SHE WROTE: PRO Bootcamp on Collaboration 1

And now for something completely different:
RWA (Romance Writers of America) has a group called PRO which is made up of writers who have written a complete manuscript but not sold yet. They do internet bootcamps at various times during the year, and this past week was one on collaboration taught by guess who. The format is that we put up a lesson daily and they asked questions. The plan is to post the four lessons we did (the fifth day, today, is open question day) with their questions and answers. We've been pretty much letting down the writing side of this blog, so this seemed like a good way to get back into things. Warning: Bob's answer to the POV question goes on for pages. He's a POV wonk.

Here's the first day:

Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer’s PRO Bootcamp on Collaboration

JENNY: Creative people have been collaborating since the first time they got lonely which must have been back in the Stone Age when one of them stared at a cave painting and said, “You know, I could use some help here.” There are a lot of different ways to collaborate—one person researches and the other writes (which always strikes me as remarkably unfair to the one who writes because that’s where the heavy lifting gets done), one writes and the other rewrites, etc.—but the kind of collaborating we’re going to talk about here is where two writers both WRITE, they creatively collaborate on the actual writing of the book, first draft through galleys. Bob and I had a pretty basic plan when we began: He wrote the male points of view (POVs) and I wrote the female.

BOB: Right.

JENNY: The big draw for me was learning more about how men think, which is really why I went for the collaboration in the beginning. It also meant that I couldn’t say, “No, that’s not right,” when Bob did something in his male POV scenes, because I didn’t know what would be right in that POV, I was there to learn. I think that’s one of the most important things about collaborating with somebody who has knowledge and skills that you don’t: watch them and learn, don’t fight them on the differences. The difference in the male and female worldview was actually a lot greater than I’d realized. Bob kept saying, “Men are very simple creatures,” which I took to meaning something like “Give them sex and beer and they’re happy.” But actually writing the book with him, I realized that what he meant was that their thought processes are very clean, that they don’t consider the side issues and the details that women tend to obsess over. There’s the goal, go to it. That was really new for me. So I’d say the first and most important part of collaborating is the choice of the collaborator. Choose a collaborator who can bring something new to your work, someone whose work you respect and someone you can trust, but especially someone who’s going to teach you things and help you grow as a writer. So Rule #1 for me is Choose the Collaborator Who Can Teach You New Skills and Whom You Can Trust. Okay, that’s too long. Rule #1 is Choose the Right Collaborator.

BOB: Doubly right.

JENNY: Beyond content we had the issue of process. I have a very patterned non-linear process while Bob is very outline-oriented, very linear. This wasn’t a surprise to either of us, but we both assumed that for the space of the collaboration, I’d write in linear, chronological structure because that’s the most efficient and really the only way to keep things straight between two writers. Except I can’t do that for very long before my head explodes. So the second thing I’d say is essential in collaboration is compromise. I’d write in a straight line for as long as I could, and then I’d tell Bob, “Wait,” and I’d go off on my own. I’d circle back and rewrite and change things and he’d scream, but then he’d work everything back into a tidy straight line again (his mantra is “I can fix anything”) and we’d work ahead. We still haven’t worked out a stress-free process, I’m always slowing us down, but we have recognized that we both need to work within our own methods, compromising like crazy so we can produce the best book possible. So after Rule #1 Choose the Right Collaborator, Rule #2 is Compromise or Die.

BOB: Triply right.

JENNY: I’d say my last rule is #3 Never Stop Talking (although you can maintain a frosty silence on occasion as long as you get over it fast and get back to work). There are some things you’re not going to be able to compromise on. That’s where you have to decide how much you really want whatever it is; that is, you’re going to have to learn to pick your fights. And the only way to find out is to talk, talk, talk with your collaborator. You can’t say, “I want this jacket to be a major motif in the book” without saying “because it represents Stephanie’s betrayal of Lucy so we can use it here, here, and here as a motif to underscore that betrayal in the reader’s mind.” Which means that later on, after many rewrites, when Stephanie is no longer betraying Lucy and your collaborator says, “Do we really need this damn jacket because it doesn’t work for me,” you can look at the story as a whole and say, “No, I guess we don’t,” and give it up, even though you loved it. On the other hand, if you can explain to your collaborator that all the Wonder Woman stuff represents Lucy’s attempts to be a super hero to everyone around her, and that her niece’s obsession with the Wonder Woman outfit Lucy gets her is not only her attempt to be her aunt but to keep her aunt’s protective aura around her, then he might roll his eyes but he’ll say, “Okay” and even think of interesting things to do with Wonder Woman’s Golden Lasso. You can’t just say, “Because I want it.” And much of the time you get a better understanding of WHY you want it once you’ve explained it to your collaborator. Keep talking. Even when you want to kill him, keep talking. So that’s Rule #1 Choose the Right Collaborator, Rule #2 Compromise or Die, Rule #3 Keep Talking.

BOB: I just did the above to see how long it would take for Jenny to blow a gasket. There were a lot of interesting things about the collaboration. One aspect that comes to mind is our She Wrote/He Wrote Blog. If you look at the pathetic blog on my web site, you will see my entries are like two lines. “I went to Maui. It was ok.” But the ones on the collaboration web site are totally different. In the same manner, writing with Jenny was very different. I was very focused on plot through thirty-some odd manuscripts. Working with her has caused me to shift focus to characters. I was already doing that, but now I’ve completely done it.
Let’s see. Rules.
Rule #1. Choose the right collaborator. We got lucky there. While we can discuss a lot of aspects of this in terms of craft, I liberally steal the title of Terry Brooks’ book on writing “Sometimes the Magic Works” although Jenny wasn’t thinking that last weekend when she wanted to throttle me when I was being a complete idiot. But one of the keys to our success-- well, we’ll have an idea of our success a month from now after the book comes out—is that I had been struggling with my ‘voice’ as a writer for over fifteen years and thirty-five manuscripts. I liked writing third-omniscient, mainly because it was easy. But easy isn’t necessarily good. I was the master of info-dump. You want the history of the Great Pyramid or Easter Island or Vampires or Jack the Ripper or damn near anything else over the course of history, read my Area 51 series. But you want deep character development, not so much.
But when Jenny wrote the first scene in DON’T LOOK DOWN, our Romantic Adventure novel (note Jenny never mentioned the title of the book, so much for media training), and I wrote Wilder’s first scene, it really clicked for me. I began writing third limited. It’s harder for me, but I think I’m a much better writer in third limited. So one lesson learned was that maybe the best voice to write in isn’t the easiest. And Jenny was a big help there because she would always cut me every time I shifted, even for part of a sentence, into omniscient voice.
Rule #2: Compromise or die: Well, that’s a bit extreme. I think I was very willing to compromise because I respected Jenny’s position as a writer from the start. Also, we were venturing more into her territory and genre more than mine. More into her readership than mine. I just finished reading FAST WOMEN and I now see where she compromised more than I did before. There’s a lot more action in DON’T LOOK DOWN than she had before. A lot less discussing china. Be still my beating heart. But the essence of her writing is there. I think all of her readers will still love the book. We say that we always compromise in terms of what was best for the book, not in terms of ego. It helped a lot that we were both experienced writers.
Rule #3: Keep talking: Most of the time. I’m learning there are times when I just need to shut up. Especially when I’m really wrong. Usually that has nothing to do with the writing. Writing is a very emotional business. You do bleed onto the page. You also bleed in interviews, at booksignings, in airplanes, etc. etc.
Collaboration. It should come with one of those warning labels: Don’t try this at home and without adult supervision. Which makes me wonder why we’re doing it.

JENNY: And on that cheerful note, any questions?


1. Hi Jenny & Bob . . . could either or both of you explain the difference between third-limited and third-omniscient? Thanks & I appreciate you guys giving your time on our behalf!


Jenny: Third person uses "he," "she," and "they," instead of "I" or "we." You can write that point of view two ways:
Omnisicent voice is the author telling the story like God, sees all, hears all, knows all including everything that happened in the past and everything that's going to happen in the future ("Little did Richard know that in three days his jealousy would be the least of his troubles as the slime monster would be slowly devouring him feet first"). Bob likes omniscient and will probably go on at length about it because it means he can tell you the history of the Gatling Gun in his book. And all kidding aside, he writes it very well. So do Tolkien and Terry Pratchett.
Third limited means you pick one character and stay in that head. No hopping about. You can have more than one POV per book--we've got Lucy, Wilder, and Tyler--but not more than one in a scene. The great thing about limited POV is that it puts the reader THERE, at that moment in time, experiencing it, so you don't want to break that strong sense of identification by changing heads in midstream. My books are written in third limited because of the intimacy with the reader and the immediacy it
gives the scenes.

Bob: Right. I agree completely with Jenny.
Well. The biggest thing about POV is make sure the reader is absolutely sure they know what the POV is. I use the camera anology. Pretend you're the film director. Where are you putting the camera to film the scene? When considering how to tell your story, the first thing you have to do is select a point of view. This may be the most critical decision you have to make after you have your original idea and are ready to transition to story. Often the type of story you are writing will clearly dictate the point of view, but a good understanding of the various modes of presentation is essential because this is one area where beginning novelists often have problems. They may select the right point of view, but it is often used poorly because of a lack of understanding of the tool itself.Regardless of which point of view (or points of view) you choose to use, there is one thing you must have: You as the author must have a good feeling about the point of view with which you are telling the story. If you don't have a warm and fuzzy about that, this confusion will most definitely be translated to the reader. Remember, ultimately, point of view is your voice as a writer.
Some people write like an MTV music video: point of view flying all over the place, giving glimpses into each character but never really keeping the reader oriented. I say this because the best analogy I can give for point of view is to look at it as your camera. You, as the author, are the director: You see and know everything in your story. But the reader only sees and knows what the camera records from its unique perspective: the point of view you choose. You must always keep that in mind. You see the entire scene, but your lens only records the words you put on the page and you have to keep your lens tightly focused and firmly in hand. The key term to know, like a director, is the word 'cut.' A cut in film terminology is when the camera is either
a) stopped, then restarted later, either in the same place or in a new place; or
b) stopped and another camera, with a different perspective is then used.
To a writer, a cut is a change in point of view. In an MTV music video, you can go about three seconds before having to 'cut.'
The most critical element to remember about point of view is that you have to keep the reader oriented about what camera they are seeing the scene through. The reader has got to know from what point of view they are viewing the scene. Lose that and you lose the reader. Thus, as with everything else, there is no wrong point of view to write in, or even mixture of point of views to write in, but it is wrong to confuse the reader as to the point of view through which they are 'seeing' the story.
Third limited allows the author to be like a movie camera moving to any set and recording any event, as long as one of the characters is lugging the camera. It also allows the camera to slide in behind the eyeballs of any character, but beware; do it too often or awkwardly and you will lose your reader very quickly. Perhaps one of the hardest techniques to master is to not get in your characters' heads to learn their thoughts, but rather letting their actions and words let the reader figure those thoughts out. This is the infamous "show don't tell" rule of writing and for most writers, the most difficult aspect of writing.
When you are in third person, everything that happens is filtered through the five senses of whatever character whose point of view you are in at the moment. The character, in effect, is the camera. There is a strong tendency, especially when first starting out, to write everything from the point of view of your characters. You approach every scene with the question: Which character am I primarily viewing this scene through? While this is the most common and accepted mode of point of view in novels, it also presents several problems if handled poorly: It can be confusing to readers as to whose head they are in or which character's point of view the scene is viewed from unless you make the cuts clear-- a common technique for this is to change POV with each chapter. The reader then grows to expect a different character POV each time they start a new chapter.
Larry McMurtry is a master of point of view. In Commanche Moon the last book in the Lonesome Dove series, he changes third person POV almost every paragraph in places. Larry McMurtry also won the Pulitzer Prize. Most of us aren't that good. He is able to completely change his writing style for each character so that you truly can feel that you are seeing the scene from that specific character's unique point of view. For example, he has the Texas Ranger, Gus, and the native American, Famous Feet, walking in the desert. They spot a mound of buffalo skulls. In one paragraph, through Gus's point of view, we get his reaction to seeing this. In the next paragraph, we get Famous Feet's completely different reaction to seeing the same exact thing. Each man sees the skulls differently because of their different backgrounds; their different points of view as people.
You are cheating the reader if you are constantly in your characters' heads,
yet you hold back something the characters know (which is sometimes
necessary)
You will also tend to give each character's point of view on various topics, most especially other characters, and this can be confusing to the reader who has his/her own point of view from the story you have presented so far.
You also might confuse the reader if the characters themselves have disagreeing point of views, which is normal if the characters are realistic.
This can be an advantage if handled well-- differing point of views on the same scene can make for intriguing reading.
All the above is not to say don't get inside your characters' heads--indeed, as I mentioned it is the most common form in published books-- but it is to say that when you do it, do it carefully. Keep the number of characters you do it with to a minimum. Make sure cuts between characters' point of views are clear. The easiest way to do that is to stick with one character for each section/chapter of the novel so that when the reader flips the page to a new chapter they grow to expect to be moving to another character's head. Remember that if you stay with your characters' point of views, you are controlling the lenses through which readers see the story
unfold. You must be very careful with that control because that also means you are controlling the reality the reader sees.
If you stay with one character (everything seen from that one point of view throughout the novel) then you might write first person because what you end up doing is writing a third person/first person story. I have, however, read quite a few books that were third person where the POV stayed with one character throughout. Some mysteries are written that way such as Michael Connolly's Harry Bosch books such as Angel's Flight or Trunk Music. An author might do this if they want a little distance from the main character--- i.e. they don't want to do the first-person voice-over.
While there is an issue in first person in terms of time-- looking back--the issue in third person is more one of distance. How close does the author get to each character? How much of inner thoughts are revealed? This is the distance between being in third person point of view and omniscient.
An omniscient narrator can get into any character's head but from an outside-in view, not an inside-out. Thus, the author can bypass the character's own flaws and deluded perceptions. This is an advantage if you want it, but that deluded third person perception is what some entire books are built on. It is all a question of what you are trying to achieve.
Here's an easy way to think about it: Are you simply assuming the character's five senses to tell the story? Or, are you also going to assume their emotional and intellectual reactions? The depth you do the latter is the depth of the insight into the character you are giving. You have to very seriously look at the number of characters you are going to use to frame your third person point of view in the story. The reason for that is, the second you go into a character's mind, the reader assumes that that character is as essential to the plot as every other character whose point of view you have taken. A general rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you should spend as much time on every character whose point of view you use. That general rule cuts out using too many characters' point of views.
Also consider what you are going to do when two or three characters whose point of view you use are going to be in the same scene. Are you going to shift from one to the other? Or stay with one? But then the reader wonders what the other characters whose point of view you've used elsewhere think and feel. Try to limit the number of point of views you take in order to strengthen those characters in you story. This should counter the tendency of newer writers to use too many characters' point of views and thus weakening their characters.
If you use too many third person points of view another problem can be detracting attention from your protagonist and antagonist as you focus on too many characters.
Third Omniscient point of view. This is also known as authorial narrative. When I first began writing I felt I had to lock in third person on a character for every scene. And that worked. But the more I wrote, the more I wanted to use an omniscient point of view at times. I tend to use it for giving the reader expository information.
I liken authorial point of view to the camera getting pulled back in order to show the viewer more. There are times you might want to pull back so you can tell the reader more information or show the reader more than the characters who are in the scene might be able to see or know.
For example, a battle scene can be written much better from omniscient point of view if you want the reader to understand the battle. The camera is pulled back and is able to simply show the action without slowing it down by processing it through a character's five senses and thoughts and emotions. But if you want the reader to see how one specific character is responding to the danger of combat, you might stick with third person from that character's point of view.
One of the most difficult obstacles for me as a writer was accepting that I could write from the authorial point of view; that I can describe things as they are or were using my own voice as the author of the work. The more I write, the more I find it important to be able to do this. There may be some information that is not going to fit using third person. Also, you may get very tired of writing "he thought" over and over again and the reader may grow weary of seeing it.
A master of third omniscient point of view is Richard Russo who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his novel Empire Falls.


2. My question is about why you both decided to pursue a collaboration project. You're both successful writers in your own right. What prompted you to consider collaboration? I'm guessing from your lesson (which was great) that a collaboration project brings its own unique set of challenges. What made conquering those worth the effort? I'm also certain you both considered these challenges before ever committing to the project - but what things cropped up that you hadn't considered? And how did you tackle these? I'm really looking forward to this book!

Jenny: I was looking for something new, a challenge, after writing fifteen romantic comedies. I loved the genre, but it was definitely time to stretch into new territory. So when Bob said, "We should collaborate," I thought, "Well, that would be new," and went for it. I think you have to keep challenging yourself or you grow stale. Plus he knew Stuff. He knows how to blow up things, what happens when you fire a gun, how to get off a bridge with a rope. If I wanted to kill somebody in the past, they fell off of something high or got bonked over the head. This guy really knew violence, and the idea of learning how to do that appealed to me tremendously. As for what cropped up that we hadn't considered, I don't think either of us realized how different we are, or how much we'd tangle on things. We handled it by committing to the project and knowing that no matter how mad we got at each other, neither one of us would abandon the book. That gave us a secure base to negotiate from.

Bob: I had nothing better to do. Actually I had written two long series, Area 51 and Atlantis and they had burnt me out. So I was looking for something new to do. I also knew I had hit my stride voice wise. The previous question asked about voice. All of my previous books had been written in third-omniscient and while I liked that, it wasn't quite right for me. DON'T LOOK DOWN is written is third limited. The first time I'd ever done that. My next book under my own name, CHASING THE GHOST, is being written in third limited, and I really think it's my best voice. So for me it was a desire to expand creatively.


3. Hello to both of you and thank you so much in advance for taking the time to talk to us. You've touched on the POV issue a little, but I guess what I'd really like to know is how you end up writing separate areas of the novel but achieving a cohesive style?

Jenny: Bob can probably talk more about this because he made the big switch from omniscient to third limited, but we had a head start in that we have similar speech patterns (if you've heard us speak together, you may have noticed it) and then Bob coming in from omniscient to limited warmed up his voice considerably. Another big factor was that I was writing the female POV and Bob was writing the male, so the difference in our voices was somewhat masked because you expect them to be different, they're different characters. I really recommend this, each collaborator choosing his or her own character. I'm doing this in a collaborative novel with Anne Stuart and Eileen Dreyer right now and it's working beautifully there, too.

Bob: Lots of weird drugs.
I think I've answered this above. At first I sort of mimicked Jenny's style but then I think I actually found my own. I'm still sorting it out. The voice in CHASING is still kind of searching but I'll get there.


4. Hi Jenny and Bob! What a great topic for a lesson. I think it's adorable how your book ("baby") was complete ("born") nine months after you began writing it.

Jenny: As somebody who went through the labor pains, adorable isn't the word I'd use, but it's here now, so I'm blocking out the memory of the pain.

Bob: I had a finger cut once and it was very painful. Next question.


5. My question concerns Rule #3: Keep Talking. Do you find e-mail communication with a writing partner to be sufficient, or do you spend more time talking via telephone or in person? What about those 3 a.m. brainstorms--do you wait until the next talking session to discuss them, or do you call him/her immediately (possibly risking the wrath of a third party)? How often is often enough to get together to get the writing job done? Thanks so much!

Jenny: Oh, God, e-mail. A lot of the energy in the collaboration comes from the fact that Bob and I are polar opposites, but it also leaves us wanting to kill each other after about twenty-four hours together. Also we both loathe the phone. But the biggest reason we use e-mail is that it gives us a record of what we've talked about and a way to swap files so we can see what we've written. As for the 3AM brainstorms, those would be mine. Bob gets up at the crack of dawn, so he has his brainstorms in the daylight. And they can always wait until the other person logs on. Finally, yes, we do have to get together to do part of this. The early parts are really done better in e-mail, but the hard core brainstorming and global revision really need to be done together in the same room, preferably with potato chips and
chocolate because we pace and eat.

Bob: The books couldn't be written without email. We're writers not talkers. We do hate the phone. When we get together we work but it's so intense that we can only last a little while before we have to separate and then email each other from across the hall. When we first met after writing the first draft in email, I had to rewrite the climactic scene upstairs in Jenny's guest bedroom. Then I emailed it to her downstairs. However, we have decided we really have to be together to do research at the start of a new book. We're tentatively discussing a third book. And because we aren't stupid, we would set it at a resort, and it would require a lot of research beforehand.


6. Thanks for taking the time! Jenny, I had the pleasure of meeting you at the Lone Star Conference a few years back, and have a handout from your workshop in my folder. How do you two manage the logistics of collaboration? Do you just email stuff back and forth?

Jenny: Bob will probably do a better job of answering this one because he loves this stuff. He's the guy with the spreadsheets. I'm the one who never knows who has the master and does revisions on the wrong file.

Bob: It's critical to make sure we keep track of who has the 'master' of the manuscript. You do not want to have both partners working on the same thing. We work in four acts. So once we're past the first act, then we keep track of the master of each act. So one of us can have separate masters of various acts. So we label them: 12-6 Act Three Bob. for example.
I also use Excel spreadsheets with the three POV characters across the top and then timelines down.
I think each person has to find out what works for them as far as organization goes. But a book is simply too large for me to keep in my head. Jenny uses collages to keep the book alive in her head.


7. This was interesting to read. I am collaborating with another writer on a mystery. She writes inspirational humor and I write historical, paranormal, and contemporary. It has been fun seeing the "aha" moments when we brainstorm. It is equally interesting to see our writing styles mesh. Are the two of you strong personalities? Did that factor into the compromising any? Thank you for this insight!

Jenny: Strong personalities? He was a Green Beret and I was a junior high art teacher. We can both kill with our eyes. But that's good because it means neither one of us folds under pressure from the other. We have a lot of disagreements, but in the end we work them out because we both love the books we're writing and we both know the other one is pig-stubborn and will only yield to rational argument. And that's been really good because we have to be able to tell each other why something needs to be changed, beyond "Because I said so" and that makes for a better book. If you can't tell somebody why you need something in a book, chances are you don't need it.

Bob: I compromise all the time. I'm so easy-going candy melts when I look at it.