The Dos and Don’ts of Co-Writing

I love co-authoring books. For one thing, they’re so damn huge, it can be overwhelming. And if you’ve got a publisher’s deadline looming overhead, it can be comforting knowing that you have a partner you can blame when things go wrong to cut your workload in half.

Two of my books had a four month completion window, each clocking in at 15 or 16 chapters. It would have been a full-time job for a single writer, but with two of us tackling the workload, we were able to get the writing done, do our regular jobs, and even get a few hours of sleep each night.

Over the years, I have co-authored eight books, including two that were never published, and one where I was the ghost co-author. In that time, I’ve learned some important lessons about how to work with a co-author.

Make sure you mesh

You want to work with someone who has a similar temperament to yours. If you’re laid back and easy going, preferring to work late and sleep late, it will be a challenge to work with a Type A overachiever who leaps out of bed at 4:30 am. If you do join forces, set the expectations that if they won’t text you at 5 am, you won’t call them at 1 am. This is easy to manage, but it’s important to discuss early so you don’t have mismatched expectations, or get upset that they’re too serious/not serious enough.

You may even want to go so far as find someone who matches with you on certain political and socio-economic matters. Now, unless you’re writing a political or social commentary book, this shouldn’t actually enter into your work flow, but just keep in mind that if you have political discussions with each other on Facebook, any negative feelings could bubble over into your work. I’ve known romantic relationships and friendships that have ended for this reason, so don’t think that a temporary writing relationship is going to be the one relationship that can withstand this.

Decide on a voice

When my co-author, Jason Falls, and I were working on No Bullshit Social Media, we stumbled a bit after we sent our first section to the publisher. Jason usually has a similar writing style to mine, but he tried writing in a more academic style, while I did my usual thing. The publisher sent it back to us saying “it sounds like two different people wrote this!” and they made us do it over. It was actually a little embarrassing.

One of you may write like a journalist and the other like an academic. One of you may prefer lots of adverbs (don’t use them though!) and flowery language, while the other prefers simple, direct language. In Jason’s case, he returned to his normal writing voice and we were able to finish the book on time. Mostly.

Decide whose voice and style is going to be predominant, and let that person take the lead on the revisions. For my social media books, we decided that my writing style and voice was the one we would use, and so I did any edits and rewrites to get us there.

Set expectations and rules up front

Set your deadline and your milestones early on. How many pages is this going to be? Who’s going to write which sections? Whose name goes first? If there are disputes that can’t be settled — opinions, interpretation of facts, directions of plot — who is the final arbiter of those disagreements?

This also includes a style guide. Are you going to follow the Chicago Manual of Style or AP style? Are you going to use swear words or discuss taboo subjects? And where does your co-author stand on the Oxford comma? (If they don’t like the Oxford comma, cut this person out of your life. You don’t need that kind of negativity.)

Divide up the labor evenly

In my books, we created the table of contents and outline, and then chose the chapters we each wanted to write. If we both wanted a chapter, we found a compromise. Again, I was lucky in that my co-authors were all easy to work with. If I wanted something a little more, they were happy to give it to me, and I did the same for them.

I’ve known other writing teams who have their own specialties. One husband and wife team writes sci-fi novels with a strong science base. She writes the dialogue and the action, he writes all the actual science-y stuff — which is the proper technical term — making sure that the technology she wants to include actually works the way it’s supposed to.

Create accountability standards

What happens if your partner fails to meet the deadline? What happens if their work standards fall off? Life intrudes on our plans, and we have to take care of jobs and family, and have a social life. Otherwise, we would all sit around writing all day. But it’s easy to drop a project just because you get distracted and then forget to get back to it. So figure out how you’re going to deal with delays, how you’re going to hold each other accountable without being a nag, and even setting a “get out free” escape clause in case things start going badly.

And if this is going to be a serious project that’s worth some money or can help/hurt your reputation, set up a contract for you both to sign. Hopefully you’ll never need to go to court over this, but you at least want to spell out which issues are worth fighting for and which ones you’ll let slide, if it ever came to that. Remember, a contract will protect you, even if it seems formal and even gloomy. I’ve known friendships that were ruined because the two parties didn’t have anything in place to protect themselves.

Be prepared to walk away

I’ve been fortunate in that nearly all of my co-authoring efforts have been with friends. And if they weren’t, we became friends. I’m one of those people who values friendship more than money, and I’ve always told my co-authors I’d rather give up a project or lose money than lose a friendship.

That means that if things start going south, I’ll drop the project so we can part as friends, rather than fight through the project and complete it (maybe), but lose that friendship. It’s never worth it, so don’t tie your ego up into the project so deeply that you’re willing to burn a bridge.

A special note on ghostwriting

A few of the books I’ve written have been more of a ghostwriter-subject partnership. I did the actual wordsmithing, and the other person was the subject matter expert. That’s still considered a writing partnership, even if the other person didn’t actually do any of the work; they were the person interesting, knowledgeable, or accomplished enough to have a book worth writing.

Here are my own ground rules for this kind of writing partnership.

1. I get paid. I’m not doing this for exposure or expected royalties, unless you’re actually famous. And if you are, there’s a good chance you can afford my fee anyway. So I still get paid. In most cases, I’ll forgo the royalties to make sure I get paid up front.
2. My name goes on the cover as “The With.” Nearly every book written by an athlete, actor, musician, or politician was undoubtedly written by a ghost writer. And many of those books include that person as the co-author, or “the with.” For example, Tony Dungy’s wrote Quiet Strength “with” Nathan Whitaker; Pete Rose wrote My Story “with” Roger Kahn. In those cases, The With did all the actual writing; I want to be that guy.
3. I get the final say on mechanics. If the other person were a writer, they could get more of a say in the nuts and bolts of the writing. But, I tell them (silently praying they don’t fire me for this), you came to me because I’m good at this part. So you worry about what we say, I’ll worry about how we say it.
4. We’ll have a contract. There were will be deadlines, expectations, word count, indemnification clauses, and other things that lawyers tell me will protect me. I don’t mind doing business on a handshake, but I always make sure you’ve got a contract in the other hand.

Writing partnerships can be productive, valuable, and help you come up with newer, better ideas, and get a lot more accomplished. Just make sure you set your expectations ahead of time, and decide on the dos and don’ts of the relationship. As long as you can both agree on the final goal, you should be able to easily finish your project and still be friends when it’s all over.