How to co-write a novel and keep one draft

The hard part of learning how to co-write a novel is not the prose. It is the logistics: who writes what, whose change wins, and which of the four files called "chapter 3" is the real one. Settle those early and writing with a co-author is twice the ideas for half the loneliness. Leave them open and the book stalls somewhere in act two.

The examples below use Romeo and Juliet, as if you and a partner were writing it as a novel.

Decide five things before chapter one

Have this conversation while you still agree on everything. Write the answers on one page and date it.

Ownership is not about ego. It gives each character one voice and gives every question one person to ask. If your co-writer needs the Nurse to keep a secret, they ask you, and you say whether she would.

The last word matters most when you are tired. Without a rule, every disagreement is settled by whoever cares more that day. With one, you argue your case, the owner decides, and you both move on.

The exit is the one people skip. Decide now whether the remaining writer may finish alone, and under whose name. If money is likely to be involved, put it in a signed agreement.

Choose between alternating chapters and sharing a scene

There are two ways to divide the writing, and most pairs need both.

Alternating chapters suits a book with two points of view. You write Juliet's Sunday night, your co-writer writes Romeo's. Each of you drafts alone, at your own speed, in your own voice. The cost is the seams: a reader can feel the handoff if the two voices drift apart.

Writing the same scene together suits the scenes where both leads are on the page. The balcony scene belongs to both of you, so write it in one sitting, one of you on Juliet's lines and the other on Romeo's. It is slower, and the scene comes out sounding like one book.

A workable rule: alternate by default, and mark in the outline the handful of scenes you will write together.

Set a rhythm that keeps the draft moving

A shared draft stops when one writer is waiting for the other and nobody has said so. Three habits prevent that.

1. A fixed handoff. Agree on a day. Chapters change hands every Thursday, finished or not.
2. A handoff note. Four lines, every time, written where your partner will see it.
3. A short weekly call. Fifteen minutes on what happens next, not on what was already written.

A handoff note looks like this:

• Wrote: chapter 9, the street fight. Mercutio and Tybalt are both dead.
• Changed in canon: Romeo is banished to Mantua, and leaves at dawn on Tuesday.
• Need from you: Juliet hearing the news, by Thursday.
• Open question: does Paris know why the wedding was moved a day earlier?

The second line is the important one. The whole story takes five days, so a day lost in one chapter is an error in the next. Every change to a fact goes in the note and on the fact's own page. If you haven't set those pages up, how to write a story bible shows what to record.

Edit each other without starting a fight

Most co-writing arguments are about how a change was made, not about the change.

• Suggest, don't overwrite. In your partner's chapter, propose the new sentence beside the old one. They accept or reject it. In your own chapter, edit freely.
• Comment on the passage. "The ending feels off" in a message is useless a week later. A note attached to the exact line, saying "Juliet agrees too fast here, she met the Friar's plan ten seconds ago", can be answered and closed.
• Name a version before a big rewrite. Before you restructure the tomb scene, save the chapter as it stands and call it "Before the tomb rewrite". Now the rewrite is an experiment, and nobody has to defend the old text from memory.

Three ways a shared draft goes wrong

The third is the most expensive, because it is found late. For Romeo and Juliet the list is short: Juliet and Friar Laurence know her death is faked. Romeo, the Nurse and both families do not. Every chapter either of you writes has to agree with that list. See how to find plot holes and continuity errors.

How Plotra handles a shared draft

Plotra keeps the manuscript and the world notes in one project, and everyone in it sees the latest text. No file is sent to anyone.

Writing in the same scene. Open the same note as your co-writer and you see their cursor and selection in their color, with their name. Text from both of you is merged as you type. You don't take turns and nothing is locked. Avatars in the status bar show who else is in the project. See writing at the same time.

When a connection drops. Keep writing. Your changes stay in your browser and are merged with your partner's when the connection returns. The status bar reads Synced, Connecting… or Offline. Two limits: this works for notes you had already opened in that browser, and only text works offline. Comments, versions and sharing need the server.

Comments and mentions. Select a passage and press ⌘⌥M. The thread quotes the passage and stays attached to those words as the text around them changes. Resolve closes it. Type @ and a name to mention someone, and they get a notification. Only workspace members can be mentioned, as the comments page explains.

Suggesting mode. Press ⌘⇧E, or click Suggest at the top of the Comments panel. Insertions are underlined in green, deletions are struck through in red, and your partner clicks Accept or Reject. It is a switch for the sitting: reload the page and it is off again, so check for the Suggesting label before you type. Only people who can edit can make suggestions.

Version history. Under Review → History, type a name and click Save. Named versions are kept until someone deletes them. Plotra also takes an automatic snapshot while a note is being edited, whenever the newest version is more than half an hour old, and keeps the latest 40 for each note. Restore this version saves the current text first, so a restore can be undone. A version is a copy of one note, not of the whole project. Saving a named version is listed in the activity feed. Details are under version history.

Members, sharing and roles

There are two ways to let someone in.

Invite them to the workspace when they should work on everything. A member can read, comment and edit in every project of the workspace. This is the usual choice for a co-author.

Share one project when they should see that project and nothing else. You pick a role:

Three things to know. Only the workspace's owners and admins can invite or share. There are no permissions on single notes or folders, so a viewer reads the whole project, unrevealed secrets included. And a co-writer who is an editor on a shared project, not a workspace member, can't be mentioned with @.

All of this is on both plans. Free allows 3 workspace members, counting the owner, and 5 people on each shared project. Open invitations count as members. Pro allows 25 members and 200 people on each project, at $10 a month for the whole workspace, not per person. The full table is on plans and billing.

Start with the one-page agreement

Before either of you writes a sentence, book an hour and fill in the five decisions from the first table. Then write your "who knows what" list, pick a handoff day, and draft one scene together to hear how your voices sit side by side. If that scene works, alternate from there.