Co-writing "Shutdown"

Silvia and her friend Tasmin are co-writing a sci-fi short story and this is how they're doing it

What is "Shutdown" and what's this project

Shutdown is the working title of a short sci-fi story that I (Silvia) and my friend Tasmin are co-writing. In this file I will be documenting our process of collaborative writing in real time in hopes it will be useful for whoever is interested in doing something similar.

Why are we writing a book together?

Tasmin's intentions:

• Has been writing fiction for a long time but never successfully co-wrote with anyone and would like to try

• Wants to explore collaboration, trust, and letting go of creative control

• Wants to write without pressure to publish, just for fun

Silvia's intentions:

• Has been writing nonfiction for a long time and wants to explore fiction for creative purposes

• Excited to work with tasmin because of her expertise in fiction

• Curious about the meta: What are ways to create together and build relationships by making things together?

How this project started and how we're collaborating:

• Tasmin invited Silvia to co-write a story

• We decided on the genre (sci-fi) over text messages

• We are meeting face to face once a week on Wednesdays for 1h30 to build foundations (storyworld, structure, plot coherence, etc.)

• Then during the week each of us works on writing their individual part of the story

• There are 2 main characters and we each write from one of their POVs, alternating chapters

Face to face writing sessions — Documentation

Session 2 (3rd Mar 2021, ~2h)

We discussed research we made at home, got clearer on the premise and story world details. We defined the basic points of relationship between main characters. We discussed meta: how we want to work, our intentions for writing together, tools to use, when to meet (once a week).

Character development:

• Defining their relationship with each other

• Defining personalities: traits, values, history

• Physical appearance: we used Pinterest to get inspired by real portraits and chose a few as a starting point

World-building:

• Timeline (When is the story happening? How long after the event that determined the big premise? What is the actual year?)

• What are the main events that led up to the current time in the story line?

• Where does the story happen in the real world?

• How do the main characters fit in that world?

Homework:

• Continue building each of our characters, namely:

  • Core values

  • Personality

  • History and place in the story world

Session 1 (24th Feb 2021, ~1h30)

We mostly brainstormed freely and explored different threads, focusing especially on defining the premise and general idea of the book.

Questions we asked each other to get the process started:

• What kind of sci-fi do we want to write?

• How are we going to be writing together?

• What is the main premise of the story?

• Who are the characters and what is the relationship between them?

• What is the message we want to convey?

• What are the dynamics?

• What is the journey/goal that moves the story forward?

Homework:

• Research some scientific questions needing to be answered for a coherent story world

• Brainstorm message of the story

• Think about communication tool for co-writing

• Brainstorm working title ("Shutdown")

• Brainstorm characters (character sheets)