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The Importance Of Collaboration Fiction

By Sharron Cantu


One may wonder why team writing endeavors are undertaken. It seems contrary to the benefit of being an independent author and presenting a unique book without suffering the influence of others. However, there are various benefits that can be found in collaboration fiction. Sharing creative control almost harks back to oral tradition where individuals all contributed to stories.

There are many different reasons for collaborating when writing. Writing groups often write stories collaboratively to help develop the skills of individuals. Academics often collaborate when writing articles. Experienced authors may come up with ideas that they feel would work best when collaborating with other published authors and these books are available for purchase, many of them from online outlets.

Writing together has a number of benefits but it also creates various challenges. One of the main benefits is that each author can benefit from the talents of the others. They can also challenge one another and thus stimulate increased creativity. The synergism can be very motivating.

One of the difficulties of working in this way is to achieve a consistency of style. A trust and mutual respect needs to exist between authors to make working in this way possible. Each author needs to give up total control and rely on the skills of others. If there is a mutual respect, the particular skills of each author can be utilized. One may be better at driving the script forward and another at providing shape and form to the text, settings and dialogue.

The way the work is divided between the authors should be done as evenly as possible. Problems can result if one author ends up doing most of the work or another feels that his work is not appreciated. Sometimes a plot is created at the beginning but other authors may work individually on chapters, characters or sub plots and only then decide how to put them together.

Various problems can arise when a group of authors collaborate on a story. One person may feel that the workload has not been evenly distributed or that his or her suggestions are consistently ignored. Another may want to take over and tell everyone else what to do. A clash of egos can result in disaster.

There have been projects attempted online where any visitors to a site can contribute to a story. Attempts like this push the boundaries of publishing but the results have often been spectacularly bad. Other forms of this type of fiction have emerged from the world of game playing, particularly role-playing games. In these games characters interact and narratives can be generated as a result.

When people co-operate with another to produce books, the efforts can be disappointing but they can also be rich and complex. This type of work definitely has a place, especially when accomplished authors succeed in working together. They can produce books that reach greater heights than they could possibly have accomplished on their own.




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