What Co-Writing Romantasy Taught Us About Each Other

Michael and I have been writing together for almost as long as we’ve been together. Our courtship was an old-fashioned, epistolary one with a 20th century twist. He was in California, I was in Texas. The emails we exchanged were full of ideas and story-seeds for a world we were already building together before we’d ever shared a zip code.

Which means that when people ask us what it’s like to co-author a novel with your spouse, the honest answer is: It’s tough sometimes, but we’ve never known anything else.

Why Co-Writing Works — and When It Doesn’t

Here’s what nobody tells you about co-authoring a novel with your life partner: Relatively speaking, the writing is the easy part. The hard part is making sure the disagreements about the story stay “professional disagreements” and don’t become personal ones.

Those fights are going to happen. Two creative people with strong opinions and genuine investment in the same characters will absolutely end up on opposite sides of a plot decision at two in the afternoon, and then have to sit across from each other at dinner. The question isn’t whether you’ll fight about the story, because you will. The question is whether you can both remember, in the heat of it, that you’re fighting for the story — not against each other.

We’ve had to learn that about indie author collaboration the hard way, more than once. In fact, we had to learn it again just a few days ago. The best guideline we’ve found is to treat the writing relationship the way we treat any other professional creative partnership — with clear lanes, mutual respect for each other’s expertise, and the willingness (or is that “humility”?) to say “you’re right” when the story proves it.

How We Actually Divide the Work

Our division of labor has evolved naturally from who we are rather than from any system we sat down and designed.

I write for our main and secondary female characters. Michael writes for the males. We handle the overall story plotting together — the shape of the narrative, the emotional arc, the climactic scenes, where it begins and where it ends — and then we build an outline together from that foundation. The shared outline is essential. Without it, we’ve both learned the hard way that an exciting scene has a way of pulling a writer off course, and two writers going rogue in the same manuscript at the same time is a special kind of chaos.

Beyond the characters, we each lead in the areas where we’re genuinely stronger. I tend to take point on religious and spiritual content, setting description, dialogue, and the interior emotional landscapes that romantasy lives in. Michael leads when the scene calls for his expertise in law, military matters, economics, building and construction, or sea travel. He knows things I don’t, and our stories are richer for it.

The actual raw drafting happens in text editors — neither of us can stomach word processors — taking turns in the file, adding our own ideas to the story as well as building on what the other has written. It’s a rhythm we’ve developed over years. You learn to recognize your partner’s voice on the page, and by judicious trial and error you can learn where to leave it alone and where to modify, or even push back.

What Co-Authoring Has Taught Me About My Husband

Want to know what I learned when we started this in earnest?

Writing a novel together can be even more revealing than taking your clothes off.

You see how your partner thinks under pressure. You see what they protect in a story and what they’re willing to sacrifice. You see their humor, their blind spots, the things they care about so deeply they can’t write around them — they can only write through them. And if they are at all observant, they will see the same things in you, too.

I fall in love with Michael all over again, on a regular basis, because of this work. Not in spite of the arguments about plot structure or the late nights untangling a scene that went wrong, but because of them. Watching someone care that much about the same things I care about, who brings different gifts to the table than mine, and who shows up for the story — even when it’s hard — that’s a real-life miracle, every time.

I didn’t expect co-authoring to do that. But how wonderful that it does.

What We’d Tell Anyone Thinking About Co-Writing a Novel

If you’re considering writing a book with a partner — spouse, friend, or creative collaborator — here’s what thirty years of doing it has taught us:

• Choose carefully. Not everyone is willing to do the personal, ego-shaving work it takes to write collaboratively. Your ideas won’t always be the best, nor will your partner’s, no matter how ardently you both insist it’s so. If you and your partner have difficulty listening to each other, if either one of you can’t disagree without getting upset about it, then it’s very unlikely you’ll be happy writing stories together.
• Know your lanes. Play to each other’s strengths and respect each other’s expertise. The manuscript benefits from two different minds, not from one mind arguing with itself.
• Build the outline together. Excitement is the enemy of coherence. An agreed-upon roadmap keeps both writers pointed the same direction even when a scene catches fire.
• Keep professional disagreements professional. The story argument ends when you close the laptops. Enjoy your dinner together.
• Read each other’s work generously. Your co-author is trying to serve the same story you are. Assume good faith first.
• Let the work reveal you to each other. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, but most of the time it’s the stuff love stories are made of.

What God Has Ordained, the first book in The Legacy of Chandar series, is the product of everything we’ve learned — and a few things we’re still figuring out. It’s available now as an advance reader copy through BookFunnel. If you’d like to be among the first to read it, we’d love to have you.