In Defense of Collaboration


This post is part of a series about writing with a co-author. To read all my advice about the full process of collaborative writing (including stories and bonus chapters not found here on the blog), order my book, In It Together, a guide to writing with a co-writer without losing your mind.

Let me be honest: collaboration sometimes gets a bad rap. Among authors and readers alike, there are individuals who turn up their noses at co-authorship. Some readers are unwilling to try a book written by more than one author. Some authors swear they would never want to co-write a book as long as they live.


Everyone has their own preferences, and that’s fine! The bias is understandable; most of us remember being students assigned to group projects, partnered with classmates we hardly wanted to sit by, let alone collaborate with. Even when we were able to pick our own partners, often we’d discover that our friends, while fun to eat lunch with, were lacking in communication skills and possessing of disparate work styles, when they bothered to do the work at all. It’s no wonder most of us balk at the thought of a group project, let alone a group novel. It’s hard enough to write books on your own, let alone bring someone else into the equation.

Reader Bias
We’ll deal with the writer’s objections in a moment. For now, let’s view this from the reader side. Some readers are all too quick to tell you they’re not interested in reading a co-authored book. If their favorite author writes a collaboration, they’re afraid the new author’s work won’t be as good. Even if both authors are unfamiliar, they may still object for reasons that are often vague. The basic assertion is that co-authored works are just worse somehow, and that having one person in charge of every aspect of the work makes for a better product.


Does collaboration really produce lesser results? Can the vision of more than one creator enhance the work, or does it always get in the way?


First, let’s broaden our vision a little. When it comes to novels, it’s still standard for one writer to do most of the work. In other industries, collaboration is the standard. Very few films are made solely by one filmmaker—writing the script, holding the camera, and playing all of the parts. Similarly, while most books have one author’s name on the cover, many are also to some degree collaborative. Most authors work with teams of beta readers and editors who contribute to the style, voice, and narrative choices of the work. The author may contribute the most, but they are usually far from the only voice.


So our entertainment diet is a little more saturated with collaboration than we often want to admit. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a good thing—let’s move back to the core question: are individuals better at making decisions than groups? If my personal experience as a student was all I had to go on, I would certainly say yes.

Research says otherwise.


In fact, studies have shown that groups of collaborators make better decisions than any of the contributors would make on their own. The effect of bouncing ideas off each other increases the quality of those ideas, and therefore the quality of the final product. For simple tasks, individuals might be more efficient, but as the complexity of a task increases, group efforts become not only superior in quality, but more streamlined and effective as well. Working with just anyone, like we were so often forced to do in school, might not be effective. Groups of grade school friends who picked each other for social reasons might not fare any better. But teams of people who have common goals, complimentary skills, build an environment of cooperation, and promote the free-sharing of ideas can create a synergy that will increase the quality of both process and product, which will benefit everyone, reader and author alike. In short, in a good collaboration, everybody wins.


Many authors like to hole up in private to do their writing. They may believe that co-authorship is an extrovert’s game. Not so says behavioral scientist Francesca Gino from Harvard Business School. Extroverts may be more naturally interested in group interaction, but introverts tend to be better at empowering the contributions of others and helping groups to be more cohesive and benefit from different perspectives. Basically, extroverts might be more inclined toward working with others, but introverts have distinct skills that make them a vital and necessary part of collaborative teams.
So, if teams consistently produce better results more efficiently for complex tasks, why is there such a bias against collaboration?


My hunch is that it comes down to an is/ought fallacy. Most novels have traditionally been written by individuals. Even now, most of the books in any given fiction section have only one author’s name on the cover. Therefore, this must be the better way, right?


The trouble with this fallacy is that it’s, well, fallacious. Just because this is the way things have been done doesn’t mean it’s the best way to do them, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s the only way. Unfortunately, the bias against co-written books does make some people less likely to try them, but the more authors turn out excellent books through collaboration, the more collaboration will start to become a norm.
Sadly, confirmation bias will mean that readers who don’t like a given co-written book are more likely to attribute their dislike to the co-authorship. Meanwhile, no matter how many single-author books a reader has despised, they are unlikely to decide that they just don’t like single-author stories, and only want to read books written by more than one person. This bias is unfortunate, but there are enough writers succeeding wildly while co-authoring that it’s clearly not preventative to success.


And the more of us do it, the more we’ll prove that teams can be just as successful in writing as they are in other forms of art.

Writer Bias
That’s all well and good for the reader, but what about from the writer side? Is the experience of collaborating better for the writer than solo work?


This will depend on many factors, including the specific co-writer relationship, the preferences of the individual author, and the impact on the project at hand. Let’s be honest, solo writing isn’t always a picnic either, and I’d be lying to you if I told you that your collaborative efforts were guaranteed to go smoothly and produce only wonderful results which will be successful beyond your wildest dreams. These kinds of results are never guaranteed in publishing, and collaborating will not magically fix that.


I understand skepticism about the process. When I first considered co-writing, I was skeptical myself. I estimated that it would be twice as much work to write a book with another writer, and make the whole experience needlessly complicated.


Was I right?


Yes and no.
First, let’s deal with the question that was on my mind when I first considered co-writing: is collaboration easier than writing solo?
I have no data for you here, but I can speak from my own experience. My collaborative writing projects have been easier in some ways, and harder in others.

Benefits
What’s easier about collaboration? One of my favorite benefits of working with a co-writer is that I don’t always have to do all the parts of the job I hate. Some of my co-writers have been fantastic at writing setting details and character descriptions. I am the worst about remembering to put those details onto the page, and I also hate doing it. When my co-writers actively enjoy going back through my work and filling in some of those details I’ve left out, the writing I’ve done gets both better and easier. Everybody wins.


The same is true for other aspects of the process. I despise making copy edits. My brain feels disengaged, and I become quickly bored as I do the tedious work of entering changes. I’ve worked with co-writers who are much happier to do that work than some of the other parts of revision, like restructuring chapters or moving large chunks of prose around and stitching them back together. That happens to be my favorite part of the entire writing process, so when our likes and dislikes align in a complementary way, both of our jobs become much easier and more enjoyable.


This extends also to business tasks. If one partner enjoys running ads while the other prefers to write emails or make social media posts, the division of labor helps everyone to be happier and less overwhelmed. There are bound to be some tasks that neither of you want to do, but dividing those tasks in half mean that you only have to do half as much of the work you hate, which is certainly easier than doing all of it yourself.


If you’re in a partnership where you are both drafting the book, two people writing words on a schedule can get those words done with each partner only spending half the time at the keyboard that they would have spent otherwise. This means you can get books drafted and into production faster, with less work done on your part.

Drawbacks
That all sounds pretty good, right? So why do I say that collaboration is also harder?
Because often times, the time you make up in having two hands typing the words, you spend trying to get two minds to agree on a single vision. And the closer you work together, the more hours of your time that’s going to take.


It turns out, part of what makes the product better also makes collaboration harder. All that benefit gained from different perspectives coming together to make better group decisions requires time, patience, and communication. It takes the maturity to prioritize your partner’s contributions as equal to your own. It takes two (or more) people who are both committed to working things out, to finding a middle ground, to sticking with a discussion until you find the solution that complements both of your visions, or a brand new vision that you both like better than your original, disparate ideas.
That’s hard. And beautiful. One of the highest privileges of collaboration is getting to be in those conversations—in the room, so they say, where it happens.


I hope you’re excited to put in that work, and see those beautiful results.

Want to read more? In It Together, has all the advice you’ll need for successful co-writing, including stories and bonus chapters not found on the blog.