Collaborative storytelling · 9:25am Aug 24th, 2020
So I've mentioned before that Gowak (formally Wendy Gowak) is my writing partner and you should all read her work. Well, I've got yet more reason for you to do so: We've now got not one, but two collaborative stories!
So Gowak and I have been collaborating for a while now; I don't write anything without going to her for workshopping, and she's been doing the same with me. Thicker Than Water was, I believe, the first story that we workshopped entirely together, but she's been a regular part of my workshopping since Looking Glass. If you've read anything I've written since LG, you've certainly seen some of her ideas in my work. Likewise, I've left my little bunny pawprints all over her stuff as well. But until now, it's all been in ideas, workshopping, outlining, and editing, and we've always done the writing on our respective stories ourselves.
That'll continue to be true for our main projects, but each of us has a side story we've been struggling with. We came up with the idea that for each of these stories, we'd make them collaborative stories to try and get past what each of us is struggling with. First, it was Gowak's story, Three's a Crowd, and just tonight, we decided to collaborate on my story, Torn. Three's a Crowd is a poly romantic drama, so it just oozes potential for me, but in particular, I was drawn to it because I've wanted to write something about metamours for ages (for those who don't know, metamours are people who aren't dating each other, but who are each dating the same person. Like I don't date my wife's boyfriend, so the two of us are metamours). This story will give me the chance to explore that area of relationships that I've only ever so barely brushed up on.
And for my story, I've been unsure what to do with Torn for ages, to the point where I've considered canceling it despite the fact that I like it and it's popular. I'm just bad at writing sex stuff, and more importantly, I'm uncomfortable with doing so. Gowak is more experienced in that area and offered to help. So what this means for y'all is that the sex scenes will be written more competently and the story may progress much quicker. She also has been given the go-ahead to write any other scenes for the story that she wants to, it's all fair game collaboration. We'll iron out the details of how to go about collaborating as time goes on, I'm sure.
Even so. we'll ultimately each retain control of our own stories. Torn is still mine, Three's a Crowd is still Gowak's. I frequently think of my writing in terms of animated series, and in this case, we'd each be the showrunner on our own individual shows, but write for each other's. When all's said and done, you'll get the story I envisioned with Torn (although that story was heavily worked on by a team of three people, with me and Gowak making up two thirds and an anonymous friend being the third). Likewise, although I was always heavily involved in Three's a Crowd's planning and ideas (we co-wrote the outline document pretty close to 50/50), it's ultimately Gowak's story and I won't stray from her vision. Not that I need to; we're similar in some great ways, with each of us bringing different strengths to the table as well.
What I'm getting at is I'm really excited for this, and I hope you are too. If you haven't read Three's a Crowd yet, I'll link it below. It's a wonderful story, and I've already started writing some for it (although what I've written is part of the fifth chapter, which is unfinished; the four chapters currently available on Fimfiction are all Gowak's with me acting only in workshopping and editing for those chapters).
This is probably the most cohesive sounding explanation of collabs ever.
5341946
I've always been interested in the concept of collaborations, but haven't ever known how to go about doing them. I'm still not 100% sure how it'll all go down, but I'm glad it at least sounds good in concept!
5341953
I imagine that it’s total chaos behind the scenes tho
5342027
Haha probably yeah