Guest Blogger: Sydney Croft
September 8th, 2007 by Michelle Diener
Collaboration
Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.
-Paul Auster
The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side.
-Margaret Carty
The first question we always get when people find out that we write together as Sydney Croft is, how do you do it? How do you write together?
Normally, our first reaction is to say, we just do or, we don’t know. But we soon realized that we needed a better answer. Or at least a longer one. So here goes.
We’ve lived in different states for our entire writing partnership and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to change anytime soon. So here are the basics that we need in our writing relationship.
The first, and most important, is email. Constant, unending email and reliable internet service. We send literally anywhere from 20 to 100 emails back and forth daily – sometimes more if we’re really working out scenes.
We’ll do the phone thing too, if we need to, but we seem to be more focused with the email. We also lose focus and ramble if we IM.
Larissa typically writes the main female POV and Steph the hero’s POV. People are often surprised at that, as though they’d never considered writing like that. We never considered any other way – mainly because, if you’re a collaboration team and you’re each writing a chapter, you run the risk of your different voices really pulling someone out of your book. With the hero/heroine method, subtle voice differences are welcome and help to keep the characters differentiated.
The strange thing is that our agent tells us that she thinks our voices are SO different on our individual works and she doesn’t know how we blend them together and make them so similar for the Syd stuff. Again, not a conscious thing on our part. Maybe part of it is the paranormal / superhero / can go over the top aspect of our writing as Sydney – it lends itself to a huge freedom and we often find ourselves building on the momentum of each other’s scenes.
Now, obviously, we’re writing the other character when we write our character’s POV, so we do need to be in both the hero and heroine’s head. But again, that seems to work – rarely do we have to go into each other’s scenes and fix our character’s dialogue. But we can ask each other before we write a scene, do you think that his/her head is at this place yet? It really helps to get in character.
The other important thing is that each of our weaknesses is the other’s strength. (Steph popping in here to say that she knows her weaknesses and doesn’t feel Larissa has any, which is why she randomly tells Larissa that she will have to kill her if she tries to leave the partnership.)
Larissa has said before that writing this way is fun and exciting because it almost mirrors the way real live people would fall in love – so our characters react off of one another, close to the way they would in real life. We plot very loosely, and neither of us knows exactly what the other is going to write in their scene – and it’s always so much fun to pass the scenes back and forth – that’s why we’re able to write so fast – because we just keep piggy-backing on each other’s ideas from scene to scene. (Larissa popping in here to say that the words “plot very loosely” gives her hives, but for some reason, it works for the Sydney books. Oh, and she also wanted to say that she does have lots of weaknesses, but Steph is too nice to point them out between random bouts of death threats – which really, are more regular than random.)
One of the best things about writing with a partner is being able to pass off a scene that, for one reason or another, you just can’t get right. We call them something like, the scene I never want to see every again as long as I live, and although it doesn’t happen often, it’s a real relief to be able to pass it off at times. And the funny part is that usually the scene is only ‘off’ by a couple of lines, something really small. But it’s coming from a different perspective because it’s being worked on by someone who has already written about those characters.
Okay, now that we’ve babbled on, please feel free to ask any questions about all of this or anything else that’s on your mind!
Thanks so much to Magical Musings for having us here during our very first Sydney release month!!! We’re so excited to finally see Riding The Storm on the shelves!!!
Sydney Croft
aka Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler
10 Responses to “Guest Blogger: Sydney Croft”
Stephanie and Larissa, thanks so much for joining us today. I can totally see how each taking a main character’s POV would work. My main gripe with collaborative books in the past is the definite difference in tone from one chapter to the next, but it would really work to have that difference in the hero and heroine.
As for the emailing, it sounds like you have perfected your working style, and I hope Riding the Storm is a huge success. It sounds like something I’d most definitely want to get my hands on
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Hi Steph and Larissa,
I was lucky to get the booklet with excerpts of all the WriteMinded bloggers’ books at Dallas. I loved the Sydney Croft excerpt. I collaborated with another writer, and we did it the same way as you did. We each took different characters and pantsed it.
When I read RIDING THE STORM, it’s going to be interesting to know who wrote what.
Steph and Larissa, so happy you joined us at Magical today! And, this is something that’s always intrigued me. I’ve never collaborated on anything, so it’s always been a mystery. Sounds like with the right mix, it’s just one of those magical things. And best of luck to you both on RIDING THE STORM. I’ll definitely be buying this puppy.
Thank you, Michelle! We’re happy to be here! What you mentioned is one of my gripes with collabs, too. They can sometimes feel jerky. I think that sticking with your own characters helps that a lot.
Edie, thank you! And is your collab available somewhere? I’d love to read it!
Thank you, LaDonna! Collaborations can definitely be tricky — I’ve tried before and it didn’t work. With Stephanie, it’s just so easy. Today at Romancing The Blog, the topic is collaborations, so there might be some good insights in the comments as the day goes on!
Larissa, I wish my book was available, but nope, even though my collaborator has gone on to sell numerous books. If we do sell it, I’ll let everyone know.
Stephanie and Larissa,
Thanks for joining us today at Magical. I’ve never thought writing as part of a collaboration. But your way of each taking one of the main characters sounds both intriguing and fun. And I can imagine how much fun you must have had as your partner’s new scene arrived and took the story into new territory. I bet each new scene sparked the creativeity of the partner reading it for the first time–so you’d be continually feeding eachother’s creativity.
I bet each person in the collaboration has to be very flexible, though. For people who need outlines and everything nailed down about their characters and their plots, I bet this type of approach would drive them crazy.
Hi everyone!!!
Theresa – yes, Larissa and I are really flexible with characters (and plots) in regards to what you’re talking about. For me, characters always just sort of arrive for me – I’m definitely a character driven writer – I always feel like character has to drive the plot. Although the Sydney books have a much more structured plot around the ’storms’ than I’ve ever written on my own.
I think what we’ve found is, even if we have certain plot points nailed down ahead of time, it changes as our characters change and interact. And really, it is fun when that happens!
Hi, Steph, Hi Larissa,
Love the cover, love the premise, can’t wait to pick up my copy of ROTS! Um, ROTS? I’ll spell it out: Riding Out the Storm.
Funny, Karin. I love anagrams. LOL.
Thanx for joining us, Larissa and Steph. Made for a fascinating blog. I don’t know if I could ever collaborate with anyone since I write at a snail’s pace and I can’t see anyone being that patient with me. It certainly sounds like a challenge, but you’ve managed to make it fun. Way to go.
Hi Karin! ROTS is funny… *g*
Liz, you know the crazy thing? I write REALLY slow too. Stephanie can write a book about 10 times faster than I can, and that’s not an exaggeration. We both started our second individual single-title romances at the same time…she’ll have hers done by November. Mine? I’ll be lucky to have it done by May.
But the Sydney Croft books go SO fast! I don’t know what it is. Probably partly the energy that flows while we’re working on the books. Plus, there’s the added pressure of knowing you’ve got someone waiting on your scene to continue the book. That’s definitely an incentive to move things along! *g*
But again, in my own works? Very, very slow!