Collaborative fiction is a form of

writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

by a group of authors who share creative control of a

story Story or stories may refer to: Common uses * Story, a narrative (an account of imaginary or real people and events) ** Short story, a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting * Story (American English), or storey (British ...

. Collaborative fiction can occur for commercial gain, as part of education, or recreationally – many collaboratively written works have been the subject of a large degree of academic research.

Process

A collaborative author may focus on a specific protagonist or character in the

narrative thread A narrative thread, or plot thread (or, more ambiguously, a storyline), refers to particular elements and techniques of writing to center the story in the action or experience of characters rather than to relate a matter in a dry "all-knowing" sor ...

, and then pass the story to another writer for further additions or a change in focus to a different protagonist. Alternatively, authors might write the text for their own particular

subplot In fiction, a subplot is a secondary strand of the plot that is a supporting side story for any story or for the main plot. Subplots may connect to main plots, in either time and place or thematic significance. Subplots often involve supporting c ...

within an overall narrative, in which case one author may have the responsibility of integrating the story as a whole. In Italy, various groups of authors have developed more advanced methods of interaction and production The methods used by commercial collaborative writers vary tremendously. When beginning writing the short story 'the toy mill'

Karl Schroeder Karl Schroeder () (born September 4, 1962) is a Canadian science fiction author and a professional futurist. His novels present far-future speculations on topics such as nanotechnology, terraforming, augmented reality, and interstellar travel, a ...

and David Nickle began by writing alternating sentences, McGoldrick p. 85 whereas when English authors

Terry Pratchett Sir Terence David John Pratchett (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015) was an English humourist, satirist, and author of fantasy novels, especially comical works. He is best known for his '' Discworld'' series of 41 novels. Pratchett's first no ...

and Neil Gaiman wrote ''

Good Omens ''Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch'' is a 1990 novel written as a collaboration between the English authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. The book is a comedy about the birth of the son of Satan and the c ...

'' they largely wrote separate plotlines and then collaborated much more heavily when revising the manuscript. The collaboration may be very limited indeed, when

John Green John Michael Green (born August 24, 1977) is an American author, YouTube content creator, podcaster, and philanthropist. His books have more than 50 million copies in print worldwide, including '' The Fault in Our Stars'' (2012), which is ...

and

David Levithan David Levithan (born September 7, 1972) is an American young adult fiction author and editor."David Levithan". October 30, 2008. Gale Database. ''Contemporary Authors Online''. UWM Golda Meir Library, Milwaukee. July 1, 2009. He has written numer ...

wrote ''

Will Grayson, Will Grayson ''Will Grayson, Will Grayson'' is a novel by John Green and David Levithan, published in April 2010 by Dutton Juvenile. The book's narrative is divided evenly between two boys named Will Grayson, with Green having written all of the chapters for o ...

'' the only plot point they decided on was that two characters would meet at some point in the novel and that their meeting would have a tremendous effect on their lives. After this decision, they separately wrote the first three chapters for their half and then shared them with each other. After sharing, they then "knew immediately it was going to work", as stated by Levithan.

Debate over value of collaborative authorship

Some academics are concerned with being able to discover who wrote what, and which ideas belong to whom. Specifically, in the humanities collaborative authorship has been frowned upon in favor of the individual author. In these instances, antiquated ideas of individual genius influence how scholars look at issues of attribution and tenure. Ede & Lunsford (2001), pp. 354–69 Collaboration scholars Ede and Lunsford note, "everyday practices in the humanities continue to ignore, or even to punish, collaboration while authorizing work attributed to (autonomous) individuals". In particular, literary-critical essays often move to "settle" questions of authorship before moving on to their central interpretive purposes. Masten (1997), p. 173 Woodmansee uses studies of writing practices since the Renaissance to conclude that the modern definition of authorship, is a 'relatively recent formation' and that previously 'more corporate and collaborative' forms of writing prevailed, Woodmansee suggesting a long history of Collaborative Fiction. She further argues that the concept that 'genuine authorship consists in individual acts of origination' is an entirely modern myth. For Renaissance playwrights, collaboration appears to have been the norm; Bently notes that nearly two-thirds of plays mentioned in Henslowe's papers reflect the participation of more than one writer. Bentley (1971), p.199 There is also an issue of continuous revision: it was common practice in Renaissance English theatre for professional writers attached to a company to compose new characters, scenes, prologues and epilogues for plays in which they did not originally have a hand. Masten (1997), p 14 Scott McMillin has exported revision as a deconstruction of authorial individuality in the Sir Thomas More manuscript. McMillin (1987), pp. 153–159 In an artistic sense, as

Lorraine York Lorraine York is a Canadian literary historian in English and Cultural Studies, currently the Senator William McMaster Chair in Canadian Literature and Culture at McMaster University. York is named Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada 2017, toget ...

notes, "Critics and readers feel a persistent need to 'de-collaborate' these works, to parse the collective text into the separate contributions of two or more authors". This is part of a tradition in criticism to view collaboration as a subset or aberrant kind of individual authorship – such that later readers could separate out by examining the collaborative text. Masten (1997), p. 17 Particular examples of this approach to criticism include

Cyrus Hoy Cyrus Henry Hoy (February 26, 1926 – April 27, 2010) was an American literary scholar of the English Renaissance stage who taught at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, and was the John B. Trevor Professor of English (emerit ...

who studies authorship in the

Beaumont/Fletcher plays Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I (1603–25). They became known as a team early in their association, so much so that their jo ...

. There have been several university-based projects that investigated collaborative fiction, both from a writing perspective and as a testbed for scientific techniques, such as visualization of narrative structure. Murtagh et al(2010) Collaborative writing in smaller groups is a widespread and successful educational technique. '' A Million Penguins'' was a large scale and completely open collaborative fiction writing sponsored by

Penguin Books Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.futurist Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abo ...

team "Gruppo dei Dieci", Don Milani's Scuola di Barbiana experiment, ''Lettera a una professoressa'' (1967), the various historical best-sellers produced by the

Wu Ming Wu Ming, Chinese for "anonymous", is a pseudonym for a group of Italian authors formed in 2000 from a subset of the Luther Blissett community in Bologna. Four of the group earlier wrote the novel '' Q'' (first edition 1999). Unlike the open n ...

collective between 1999 and 2011, and ''In territorio nemico'', the 115-author novel realized within the SIC – project founded by Gregorio Magini and , which established a codified methodology for the collective production of literary texts.

In Australia

Australia has a number of famous writing teams. In 1944

James McAuley James Phillip McAuley (12 October 1917 – 15 October 1976) was an Australian academic, poet, journalist, literary critic and a prominent convert to Roman Catholicism. He was involved in the Ern Malley poetry hoax. Life and career McAuley wa ...

and

Harold Stewart Harold Frederick Stewart (14 December 19167 August 1995) was an Australian poet and oriental scholar. He is chiefly remembered alongside fellow poet James McAuley as a co-creator of the Ern Malley literary hoax. Stewart's work has been asso ...

collaborating as

Ern Malley The Ern Malley hoax, also called the Ern Malley affair, is Australia's most famous literary hoax. Its name derives from Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley, a fictitious poet whose biography and body of work were created in one day in 1943 by conservat ...

wrote seventeen poems in one day as a hoax against Max Harris and his magazine ''

Angry Penguins ''Angry Penguins'' was an art and literary journal founded in 1940 by surrealist poet Max Harris, at the age of 18. Originally based in Adelaide, the journal moved to Melbourne in 1942 once Harris joined the Heide Circle, a group of avant-garde ...

''. From the late 1920s to the late 1940s

Flora Eldershaw Flora Sydney Patricia Eldershaw (16 March 1897 – 20 September 1956) was an Australian novelist, critic and historian. With Marjorie Barnard she formed the writing collaboration known as M. Barnard Eldershaw. She was also a teacher and later ...

and

Marjorie Barnard Marjorie Faith Barnard (16 August 18978 May 1987) was an Australian novelist and short story writer, critic, historian—and librarian. She went to school and university in Sydney, and then trained as a librarian. She was employed as a librari ...

wrote under the name of

M. Barnard Eldershaw M. Barnard Eldershaw was the pseudonym used by the twentieth-century Australian literary collaborators Marjorie Barnard (1897–1987) and Flora Eldershaw (1897–1956). In a collaboration that lasted two decades from the late 1920s to the ...

. During that time they published an impressive body of work that included five novels. Evidently Barnard did more of the actual writing whilst Eldershaw concentrated on development and structure of the works.

Louise Elizabeth Rorabacher Louise Elizabeth Rorabacher (April 10, 1906 – December 26, 1993) was an author and editor, producing three college textbooks, two biographies and two collections of Australian short stories. Born in Worden, Michigan, Rorabacher graduated fr ...

who wrote about the collaboration stated: "that in their early collaborative novels it is impossible to distinguish their separate contributions." The partnership worked because according to

Nettie Palmer Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer (née Higgins) (18 August 1885 – 19 October 1964) was an Australian poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic of her day. She corresponded with women writers and collated the Centenary Gift Book which ...

, a leading literary critic of the time: "Any difference in the characters of the two women doesn't make for a difference in their point of view or values."

Dymphna Cusack Ellen Dymphna Cusack AM (21 September 1902 – 19 October 1981) was an Australian writer and playwright. Personal life Born in Wyalong, New South Wales, Cusack was educated at Saint Ursula's College, Armidale, New South Wales and graduated f ...

wrote twelve novels, two of which were collaborations. She wrote '' Come in Spinner'', a novel set in Sydney during the end of World War II, with

Florence James Florence Gertrude James (2 September 1902 – 25 August 1993) was an Australian writer and literary agent, born in New Zealand. Life James was born in Gisborne, New Zealand, daughter of a refrigeration engineer with a successful consulting pr ...

. The completed book was submitted and won the 1948 '' Daily Telegraph'' novel competition. Cusack also collaborated with another writer –

Miles Franklin Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (14 October 187919 September 1954), known as Miles Franklin, was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel ''My Brilliant Career'', published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh in 1901. While ...

on the 1939 novel ''Pioneers on Parade''. Between 1997 and 2000, Australian children's authors, Paul Jennings and

Morris Gleitzman Morris Gleitzman (born 9 January 1953) is an English-born Australian author of children's and young adult fiction. was written by a group of five Australian women, and its 2017 sequel The Shifting Light' by four authors who collaboratively write under the pseudonym

Alice Campion Alice Campion is the pseudonym of a group of Australian writers who have published two collaborative novels, ''The Painted Sky'' (Random House, 2015; published in German as ''Der Bunte Himmel,'' Ullstein Verlag 2015), and ''The Shifting Light'' (P ...

. Their unique writing process has resulted in critics applauding their "single" author voice. As 'Group Fiction', three of the collective have also written a guide to collaborative fiction writing called How to Write Fiction as a Group. In 2020, novelist Craig Cormick collaborated with Indigenous Australian writer Harold Ludwick to write an

alternative history Alternate history (also alternative history, althist, AH) is a genre of speculative fiction of stories in which one or more historical events occur and are resolved differently than in real life. As conjecture based upon historical fact, alte ...

novel, ''On a Barbarous Coast'', about Captain Cook's 1768-1771 voyage to Australia.

Community and educational uses

Collaborative writing has been used to increase community engagement in writing: one of the three 2008

TED TED may refer to: Economics and finance * TED spread between U.S. Treasuries and Eurodollar Education * ''Türk Eğitim Derneği'', the Turkish Education Association ** TED Ankara College Foundation Schools, Turkey ** Transvaal Education Depa ...

Prizes was given to

Dave Eggers Dave Eggers (born March 12, 1970) is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He wrote the 2000 best-selling memoir ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius''. Eggers is also the founder of ''Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern'', a lite ...

, partially for his work with the 826 project, which uses many collaborative techniques to engage school children, and community groups in writing. The 826 Valencia chapter consists of a writing lab, a street-front pirate supply store that partially funds the programs, and two satellite classrooms in nearby middle schools. Over 1,400 volunteers—including published authors, magazine founders, SAT-course instructors, and documentary filmmakers—have donated time to work with thousands of students since the chapter was founded. TED blog (2008) His TED Prize wish was for community members to personally engage with local public schools. Other educationally motivated work has been developed by the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

and used both to improve the writing skills of the participants and as a testing ground for scientific techniques, such as visualization of narrative structure. The project attempted to show students the workflow of a novel from inception to production and to improve teamwork and feedback skills. WordPlay 2011 Workshops lasted up to a week and aimed to produce a full-length novel from a plot idea provided by an established author, with younger students producing smaller sized novels. Because the workshops were very short the use of collaborative writing was required so that a novel could be produced in the timeframe. Techniques from

software engineering Software engineering is a systematic engineering approach to software development. A software engineer is a person who applies the principles of software engineering to design, develop, maintain, test, and evaluate computer software. The term '' ...

were used to arrange the workload amongst the students. A collaborative novel written in an educational setting was ''Caverns'', written collaboratively in 1989 as an experiment by

Ken Kesey Ken Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey was born in ...

and a creative writing class that he taught at the

University of Oregon The University of Oregon (UO, U of O or Oregon) is a public research university in Eugene, Oregon. Founded in 1876, the institution is well known for its strong ties to the sports apparel and marketing firm Nike, Inc, and its co-founder, billion ...

. Because of Kesey's attachment to the project, the book was widely reviewed in newspapers and magazines. Critics were generally intrigued by the book but ultimately critical of its shortcomings: noting in particular the lack of a coherent voice and a too-large cast of characters. Writing in the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...

'', Bob Sipchen noted, "''Caverns'' is an amusing lark, full of weird characters and goofy plot twists. It was a sufficiently intriguing project to make The Mainstream Media swarm around Kesey again. But no one is calling ''Caverns'' literature." The Los Angeles Times (February 11, 1990)

Recreational collaborative writing

Collaborative fiction can be fully open with no rules or enforced structure as it moves from author to author; however, many collaborative fiction works adopt some set of rule on what constitutes an acceptable contribution. Writing games for collaborative writing have a tradition in literary groups such as the

Dadaists Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

and the

Oulipo Oulipo (, short for french: Ouvroir de littérature potentielle; roughly translated: ''"workshop of potential literature"'', stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works ...

. The advent of the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

has seen many such collaborative writing games go online, resulting both in

hypertext fiction Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text ...

and in more conventional literary production. For example, the Baen's bar forum, known as 1632 Tech, has been a prime force behind the many works in the popular alternate history 1632 series under the aegis of

Eric Flint Eric Flint (February 6, 1947 – July 17, 2022) was an American author, editor, and e-publisher. The majority of his main works are Alternate history (fiction), alternate history science fiction, but he also wrote humorous fantasy adventures. ...

— especially

The Grantville Gazettes ''The Grantville Gazettes'' are anthologies of short stories set in the 1632 universe introduced in Eric Flint's novel ''1632'' that was primarily published as a bi-monthly electronic magazine from 2003 until shortly after Flint's death in 20 ...

. Author and scholar Scott Rettberg's paper "Collective Narrative" discusses connections between avant garde literary groups and online collaborative fiction. Scott (2011)

Influence of tabletop gaming

Other forms of collaborative fiction have evolved from the practices of

tabletop Tabletop may refer to: Mountains * Table Top Mountain in Rangeville, Queensland, Australia * Table Top Mountain (New York) * Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa * Tepui, flat top mountains in South America Places * Tabletop, New South Wale ...

and role-playing video game gamers and related '

fandom A fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by a feeling of empathy and camaraderie with others who share a common interest. Fans typically are interested in even minor details of the objects of their fandom and spend a significant ...

' activities. Role-playing games such as

Dungeons and Dragons ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TS ...

are often seen as a process to generate narratives though each characters interactions Spierling & Szilas (2008), p. 33 Such table top role-playing has always been an exercise in collaborative fiction, but can possess more structured rules: players acting out in an antisocial way can be penalised by the game mechanics (though they are just as likely to be penalised socially). Harrigan (2004), p. 168 Eventually, these tabletop behaviors merged with hypertext fiction to create text-based interactive role-playing environments, like roleplaying

MUSH In multiplayer online games, a MUSH (a backronymed variation on MUD most often expanded as Multi-User Shared Hallucination, though Multi-User Shared Hack, Habitat, and Holodeck are also observed) is a text-based online social medium to which mul ...

es. In 2001, OtherSpace became the first such game to publish a novel taken from these interactions.

World creation

Ring of Fire (series) is a series of alternate history books by Eric Flint and other authors set in a universe created by Eric Flint with the intention of integrating multiple authors into the fabric of the universe structure. Sites such as

Orion's Arm Orion's Arm (also called the Orion's Arm Universe Project, OAUP, or simply OA and formerly known as the Orion's Arm Worldbuilding Group) is a multi-authored online science fiction world-building project, first established in 2000 by M. Alan Kaz ...

and Epic Legends Of The Hierarchs: The Elemenstor Saga encourage the development of fictional universes rather than novels (though 'Epic Legends' is parody of fantasy universes).

Online collaboration platforms

With the development of the internet collaborative writing is gaining new relevance with various online collaborative writing platforms emerging. Most popular are

collaborative real-time editor A collaborative real-time editor is a type of collaborative software or web application which enables real-time collaborative editing, simultaneous editing, or live editing of the same digital document, computer file or cloud-stored data – s ...

s such as

Etherpad Etherpad (previously known as EtherPad) is an open-source, web-based collaborative real-time editor, allowing authors to simultaneously edit a text document, and see all of the participants' edits in real-time, with the ability to display each ...

and Google Docs which are however mostly used for coordinating projects and brainstorming. Nevertheless, they have also been used to collectively write works of fiction, such as ''The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra'' – an over 300 page book written by anonymous users of the Literature (''/lit/'') board of

4chan 4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...

from over 71 countries using GoogleDocs.

Commercial collaborations

Traditional fiction writers and

writing circle A writing circle is a group of like-minded writers needing support for their work, either through writing peer critiques, workshops or classes, or just encouragement. There are many different types of writing circles or writing groups based on lo ...

s have experimented in creating group stories, such as

Robert Asprin Robert Lynn Asprin (June 28, 1946 – May 22, 2008) was an American science fiction and fantasy author and active fan, known best for his humorous series '' MythAdventures'' and '' Phule's Company''. Background Robert Asprin was born in St. J ...

's Thieves World and

MythAdventures ''MythAdventures'' or ''Myth Adventures'' is a fantasy series created by Robert Lynn Asprin. After twelve novels by Asprin, published 1978 to 2002, he and Jody Lynn Nye continued the series with seven more books. After his death in May 2008, she ...

– such approaches date back at least as far as ''

The Floating Admiral ''The Floating Admiral'' is a collaborative detective novel written by fourteen members of the Detection Club in 1931. The twelve chapters of the story were each written by a different author, in the following sequence: Canon Victor Whitechurch ...

'' in 1931. There are many highly regarded collaborations, but also some collaborative work produced as spoofs or hoaxes such as ''

Naked Came the Stranger ''Naked Came the Stranger'' is a 1969 novel written as a literary hoax poking fun at the American literary culture of its time. Though credited to "Penelope Ashe," it was in fact written by a group of twenty-four journalists led by '' Newsday ...

'', which was allegedly written to illustrate the point that popular American literary culture had become mindlessly vulgar. Schroeder (1997) The Australian genre fiction collaborators known as

are thought to be the first in the world to publish commercial fiction as a team of five, now four. Their popular novels, ''The Painted Sky'' (2015) and ''The Shifting Light'' (2017) were published by Penguin Random House.

Legal aspects

The disadvantages of the collaborative writing process can include problems with series or

sequel A sequel is a work of literature, film, theatre, television, music or video game that continues the story of, or expands upon, some earlier work. In the common context of a narrative work of fiction, a sequel portrays events set in the same ...

s to successful books, if one partner has other commitments or is bored with the project, then losses, delays and pressure on the relationship may occur. Maass, p. 170 The Association of Authors' Representatives recommends that "a collaboration agreement must deal with termination of the collaboration: How the collaborators can part ways, who keeps the money, who keeps the rights to the material". Association of Authors' Representatives, March 4, 1992 Moreover, there can be legal complications if, for example, two authors are under contract to write other books individually for different publishers – if there is any overlap on the types of books then the contractual responsibilities need to be thoroughly examined to avoid copyright problems. McGoldrick, p. 71