Crocodile Creek: a tale of friendship and collaboration

This past month I've done quite a few guest blogs, spotlights and interviews talking about the Diamonds Down Under series. Today's guest spot is at Fresh Fiction where I talk about collaborating with friends, but instead of making it all about Diamonds, again, I asked another group of friends who've collaborated for their thoughts on writing with friends.

The group: the awesome foursome who concocted the Crocodile Creek series for M&B Medicals. Alison Roberts, Marion Lennox, Meredith Webber and Lilian Darcy have published hundreds of books between them, collected RITA and R*BY nominations by the truckload, while remaining fast friends and all-round top people. At present they've sold three four-book series under the CC banner and, who knows, if the readers keep pleading there may be more to come. :-)

Alison Roberts was the first to respond to my request for a quote about writing with friends, and she answered so expansively and eloquently that I had a hard time choosing one grab for the Fresh Fiction article. I asked if she minded me using the whole response as a special guest blog here. Alison, as I mentioned, is an all-round champion person and so she said feel free and Marion, Meredith and Lilian added their responses and here it is: a very special guest blog about writing with friends by the fabulous Croc Creekers.

Bron: How did the Crocodile Creek collaboration come about?

Alison: This series came about due to the first ever writer's retreat I went on, which was just me and Marion having a few days on South Stradbroke Island before the first Gold Coast conference. [Romance Writers of Australia conf, 2003.] We roped in Meredith once we got to the conference and got Lilian on board via telephone conferencing and there was this buzz even talking about it. We missed all the scheduled conference things we were going to do and sat round bouncing ideas and making notes and it was really exciting!

I think Harlequin was a bit gobsmacked at being given an author-generated idea for a series and it actually took a long time and quite a bit of modification before we got the green light, but then we started work on the first series and it was amazing. As Marion ( I think) put it at one point, "It's like having three extra brains". Emails flew back and forth as we discussed characters, backgrounds and plots.

I think the first series was easier because we worked more in sequence so had the book prior to ours to work from (or I did, anyway) but later -- especially this last series -- we were working at the same time which made timelines and things trickier. Also, we linked each set of four books with a story arc so we had to write a book that would stand alone but also fit into the overall story line.

To sum it up, I'd say it's challenging but fabulous. And so much fun, working in little bits and pieces of the other books, like snatches of conversations overheard or even just the expression on someone's face. For example, I have a wedding scene for my characters but two characters from the next book were having a snog in a side room. My characters can't go out the main door because the cyclone is ripping slates off the roof. They go to go out the side door and hey, there's this couple locked in a passionate embrace.

Marion: It was indeed fun. It felt a bit like a free book cos there were four plotters rather than one. I think the fact that we totally respected each other as writers and we knew each other's characters would be treated sympathetically was the key.

Meredith: What I loved was the intricacy of it. Yes, it was like a free book because we'd plotted together but weaving the stories together so bits of one fitted seamlessly with bits of another was the best fun. We even wrote little passages for each other's books so the stories melded. This might not have happened if we'd known each other less well or not been friends -- don't know -- but it worked well for us.

Bron: any words of wisdom to writers thinking of working with friends in some form of collaboration?

Alison: I'd say don't do it unless you have the utmost respect for each other's work and a solid base of friendship where ego is put aside. Ours was a collaboration in more than just a professional sense and we tried to write the best books we could because we wanted them to be as good as we knew the others would be. The "x" factor that came from our friendship gave these books an edge that made them special.

Lilian: We did make the initial mistake with our first continuity idea of trying to put too many eggs in our basket -- tons of murder and suspense and international intrigue as well as medicine and romance -- way too many bells and whistles. Various editors hosed us down with blasts of cold water and cured us of all that.

I think we all felt that the second of our three sets of four books flowed the most smoothly (interestingly and rarely, not one of the four of us had any revision requests on those books) and I think that's because a) we were experienced at working together by that stage and b) we came up with an idea that was outwardly simple yet allowed for a whole lot of complexity and emotion within each individual story. We could basically sum it up in three words "weddings and cyclone," and the juxtaposition of the romance of the weddings and the drama of the cyclone gave us the basis for everything that the Medical Romance line thrives on.

This would be my advice to anyone attempting an author-generated continuity: give yourselves a simple over-arching continuity thread that hits the centre of your line's promise to the reader so that the complexity and uniqueness can develop within each story without you all getting tangled up and treading on each other's toes.

Series two of Crocodile Creek -- the "weddings and cyclone" one -- was out in late 2007 in the UK and Australia and in Nth America through eHarlequin.

The titles in this series:
The Playboy Doctor's Proposal, Alison Roberts
The Nurse He's Been Waiting For, Meredith Webber
Their Lost-and-Found Family, Marion Lennox
Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family, Lilian Darcy

Labels: giveaway, Guest blogger, writing tips

posted by Bronwyn Jameson @ 10:48 AM