Writing team?

[Super Fantasy]

Has anyone wrote novels as a team?

If anyone is interested in writing with me DM me on here or mention in this thread.

 

[ThinkerX]

A E Lowan is a writing triad.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

A E Lowan is a writing triad.

This is indeed true. Throw your questions in here so we can add to the group information.

 

[OneMerryWriter]

I am returning to this forum after a gap of a year plus. This team thing interests me. I have no idea how such a thing would work though. Especially for someone like me who is a pantser that occasionally outlines.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Every collaboration works a bit differently from the others. We have three women on Team Lowan; my wife, who's been writing with me since high school, is a phenomenal plotter as well as a fantastic in-house editor, our formatter of beautiful books, a gifted writer in her own right, and way smarter than I am. Our writing partner is about 20 years younger than us and is our primary researcher and the drive pushing us ever forward. And I'm the drafter, and I actually have never written on my own in my adult life. Salud to you badasses who do this solo. It boggles my mind.

We went with particular structure to ensure we have a cohesive voice, no matter what's happening in the plot. We all three plan together, pick apart drafts through sharing files with Microsoft 365 so we can all be in the document and seeing what the others are doing in real time. We've had a lot of readers comment that they'd thought at first that Lowan was a solo act, and after knowing the truth say that they couldn't find where one of us ended and another voice comes in.

We've all three been writing together for about 10 years and we have the first three of our numbered books out and available. Numbers 4 and 5 are currently just regaining their legs after some serious life shit. I got knocked off my feet for about 4 years running, and not all of it is resolved. I'm the drafter, so when I lose it I become the bottleneck, and that super sucks because we have a whole lot of books planned.

 

[Mad Swede]

You asked about writing as a team, but I'm going to give you a wider reply based on something A. E. Lowan wrote. Writing is one thing and can be done as a team, but getting your book published also involves teamwork.

If you're lucky enough to land a publishing contract you will be working with an editor. The same is true if you hire an editor before self-publishing, or if someone in your writing team is a good editor. Working with an editor is all about teamwork, you have to respect one another, you both have to listen and you must discuss things. Trust is a big part of this working relationship. It's like writing together with someone (which I have done on academic papers), there is give and take involved and you need to be able to compromise about what goes down in text. So think carefully about how easy you find it to compromise about characters you care about or about the story arc you see ahead, because this does have an impact on how well you work as a team (with your editor and/or with your co-writer).

 

[Devor]

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman wrote Good Omens together. According to, I believe it was Gaiman, they put together an outline, and each of them wrote the first draft for different character POVs. They then edited the snot out of each other's work so much that it didn't matter which character was whose anymore.

Collaboration, it's a trust game. You have to be able to trust each other. You also have to give each other good reason to trust you. If you don't trust your partner, you'll bicker until you fall apart. If you trust them too easily, you'll let them guide you through a waste of time and end up with a weak result. Or more likely, one or more people will just flake out.

I'm a fan of trying to collaborate on projects, even though I've been on all ends of it. But it would also take a lot for me to collaborate on a whole novel. The commitment level is just too high, which means the trust values have to be just as high.

 

[OneMerryWriter]

Good to see these thoughts on team writing and team work. I always figured that team writing would take a lot of trust which is why I never imagined being able to do such a thing especially since I go with the flow when I write. The only real teamwork I would be able to do, would be to write in advance and share with a team member for comments. Possibly something similar to what Pratchett and Gaiman did (feels so pretentious on my part to say that).

 

[Prince of Spires]

Salud to you badasses who do this solo. It boggles my mind.

We just all have I'm going slightly mad by Queen running through our heads continually, accompanied by the matching videoclip...

As a complete tangent (to a complete tangent), but I still love your covers

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman wrote Good Omens together. According to, I believe it was Gaiman, they put together an outline, and each of them wrote the first draft for different character POVs. They then edited the snot out of each other's work so much that it didn't matter which character was whose anymore.

If you're interested, in my edition, they give a little insight into the process in the back of the book. Which, in true Terry Pratchett fashion, is something like "it involved a couple of guys shouting excitedly on the phone at each other."

I also remember reading somewhere that they mentioned trying to write as fast as possible, so they could each get to the fun bits...

 

[A. E. Lowan]

We just all have I'm going slightly mad by Queen running through our heads continually, accompanied by the matching videoclip...

As a complete tangent (to a complete tangent), but I still love your covers

Oh heavens, so do we. With some genre education, though, we're wondering if the lack of characters on the cover is proving confusing to your average Urban Fantasy reader, and that in turn is leading to lost sales. That being said... the three of us are bouncing around the idea of doing a full re-cover when Books 4 and 5 release. I'm hell-bent to leather determined to have two things out of this literary caucus race: Five little words and a Hugo. So it's a tightrope walk between what's expected and what's desirable.

But that also being said... I love this cover oh, so much. lol

If you're interested, in my edition, they give a little insight into the process in the back of the book. Which, in true Terry Pratchett fashion, is something like "it involved a couple of guys shouting excitedly on the phone at each other."

I also remember reading somewhere that they mentioned trying to write as fast as possible, so they could each get to the fun bits...

We do this all the time, but we use what we dream up as development notes and character explorations. We, literally, RP all of the havoc and mayhem, and then take down the incident reports. But I write at Speed of Martin, and we have a lot of friends who can rapid release their books at an insane pace. I'm talking about releasing titles a few times a month.

Yeah.