Do authors collaborate?

 Michael – Alternate Thursdays

Stanley and I have written multiple times about our collaboration together that has led to nine books with the tenth in the pipeline. Last week, Karen told us about her book A Trace of Deceit and how, in a different way, she collaborated on that work. (By the way, I’m greatly enjoying the book, and ebooks are only $2.29 right now.) Her collaboration involved working with two friends who are artists and she credits them with helping her develop her protagonist into a living, breathing painter.

She finished her piece by asking writers if they collaborate. That made me think that almost all authors do so in multiple ways, and, I believe, their books are better for it. I suppose Karen might have called her collaboration “research” – which, of course, it also was – but I understand that it was deeper than that. It wasn’t just facts but the way painters feel. What is embedded in their characters. What they might think, what they might say.

Stan and I once had a wonderful afternoon driving around Gaborone with the director of the CID. He was a great character who arrived to meet us in cowboy boots and hat. We learned facts a plenty but we also obtained an insight into how the CID in Botswana operates. And that their offices were raided by baboons who came down from neighboring Kgale Hill.

We became friends with the head master of the wonderful Maru a Pula school. He seemed to know everyone and introduced us to the police commissioner and several amazing women. All of them became collaborators in our work. Without them we might have had the facts right (thanks to the internet and our own travels), but we wouldn’t have had the people right at all.

Another collaboration is the one an author has with an editor (or certainly should have) and may have with an agent. We are fortunate to have had editors who operate at multiple levels. One is the broad sweep. On reading our second book, our editor at Harper Collins scrawled in the margin: “What are these two characters doing in the book?” We tried to draft a reply, indignantly defending them … and realized that the characters weren’t doing anything important at all. However, they occurred throughout the book, so we had to rewrite the whole novel. Without that collaboration, the book would have been longer and not as good. At another level, the copy editor corrects wording and catches mistakes. The translator of our books into German caught an important error in the description of a boat between pretty much the first chapter and pretty much the last chapter. (By the time it was translated, the English version of the book had been through two editors and two copy editors, to say nothing of multiple rereads by the two authors.)

We are also fortunate to work with a writing group in Minneapolis. We read each other’s latest work and comment and then discuss the material. Those outside perspectives help steer the book, catch badly drawn scenes, add momentum to the writing. I always recommend groups like this to new writers. In addition to the collaboration, they add enthusiasm and create some sort of timelines to work to. And they’re fun.

Then, like Karen, we have friends who are readers of mystery fiction who will read the work and give us valuable insights into the full book. These readers are invaluable, but you need to be sure they’ll really give you honest, critical comments. One recently did so, causing us to make quite extensive changes to our current book.

Of course, eventually the author calls the shots. There are some who won’t allow anyone to read any of their material until the book is in final form. South African Nobel Prize winner Nadine Gordimer was one. I guess if you’re that good, maybe you don’t need any help.

The rest of us collaborate.