Different personalities
Are you someone who seeks out feedback and criticism, or are you more of an independent soul? Do you enjoy paying attention to every detail right off the bat, or does that drive you crazy and you wish to just get the story or body of the work fleshed out first? Maybe you wish to adhere to the traditional conventions of vocabulary and grammatical structure. Or maybe you view those as mere suggestions, and creativity should rule. These are just a few instances where you might not be on the same page as your coauthor that you discover along the way.
Different writing methods and styles
Right off the bat, there is the matter of crafting a story.
I have always, in the past, for example, created a brief concept map to brainstorm an idea before writing. Next, I developed an outline and worked from it closely. My coauthor comes from the creative writing school of thought, where one might start with a few main characters and a vignette, work forward or even backward from there, and may even create a host of additional characters as you go along.
This is a powerful creative method of writing, but it was one I had no familiarity with at all. I found it exciting to not know if a character we created would turn out to be good or bad or which direction a plot element would take. In the end, that is how the story was created, and with my linear background in writing, I played a part in developing an outline and timeframe for the story partway through the process.
Other basic differences in writing styles between coauthors may need to be worked out. This can include choosing and sticking with a consistent point of view in the narrative, relying on one grammatical authority, such as Merriam-Webster, working on similar pacing, and achieving a coherent tone in the writing. For example, I tend to write in longer sentences, whereas my coauthor leans more toward a shorter, to-the-point, and at times even grittier style.
Kill your babies. What?
Another consideration has to do with the authoring concept of being willing to “kill your babies.” I have never liked that phrase, but I totally get the idea. It is very hard to delete what you might deem a brilliant line or passage worth of Toni Morrison or Ernest Hemingway but which totally does not move the story along, is too esoteric for a reader to relate to, or is suffering from some other form of malaise.
This can be hard for an author to tackle in their own writing, but suggesting that your coauthor kill one of their own babies for the sake of improving the book… Well, you can imagine that this could be a landmine of sorts. Mutual respect, clear communication, and a willingness to compromise are key elements.
Multiple cooks in the kitchen
It is wonderful to divide up the work, but someone has to tackle the above factors and make the book read like it is coming from a single author, be it one of the authors who edits the other’s work or a professional editor that is brought into the mix. Your reader should be surprised when they reach the bios at the end of a book and realize two authors wrote it.
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