Recently I discussed the benefits of collaboration in broad strokes – that working with another writer on a story or novel can create a synergy that turns two plus two into five. This requires a meeting of the minds and a compatibility between two creative forces that doesn’t always happen. It’s a kind of marriage. You gotta gell.
I’ve been very lucky in this regard with the likes of Terry Beatty, Dave Thomas and Matt Clemens, among a few others.
Collaboration on a film set is a much different animal. The social element is something I find refreshing, as someone who has worked in a solitary fashion for many years. Actors and film crews bring their considerable talents to bear in helping me mount a production from a script of mine – they often improve upon that script. I would say they usually do.
Alisabeth Von Presley and Paula Sands at the premiere of Death by Fruitcake in which they appear as Brandy and Vivian Borne, shown with Sushi. Watch for it late this year!
Phil Dingeldein and Chad Bishop are key players in my (apparently) ongoing return to indie filmmaking. Robert Meyer Burnett has worked closely with me as he directs my script for True Noir, our immersive ten-chapter audio adaptation of True Detective (episode five just dropped!). That project is very film-like as an experience – making an elaborate, large-cast “movie for the mind.”
I’m sure the need to create something in collaboration with others has a lot to do with why I stayed involved with playing in my bands the Daybreakers, Crusin’ and Seduction of the Innocent. Frustrations and head-butting ensues, yes, but the sum total is worthwhile and, frankly, fun.
What I neglected to talk about, in regard to writing fiction with a collaborator, is how the process works. Frankly, it can work several ways – more than several. But my process is usually that the plot and themes are mostly worked out in advance, and the other writer takes a pass at a chapter (or short story), or a complete draft, and I take the second pass, basically working as a supremely intrusive editor (the kind of person I hate when I’m writing on my own – copy editors have often been subject of my displeasure…so there’s an irony here).
My longest and arguably most successful collaboration has been with Barb, my wife of a hundred years or so. The most infuriating thing about Barb to other writers is when they learn she grew up having no interest whatsoever in becoming a writer. That dream held by so many was nothing she ever experienced.
Basically, she put a toe into the water at my request when Terry Beatty and I needed help on the back-up feature (“Mike Mist”) in the Ms. Tree comic books. Initially she wrote scripts and later, to save Terry two pages of art per issue, short stories. What they used to call “filler” in Golden Age and Silver Age comic books.
She was almost irritatingly good at it. I was a tad surprised, but not really, because she had been my in-house editor from the start and displayed an innate feel for storytelling. Her inspirations were the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series (particularly episodes based on Roald Dahl short stories) and Nancy Drew novels. She was not an avid reader (although she is a big reader of non-fiction now, particularly biographies).
I have said before that if I had been a brain surgeon, Barb would have become one, too, just picking it up being around me. That certainly seems to be the case with fiction writing.
Her process, whether she’s writing with me or on a solo project (she did many short stories alone before we began working on the Trash ‘n’ Treasures Antiques series together) is slow and steady. Fastidious. She is a long distance runner and I am a sprinter. I write quickly and revise as I go, having been working at fiction writing since junior high; she works and re-works her draft before turning it over to me.
Our process is discussing and loosely plotting a novel together, often over a dining-out meal or a car trip, and usually we come up with a title (sometimes she comes up with it, sometimes I do, but we have to agree it’s a good one). Then she sets out alone and works for six months or so on a somewhat short (250 – 275-page) draft.
She then turns her draft over to me, and I take under a month on my draft, generally, and expand the novel to 300 to 325 pages. These are double-spaced pages. She reads my chapters as I go, gives notes, finds typos, and I make the corrections and revisions before I start the next chapter. She rarely gives me a bad time about changes and expansions I make, claiming to be sick of the book by the time she hands it over to me. She gives me remarkable freedom in my rewrite, mostly just making sure I am not doing damage to the plot, because I don’t read her entire manuscript before starting my revision.
That may seem counter-intuitive, because you would think I’d want to read the thing before starting to revise it. But that doesn’t work for me. Back when I did read Barb’s draft first, I would start rewriting it in my head, immediately, making notes and getting bogged down. I do better just digging in. Also, because we plotted it so long before, I seldom remember who the murderer is. So that means, as I do my draft, I’m in the dark with the reader, which is a good thing. If I can guess who did it too early, we have some carpentry to do.
Barb and Max Allan Collins at the Death by Fruitcake premiere with Sushi. Their Antiques series come to life!
Collaborations work a lot of ways. This is our process. I don’t recommend it as a method, because every writer and every writing team must find their own method, their own process. It may work for you, it may not. Our way accommodates Barb’s pace and my pace, which are (as I’ve said) radically different.
It does work for us. I’m very proud of the Antiques novels, and my contribution to them, although Barb is very much the lead writer. The Trash ‘n’ Treasures series has more entries than any other series of mine – it has enjoyed the longest run with some of the best reviews any project I’m associated with has ever received.
I think it’s fair to say that Barb couldn’t do these books alone and neither could I. Either of us could write an entry in the series, but neither of us could write an entry as good as our team could do. It is indeed synergy.
What’s the secret? First, we each respect the other writer. Second, we stay of each other’s way. I don’t look over her shoulder while she’s writing her draft, and she gives me all the room I need to write mine.
Also, her office is on the first floor of our house, and mine is on the second.
M.A.C.
