Things to know about your story collaboration request

[Melrick]

Are you writing a story that you’re majorly stuck on and think bringing in another writer might help? Or perhaps you’re in the planning stages of a major new story, but feel a second writer helping out is the way to go? Whatever your reasons, this is the forum to post your request.

But there are things you should know before you post your request.

Basically, the more information you provide, the better. For example, is it a Harry Potter story? Obviously you’d tell people that much. But you also need to tell people what kind of a Harry Potter story it will be. Will it include male/male sex? Rape? BDSM? If so then you need to make that crystal clear, so prospective co-writers won’t bother enquiring with you if they really don’t like BDSM, for example.

Likewise, if there are certain kinks that really turn you off, like rape or BDSM, then you need to make that just as clear. Many people specialise in certain areas, and they'll need to know whether or not their own writing style or area of specialisation would suit you.

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) publicly include great details on the plot, but you should include as much relevant information as possible to help people make a decision as to whether or not they should contact you.

A handy thing you could do is to provide a link to stories you’ve already written, if that’s the case, to give people an idea of your current level of writing skills. Also, if someone does contact you, an absolutely necessity, I would think, is to ask them for examples of their own work, so you can judge whether this person’s writing style and/or skill level suits you.

Keep in mind that people will need to be a member of this forum before they can leave a reply or send you a PM, so if you wish for people to contact you via an alternative method, such as email, then you should leave that info. Disguising your email address to make it less likely for spam bots to harvest it isn’t a bad idea. And that goes for any forum! Alternatively, using a disposable email address (such as one from Yahoo or Hotmail) for forums and the like is a good idea, since you can simply abandon it if spam gets out of hand. I would not recommend using your ISP’s email address!

And finally, if you do find someone to co-write with – or later change your mind – then don’t forget to come back and edit your post to say so.

Good luck!