Long distance collaboration tips

I'm working on a sitcom with a friend who lives in another part of the country. We exchange a lot of ideas through e-mail and talk on the phone regularly, and have now figured out the characters and worked up a pretty decent structure for the pilot.

Now I'm not sure the best way to approach the script itself. Only one person can write at a time but I'm not sure if we should split it scene by scene, or episode by episode. And after it's written, is it a case of the other person rewriting and handing back, or just giving notes to the original writer?

Obviously we need to find a method that works best for us, but I'm interested to hear if anyone else has made this work, and how you did it.

I have a writing partner, though unlike you and yours we live in the same city. When it comes to actually working up a first draft, we just bounce it back and forth by email, adding a few new pages at a time and rewriting what's already there.

What I've done is receive a scene and then try to add some extra (hopefully funny) lines and vice versa.

My advice, do big chunks don't get tied up in the minutiae or you'll get nothing done.

Who's the better writer?
I know it sounds harsh, but there will be one of you who's better at translating it onto the page.
Let that person do a full draft and let the other read, edit and revise.
We all have different writing styles and you want the end product to have a definitive voice or it'll be a mess.

Quote: Lazzard @ 21st April 2014, 8:07 PM BST

Let that person do a full draft and let the other read, edit and revise.

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Oh, I wouldn't like that. If I was the one just doing the revising I'd feel like I wasn't really a writer.

But whatever works, I suppose.

Alternate scenes sound a good idea. You edit your partner's chapter, then add your own.

As a consummate control freak, I find this fascinating. Surely people have different styles, resulting in quite a disjointed episode?

I can see the value in having someone to kick you up the arse and cut out the bits you are wedded to, but I would love to see how writing alternate scenes works in practice.

If you get a little transitional scene on your bit, can you have two go's?

It's the disjointed style that's so important. Conflict and characterisation are at the heart of comedy. And if two writers clash so will their characters and that's a good thing.

Quote: Jennie @ 21st April 2014, 9:10 PM BST

As a consummate control freak, I find this fascinating. Surely people have different styles, resulting in quite a disjointed episode?

I can see the value in having someone to kick you up the arse and cut out the bits you are wedded to, but I would love to see how writing alternate scenes works in practice.

If you get a little transitional scene on your bit, can you have two go's?

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Well you'd write more than one scene for one thing, otherwise it would take forever. We always write six or seven pages before passing it on. Write your six or seven pages, tweak all the stuff that's already there, pass it back.

Quote: sootyj @ 21st April 2014, 9:12 PM BST

It's the disjointed style that's so important. Conflict and characterisation are at the heart of comedy. And if two writers clash so will their characters and that's a good thing.

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I mean that the risk that the characters, speech and tone are inconsistent from scene to scene.

Quote: Matthew Stott @ 21st April 2014, 9:17 PM BST

Well you'd write more than one scene for one thing, otherwise it would take forever. We always write six or seven pages before passing it on. Write your six or seven pages, tweak all the stuff that's already there, pass it back.

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Fair enough. I am not criticising because I have never tried it. I guess you need someone who is a perfect match for you - both in terms of writing style, ability and vision for the project.

However I know that lots of comedy is written this way, so maybe I need to get with the programme a bit more.

Quote: Jennie @ 21st April 2014, 9:19 PM BST

Fair enough. I am not criticising because I have never tried it. I guess you need someone who is a perfect match for you - both in terms of writing style, ability and vision for the project.

However I know that lots of comedy is written this way, so maybe I need to get with the programme a bit more.

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Well it's not for everyone. I didn't think it would be for me until more recently. Though even if it's not something you want to do as the norm with your work, collaboration is a good skill to get to grips with in comedy writing. At some point you're probably going to do it at least a bit.

If we were in America, it would be almost all we were doing.

Quote: Jennie @ 21st April 2014, 9:19 PM BST

I mean that the risk that the characters, speech and tone are inconsistent from scene to scene.

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That's where editing comes in.

You know you're doing well when you ditch good stuff.

I still maintain that you get it as close to fully mapped out as possible - then let one partner have a crack at it.
I'm pretty sure it's how Clement & Le Frenais used to work.

I'm new to collaborating but we're trying the method Lazzard suggests: Work out the story together very carefully, then one person writes the first draft, the other redrafts it, then the first reviews it again (for as many iterations as you want).

Any bit that has survived both of you is probably good enough to go into your "first draft" which is the first thing to show anyone else (not that we are at that stage yet).