Collaboration

As I mentioned last week, I’ve been collaborating with another lawyer-turned-writer, Caro Fraser on a TV drama. While my books have been legal thrillers, Caro’s novels have focused more on human relationships and drama. I had never worked on a joint writing project before and at first, I was worried that with two strong-willed, highly creative people whose previous writings have little in common working together, we might end up in arguments and never speaking to each other again. I am pleased to report that we haven’t exchanged fisticuffs at all!

We have both in fact been invigorated by this collaboration. My action/ thriller approach to story brings thrills and spills and driving momentum to the pacing. Caro’s more detailed approach to relationships puts a brake on my more outlandish ideas, tempering them to fit the human drama. We’ve both also enjoyed talking over plot points and character motivation and trying out different angles and possibilities.

Writing a novel on your own can be a long, tortuous and isolating process. No-one knows your characters or story as well as you do so although you may discuss and explore certain aspects with a friend or another writer, their input is limited. Collaborating with another writer means you both own the project and we are both very keen to make sure the other person has a stake in each step of the process. We both have an in-depth knowledge of the characters and their motivations and a shared vision for the outcome of the story. We rely on each other’s focus and creativity as much as on our own input. It’s been a hugely refreshing process and I think, we’ve both learnt a lot that we can also carry on in our future individual writing projects.

Caro comes round to my place every other Friday morning and we work till lunch time, capturing our character sketches and story arc on a laptop. We both contribute mid-morning munchies – very important! – spring rolls, prawn toast, onion bhajis, quiche etc. We sit at my dining table or wander around the room going: How about this? What about if…? No, wait, scrap that, try this for an idea… Yes, yes, I like that… Mmmm, I’m not sure about this…

After Caro heads off home, I am usually completely shattered. This creativity business really is exhausting but I really feel a sense of achievement. I imagine that this must be how athletes feel after a good round of tennis or a marathon! We’ve now finished the character briefs and their story arcs, an outline for the six episodes and a rough sketch for the actual dialogue of the first episode. When I get back from KL in March, we’ll start work on polishing the script for the first episode and putting the treatment together to submit to the TV people.

Photo: thanks to accentinteractive.net