Anyway: collaboration, the few times I’ve tried it, it turned out, well, not horribly, but not that good either. Essentially there were three of us, on a forum, and we’d each build up on each other’s ideas.

It probably would have helped if we had had a plot to begin with, I suppose. But yeah, I haven’t done well with collaboration, but I see no reason why I should never try it again.

On forums: I’ve had a lot of experience with forums, and usually, until they reach a certain number of active members, they’re pretty dead. The flip side of that is that once you get above a certain number of active members, they get a little spammy. But with something this size, it’s kind of a toss-up. Either way, people will (probably) still listen.

A comedian of the silent movie era was on his deathbed. “Dying is easy,” he said. “Comedy is hard.”

In terms of collaboration, it was fun working with Colin.

But in general I think collaboration means twice the work for half the money. It’s not an easy process. Comedy is particularly well suited for collaboration though. (Hence the number of writers on comedy TV shows). It helps to have someone else to help generate jokes and to check how well your own jokes work.

Clarion South was a great experience for me. But I know not everyone has 6 weeks to spare.

John Joseph Adams has a great post about the range of sf workshops that are available.
http://www.johnjosephadams.com/?p=1200

I completed a first draft of a screenplay collaboratively (I really hope the file is lost forever, so don’t ask when it’s going to be made into a movie XD). It didn’t work as a screenplay because my partner and I weren’t very mature as writers and also because we never really decided between dark comedy and serious indie flick.

The writing method itself worked out pretty well. We sat down in the same room and went back and forth on each line until we were happy with it. Kind of like what is known as “extreme programming” but with writing instead of code.

One of the most popular methods is doing the collaboration as a text RPG with no DM (each collaborator taking a different character to make decisions for) and making other decisions with (OOC) comments. I’m really opposed to that method of collaboration, but if it works for you … go for it.

Also thanks (I think) for the shout-out. I heard it! :-) I suppose I do make positive comments quite a bit. haha. Can’t help it. If I didn’t love the podcast, I wouldn’t be listening!

And here’s one more: Rish’s reading of The Monkey’s Paw kicked ass. (Hopefully the use of ‘ass’ will give me a slightly rougher edge this time.) What can I say? You guys rock.

Collaboration – Back in college, I was never able to make it work, but it’s been a long time since I tried. I don’t think I’ve ever attempted to collaborate with another author who finishes stuff. It does seem like the plot and concept would need to be jointly created, then maybe split up writing of sections or characters, then each person re-works the other person’s sections and adds stuff. I don’t think the alternating chapter thing would work for me; I think it would turn into tug-of-war.

Forums – you already know what I think. I agree with Josh that you’ve kind of trained people to comment here, but I don’t think you’d need to shut down comments to drive them to the forums. All you’d need is reference to discussions going on in the forums that aren’t happening here (ideas about writing or ghost stories or whatever). Those are the sort of threaded discussions that don’t work that well on a WordPress page. Here people are somewhat limited to discussion of the latest episode. It’s highly episodic, because it’s not all that convenient to go back to long-ago WordPress pages and comment. Those threads are dead. However, in forums, it’s much easier for people to resurrect threads or ideas that interest them. There’s that handy “posts since my last visit” button. Old threads need not die. Forums are just more versatile.