Two Heads (and Continents) Are Better Than One: A Conversation on Collaboration

WhatsApp Conversation

11:45PM EST; 4:45AM GMT

Lee: Okay not trying to freak us out but

Lee: we may want to rethink the Tavalli setup

Lee: Maybe start Vivienne on the boat, more of a panorama, a bird’s eye sense of place?

Jenn: Ooh I like it. More cinematic. Can a production assistant pick her up, establish the film vibes right away?

Lee: Why are you awake rn!??!

Jenn: BRAINSTORMING cannot stop send help

(Whatever Happened to the Literary Adventure…and Can We Bring It Back?)

WhatsApp Conversation

5:30AM EST; 10:30AM GMT

Jenn: When you’re up: I’m worried there is the *teeniest* plot hole b/c MC is alone at time of LM’s disappearance but we say she has an alibi

Lee: Noooooooooo

Jenn: Can we just change the police report so she leaves the party later?

Lee: Yessssssssssss

Writer’s Digest Conversation

8AM EST; 1PM GMT

Lee: Why hello, Jenn.

Jenn: Helloooo Lee!

Lee: So . . . collaboration, first and foremost, is an ongoing conversation, right? You’re taking the internal, iterative brainstorming and thought process that goes into drafting a novel and transforming that into a dialogue with another person.

Jenn: And that dialogue really extends beyond the novel’s pages–collaboration is way more than a shared document. With you in Pennsylvania and me in rural England among the cows, we obviously rely mainly on video chats for work sessions, but it’s like this wormhole across the Atlantic. I love how our kids know each other and have taken over calls with Pokémon debates. And how our spouses will pop into the screen and ask about our days.

Lee: Yes! I’m thinking of our virtual toasts and high-fives, too, especially as it’s release week for our second team book, The Starlets. I love how we can celebrate publishing wins as collective victories, and weather bad reviews and disappointments together.

Jenn: Usually with humor. Book events, too, are so much more fun! But I do think you need to find the right partner in order to make the experience work. It’s more than just personal synergy. You need to gel creatively. Those early Skype calls we had, I remember trying to gauge whether we were jiving on ideas, approach, the way we even communicated in the first place. As collaborators, you need a natural rapport that’s going to keep you allied through years in the publication timeline. It’s not unlike dating.

Lee: And that rapport and process evolves–at least it did for us. I think about the early days, researching and plotting our first team book, The Antiquity Affair, and how we were *so* careful with each other. You wrote one POV sister, I wrote the other, and we really stayed in our own lanes (other than commenting in the margins). For The Starlets, we’d grown fluent in the language of collaboration and a lot more comfortable in our partnership. Which, for a twisty mystery like The Starlets, was really key–to be able to work holistically together.

Jenn: For The Starlets, Lee still “captained” a main character, let’s call it, while I captained the other, but we were far more comfortable extending our creative reach into each other’s chapters, which was crucial for the book’s success, in part because of the structure. In The Antiquity Affair, our two main characters were by and large separated for most of the novel. For The Starlets, our leading ladies were “on screen” together for almost eighty percent of the book. Congruity across scenes became so much more important, so we tossed aside the idea of separate lanes and embraced the full spirit of collaboration. The book’s better for it.

Lee: I think the trust we established through working together on The Antiquity Affair really helped, too–I know that if I don’t get to a particular scene or the chance to fill in details, Jenn will have done so before I get up the next morning. This “pass the baton” approach also enabled us to capitalize on our different time zones and become that much more efficient in how we draft.

Jenn: I tend to work for a few hours of my GMT morning, and then, when we’re actively drafting or revising, Lee and I will meet on Google chat for an hour or so (or sometimes longer if it’s beneficial to write together or if we just feel like chatting away). We’ll talk out plot problems, story ideas, ways to punch up current scenes, and then she’ll continue working during her morning, and the whole process begins again the next day.

Lee: And that trust I was talking about extends to idea generation, too – I love the zany concepts and movie-type twists and turns we come up with! I think we’re able to do that because we afford ourselves and each other the space to drum up off-the-wall ideas without judgment.

Jenn: Yeah, things get weird. In a good way! And often, those harebrained ideas are the ones that end up unlocking a perfect plot solution or scene button. It’s all part of the process. We’re zany people, what can I say?

Lee: I kind of can’t believe we’re on our fourth(!) collaboration together!?

Jenn: I know, the time it doth flyeth. We just turned in a new draft for Jenn-Lee Book #4, as well as a draft for Book #3. But I think there’s something else I’m forgetting to say about The Starlets?! Gah. If I think of it, I’ll Whatsapp.

Lee: Until then, #goteam.

Jenn: Also . . . #highfive

Check out The Starlets, by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne, here:

Bookshop | Amazon

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