What would you look for in an author you would consider collaborating with?

[WCSGarland]

I've seen threads about collaborating before, several author's have mentioned they would like to collaborate on stories with other authors, but it seems none of them mention what criteria they would or might be looking for in another author they would consider collaborating with. Is there any criteria? If you are an author interested in collaborating with other authors, would you have any standards the other collaborator might have to meet? Or are you (for lack of a better description at the moment) so desperate to collaborate with anybody that you have no standards?

EDIT: Granted, some of you have already collaborated with other authors, so my question for you would be, what about them prompted you to collaborate?

 

[Erozetta]

Willingness to throw the whole idea out and wing it together.

Basically, that's it. Not getting bent out of shape for not strictly adhering to a single path for the story.

In fact, I'd love to write a story game with someone where we each branch off of each other's branches so it's a mishmash of our writing and playing with each other's ideas.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Granted, some of you have already collaborated with other authors, so my question for you would be, what about them prompted you to collaborate?

@Djmac1031 and I have collabed for a long time. That includes reading piecemeal as the other writes, acting as a sounding board, trying to help when the writer is stuck, and giving honest opinions as to what works and doesn’t work.

Beyond that, we built a shared supernatural universe. My approach to this was to let Dj do all the hard world building and to focus on writing raunchy sex.

We have also coauthored four stories.

What is the secret? Basically a shared fetish for including Star Wars and Indiana Jones jokes and quotes as frequently as possible.

More seriously, we just became friends with a shared hobby.

More recently, I coauthored with @PennyThompson - I found her work funny and delightful, and she found my work tolerable, so it kinda worked out.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I have no serious standards about collaboration other than a shared interest in the story. I do a form of collaboration here in the Sexual RP forum. I find it enjoyable and challenging to play out a story with someone where our responses aren't planned. It give a certain unexpected reality to the character my partner is playing.

 

[WCSGarland]

Willingness to throw the whole idea out and wing it together.

Basically, that's it. Not getting bent out of shape for not strictly adhering to a single path for the story.

In fact, I'd love to write a story game with someone where we each branch off of each other's branches so it's a mishmash of our writing and playing with each other's ideas.

Would it be fair to paraphrase this as the willingness to sublimate the ego and just ad lib?

 

[WCSGarland]

I have no serious standards about collaboration other than a shared interest in the story. I do a form of collaboration here in the Sexual RP forum. I find it enjoyable and challenging to play out a story with someone where our responses aren't planned. It give a certain unexpected reality to the character my partner is playing.

I don't know... I'd think shared interest in the story would be a rather serious standard. How would you quantify that? Or would you not want to quantify that? How would you go about determining a share interest in the story?

 

[Erozetta]

Would it be fair to paraphrase this as the willingness to sublimate the ego and just ad lib?

Less ad lib and more "What if the story went this way instead of the way we talked about?" or "Can we test this path for the story before we commit to the other path?"

Or "Yes, that's very good, would you mind if I just..." *increases sex scene tenfold.* "There we go! Carry on, love the path we're on!

Ad lib would be more in role-play territory.

 

[Rob_Royale]

This has recently popped up on my radar and another writer and I have agreed to consider co-writing something. We're in the brain storming phase and I'm hopeful that between the two of us we can come up with something special.

For me prerequisites are similar interests and appreciation for the writers work. In this case, a fair bit of writing style compatibility has sealed the deal, but it wouldn't be mandatory.

 

[Voboy]

I'd need to have a sense that their writing style and method of working was complimentary to mine.

The one time I tried to collab directly, it didn't work because the other person was a lot more interested in writing now and editing later. I don't do that at all; I edit as I go. The story, predictably, went nowhere.

More recently I've contributed to the Leinyere stories here, which was just a shared universe into which a number of us could insert our own stories. That's not really "collaborating," but it felt fine. So I guess it depends on what you mean by "collaborating." I don't mind sharing basic ideas with someone else, but I don't think I'd want to try to "write with" anyone.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I don't know... I'd think shared interest in the story would be a rather serious standard. How would you quantify that? Or would you not want to quantify that? How would you go about determining a share interest in the story?

That's what I said: No serious standards other than a shared interest. And I wouldn't (couldn't) quantify it. A shared interest? The collaborators both liking the premise and the characters, seeing room for interesting developments, similar to what we look for in RP, but with more collaboration and editing in the writing.