Collaboration
Jul. 24th, 2005 07:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWas reading an article on Neil Gaiman
Collaboration has always featured in Gaiman's work and his two picture books for children, The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish were illustrated by his friend Dave McKean.
Struck me because it for a moment seemed odd they felt the need to point out he collaborated. Especially with a person that does illustrations.
I think from reading comics and fanfic and a bit from TV I just have this default setting that people collaborate to be creative. I mean how many comics have one person doing everything down to the letters? None I have read, afaik. People do the bits they are best at, and the result is shinier.
But novels mostly get written by one person.
And even journalist type newspaper stuff is written mostly one person at a time. Not collaborating per se, just all ending up on the same page.
So some people think it needs pointing out that someone collaborates.
Not that I'll always remember to write all the names involved - I actually am not good at author names in comics, let alone all the artists, and on TV I can rarely remember who wrote a particular episode - but I seem to be with the mindset that of course there will be a bunch of people involved.
But, so far, not with my work.
I co-wrote something once. I don't remember doing it, how it worked out or anything. I just still have the story up somewhere on my page.
I tend to come up with plots. And plots, actually, aren't the hard part of writing. Everyone gets the plot bunnies. So while I can wave my Huge Grand Epic of a plot arc around, I'm sure all everyone else has plots of their own to do. So trying to get someone in to co-write when what I really mean is 'I do story, you do script' isn't going to work until I get famous and/or rich.
Trouble is, I now have at least one story needs writing with characters I don't know how to write - Buffy, Faith, Willow for at least a cameo. I've written Wesley, though I don't claim I'm doing that well. But I need to write a lot more, with him as a central character, and I'm, er, not sure my Wes voice is up to that. I'm not even sure it is up to Roger Wyndam-Pryce, and we have so little canon to work with it takes a lot of work to contradict it. Yet I'm sure I could manage...
Anyways, this is why co-writers are shiny. In theory, I could find someone who has all those muses sitting around in their head and just doesn't know what to do with them today.
In practice... I'm thinking less likely.
And also, if I start writing that one, I think I have to write the one with Connor. And possibly Anne and Groo. And then the one with Angel, Illyria, Spike and Gunn. And eventually the one with Spike and Gunn and Xander on a road trip, which seems to have added Faith now, just to be complicated. After that there is only the one with Fred-Illyria. And Willow. And Kennedy. I think.
I want to stick with writing Giles. I'm not sure I'm any good at it but it is at least a very practiced not good, since I've been working on it for years. Giles and Ethan. They're who I meant to write about when I started. But then there are all these other threads heading off all over the place, and I don't want to leave anyone quite where canon put them, and... bunnies. Everywhere. Many bunnies.
*sigh*
(Anya wasn't so wrong)
Collaboration has always featured in Gaiman's work and his two picture books for children, The Wolves in the Walls and The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish were illustrated by his friend Dave McKean.
Struck me because it for a moment seemed odd they felt the need to point out he collaborated. Especially with a person that does illustrations.
I think from reading comics and fanfic and a bit from TV I just have this default setting that people collaborate to be creative. I mean how many comics have one person doing everything down to the letters? None I have read, afaik. People do the bits they are best at, and the result is shinier.
But novels mostly get written by one person.
And even journalist type newspaper stuff is written mostly one person at a time. Not collaborating per se, just all ending up on the same page.
So some people think it needs pointing out that someone collaborates.
Not that I'll always remember to write all the names involved - I actually am not good at author names in comics, let alone all the artists, and on TV I can rarely remember who wrote a particular episode - but I seem to be with the mindset that of course there will be a bunch of people involved.
But, so far, not with my work.
I co-wrote something once. I don't remember doing it, how it worked out or anything. I just still have the story up somewhere on my page.
I tend to come up with plots. And plots, actually, aren't the hard part of writing. Everyone gets the plot bunnies. So while I can wave my Huge Grand Epic of a plot arc around, I'm sure all everyone else has plots of their own to do. So trying to get someone in to co-write when what I really mean is 'I do story, you do script' isn't going to work until I get famous and/or rich.
Trouble is, I now have at least one story needs writing with characters I don't know how to write - Buffy, Faith, Willow for at least a cameo. I've written Wesley, though I don't claim I'm doing that well. But I need to write a lot more, with him as a central character, and I'm, er, not sure my Wes voice is up to that. I'm not even sure it is up to Roger Wyndam-Pryce, and we have so little canon to work with it takes a lot of work to contradict it. Yet I'm sure I could manage...
Anyways, this is why co-writers are shiny. In theory, I could find someone who has all those muses sitting around in their head and just doesn't know what to do with them today.
In practice... I'm thinking less likely.
And also, if I start writing that one, I think I have to write the one with Connor. And possibly Anne and Groo. And then the one with Angel, Illyria, Spike and Gunn. And eventually the one with Spike and Gunn and Xander on a road trip, which seems to have added Faith now, just to be complicated. After that there is only the one with Fred-Illyria. And Willow. And Kennedy. I think.
I want to stick with writing Giles. I'm not sure I'm any good at it but it is at least a very practiced not good, since I've been working on it for years. Giles and Ethan. They're who I meant to write about when I started. But then there are all these other threads heading off all over the place, and I don't want to leave anyone quite where canon put them, and... bunnies. Everywhere. Many bunnies.
*sigh*
(Anya wasn't so wrong)