novel project, Ten To One. Oh, don’t worry dear friends, I’m not going to do a hard sell. However, I will just say this:

·         Ten To One is an earnest attempt to write a high quality novel with ten authors.

·         If you are reading this before 31^st March 2013 then you still have time to throw your hat into the ring.

·         Whether you’ve still got time or you’re fashionably late to the party, you can find out all about the Ten To One project at www.pigeonparkpress.com

What are you bringing to the party?

An extract from "How To Write A Collaborative Novel" by Heide Goody and Iain Grant - published by Pigeon Park Press in 2013

Have you ever been at a party or other social situation and spoken to a married couple who seem bizarrely mismatched?

The kind of marriage that seems horribly one-sided? Have you, once the married couple have wandered off to socialise elsewhere, turned to a friend and say, “How did he/she manage to end up with someone as beautiful/intelligent/witty/charming as that!”?

If you’ve never done that it’s probably because you’re a wonderful human being who can see the best in everyone. But such couples are out there, ones where one brings all the good stuff to the party and the other … just… stands there.

What about a couple who are both wonderful in their own way but whose personal traits totally fail to complement one another? Imagine a friend who is lovely and kind and very thoughtful but has no practical skills, absolutely no common sense and no ability to manage their finances. You probably hope that they are going to find themselves a boyfriend/girlfriend who loves them for who they are but has that common sense grounding to make up for their failings. But what if they end up with someone else, equally lovely, but equally useless in the practical aspects of life? Are they going to spend the rest of their lives as a kind and gentle pair who are in constant debt, live in a collapsing unmaintained home and keep on making sweet but dumb life choices?

In a good and strong partnership, each partner makes up for the others failings. Look at a successful married couple you know. One will be the practical one. One will be the spontaneous one. One will be the thoughtful one. One will be the money-savvy one. One will be the funny one. One will be out-going. One will be mature and wise. One will remember birthdays. One will be exciting and passionate. One will be calm and unflappable. One will be able to change a plug. One will be able to cook a three course meal. It doesn’t matter which person does which but the important thing is that at least one of them does each of them.

As in marriage, so it is in collaborative writing.

You may be a great writer with a particular skill set but does your partner’s skill set mirror yours or complement it.

Here’s a useful exercise for you and your writing partner; think about what you’re bringing to the party. You will probably have talked already about your writing experience. Did you talk about your strengths and weaknesses?

Grade yourself between 1 and 10 on the following, judging how easily and successfully you think you’re able to do them:

Coming up with original ideas

Creating well-rounded, believable characters

Plotting at the high level

Plotting at the low level

Writing with a compelling voice

Writing sparkling dialogue

Editing effectively

If you can get these out in the open, in an honest discussion, then you should be able to capitalise on your strengths and find ways to tackle your weaknesses.

I am not suggesting that you will hand over all of the editing to the person who’s best at editing. You can do that if you want to, but I think it would be much more productive if you could use the opportunity to pick up some editing skills from your collaborator as you work together.

Now, what else are you bringing to this project? I use the word project deliberately, because it holds a clue to some of the other skills that you might want to think about.

Do the grading exercise again, with these skills:

Organising large pieces of work into manageable chunks

Scheduling

Recording details

Looking for opportunities

Considering risks

Adapting to change

You will probably need all of these if you’re writing a novel together, so you should know where you both stand with regard to the non-writing activities. Keep the list handy as you work through the sections in the book on doing the work. For each new thing that you do, consider how you will organize, record and schedule the work, and give a thought to what risks and opportunities might arise.

A brief word on risk. Writers are often in possession of a powerful imagination. If you ask a writer what could possibly go wrong with something, they will divert their creative effort into imagining all sorts of colourful scenarios. If you think of a risk then you also need to work out how serious it could be and how likely it is to occur. If you can take action to prevent it then do. Otherwise, don’t get hung up.

An example of a risk worth taking seriously might be that Hilary is worried that she and Leslie will forget about their planned phone calls when they are busy writing. She addresses it by setting up a meeting in her email software and sending to Leslie so that they will both see it in their schedule.

So, you have a better idea of your project management skills, what else are you both bringing to the party?

You should talk about any knowledge specialisms that you have. I am going to define a knowledge specialism as “any subject that you could speak about for fifteen minutes”.

It’s likely you have a few. If you have expertise from a professional job, or some knowledge from a course that’s great. Maybe you’ve lived in an interesting place, or your cultural background is very different to your partner’s. If you’re an expert on cooking, gardening or photography, then that is just as likely to prove useful, and you should let your collaborator know, in case it strikes a chord with them.

There’s one more set of skills that I want you to consider.

It’s on the subject of selling books. Once you’ve written one, then you will presumably want to sell it. However you decide to do this, there is a duty that falls to the writers to promote it, even if you’re with a large publisher. What are your assets and skills in this area?

·         Do you have anyone in your circle of friends who works in publishing or something related?

·         Do you have a celebrity who will support your efforts?

·         Do you have a blog? Does it get lots of hits?

·         How many Facebook friends do you have?

·         How many Twitter followers do you have?

·         Is one of you a famous author?

·         Do you have previously published work?

·         Do you have any kind of fan base?

·         Can you passionately evangelise about something you believe in?

·         Are you prepared to socialize and network in circles that might be useful to you?

Pigeon Park Press’ new collaborative writing project Ten To One is currently looking for participants: http://pigeonparkpress.blogspot.co.uk/p/ten-to-one-collaboratively-written.html