Teamwork Makes the Dream Work: How I Published A Novel Trilogy By Co-Authoring

Hi there! I'm Marie, a Filipino fantasy author based in the United Kingdom. I co-wrote the Norse myth urban fantasy trilogy The Prophecies of Ragnarok with Meri Benson, which we just completed last October, and I'm here to talk about our co-authoring process!

In the Beginning

Meri and I met in the summer of 2019 (hey that sounded like a song 😂) in an online writing community. I’ve been writing since my teens, but I’ve always found collaborative writing to be more enjoyable. (I used to exchange letters with my schoolmate's sister, and our letters were mostly "so to continue my story..." 🤣) That community had prompt challenges for people to work on together instead of individually, and I randomly answered her call for responses to one of the challenges. The theme was childhood friends to lovers, a favorite trope of mine. We plotted for a bit then went on to write a story. Things just took off from there.

Now I’ve long had it in my bucket list to finish a novel. I have a lot of ideas, but I always have trouble getting to the finish line. I think I just really get bored writing by myself? 🫠 Because when I started doing those writing challenges with Meri, I realized I could write something that’s more than just an intro or an ending. And she'd already published her stuff on Amazon by then, so I thought, who better to help me? If she was willing, anyway. I’ve had people turn me down previously when I proposed a collaboration, and one even ghosted me. But she said yes! 😱

Our common ground (aside from Game of Thrones 😂) is mythology, specifically Norse. Meri's family is Swedish and from the Scandinavian area, while I've had a fascination for Norse myth since my teens (a story for another time 🤪). And so Hotel Fen (and our series) was born.

Our Process

I'm really lucky because Meri and I vibe in a lot of ways. We're pretty much in the same wavelength when we have a project 🤪

Our process basically goes:

1. Come up with a base plot.
2. Create the characters.
3. Worldbuild.
4. Outline.
5. Write.
6. Edit.
7. Release.
8. Realize we actually have to market the book, and then panic about it. Struggle with selling. Feel like imposters and cry. Burn out and swear we're not going to write again.
9. Go back to Step 1.

🤣🤣🤣

For Hotel Fen, we knew we wanted Norse mythology, a romance subplot, and to restrict the first book to one location so it's more manageable in scope. After some plotting, we came up with the base storyline: the "gods" are real, and two reincarnated lovers find each other again and have to deal with their past baggage and (because Norse mythology) Ragnarok.

Idea/plot generation is easy for us. We love the what if exercise and brainstorming. We even have alternate versions of our own trilogy. 🤣

Character Creation

We each create characters, starting with the protagonists and just going from there. That's simply how we work. Eventually we're comfortable enough to write about or from the POV of the other's character, but there's definitely a divide of sorts, and some characters are more mine than hers and vice versa.

For Hotel Fen, we agreed that she'd create the guy and I the gal. Then we just kept adding characters, building off from what the other brings to the table 🤪 It's really fun! Sometimes we deliberately split characters that are connected in some way (love interests or couples, close family members), but most of the time it's just dibs or a random "I THINK YOUR CHARACTER NEEDS A BESTIE" moment 🤣

Worldbuilding just naturally follows. I'm the one who creates moodboards and playlists. I also create and keep the documents with the lore and timelines and whatnot since I love to research.

We also do this thing where we facecast our characters 🤪 You might be surprised who our Odin is. I even make charts and family trees, because I'm Extra like that.

The Writing Part

We come up with enough of an outline to start writing, but often go back and expand on it as we go along. Our process is very chaotic 🤣

Because certain characters are "ours," we often start writing based on POV. But we also skip around a lot. Examples include:

• I would start a chapter but end up with a gaping hole in the middle. So I would leave her a message to say that words did not come to me for that scene or I just didn't know what to do. She would work on it while I'm sleeping (she's in the US), and viola, the chapter's done by my morning! Or vice-versa.
• She's better with descriptions. I often just link a picture of something and leave a note for her to work her magic. She knows what to do.
• I'm pretty good with dialogue, so it's become a thing for us where I go into something she's already written to add or reword some lines.
• She's the copyeditor, so I don't mind her fixing up my grammar lapses as we go along.
• We're in chapter 2. I feel a sudden burst of inspiration to write a very specific part of a scene in chapter 13, so I go and do it. And vice-versa.

Once we've clobbered a draft together, I go through it to smoothen the prose — so it doesn't sound like it's written by two people! Then she goes through a round of edits, after which we send off the manuscript to our editor (her mom!) and our betareaders.

Then we make one last round of revisions together. She usually makes the changes based on her mom's feedback since they live together and she gets them firsthand, while I deal with the beta revisions. We discuss and agree as needed, of course. Then I go through the manuscript one last time, and she goes through it one last time, before we consider it done.

Oh, and we use Google Docs for all this!

The Publication Part

She handles the formatting and the back-end stuff, because she's the one with the experience. (I only learned how to do that when I published Midnight Son this year.)

Our toxic trait is we release as soon as we're done, so we end up just posting "OH WE HAVE A BOOK NOW" 🤣 When we have something in pre-order, it's either because we finished it a few days before the date we said we'd have it done, or to force ourselves to finish by setting a deadline. (We're both procrastinators. We vibe there too 😅)

We still don't have a release system in place a trilogy later, but we've learned our lessons for sure. 😂

Royalties

First off: Draft2Digital now has the option to split royalties! Though it gets a little tricky with Amazon since those of us who are wide often use Amazon + D2D for everything else except Amazon. I'll come back in a couple of months to report on how it goes with our upcoming scifi fairytale anthology, as we're going the D2D route so we don't have to worry about royalty splitting.

Anyway, Meri and I are still doing things old school. She has the books uploaded on her end so she gets the royalties, then we split anything that's left after the costs 50-50. I know it takes a certain level of trust to do things this way, but we're there, so it's not an issue. 😇

We also always check with each other when something comes up and get the other's agreement. And we do actually have something in writing. 😉

Moving Forward

We might not be working on a new installment to the series (FOR NOW 🤪) but we're still both very busy! We've actually been talking a lot about what we learned from our releases, what we can do better next time, what we both want to achieve in the short and mid-term. It's a continuous learning process and we're still moving forward together even as we start doing our solo writing projects. We even did some kind of "strategic planning" just last week where we laid out our goals for the next year and specific action items. (I have corporate management experience thanks to my day job, so it was about time I put it to use. 😂)

Meri's great with in-person sales, so she's been selling our books in cons and fairs. She's also set up a Ko-Fi shop and soon she'll be on TikTok too! On the other hand, I'm mostly the social media person, hence why I'm more visible on Instagram and Twitter.

In Conclusion

I'll always be grateful to Meri for helping me make the leap to the published author life! It's been hard and it's been chaotic but it's also been really fun 🥰 I've learned so much, so here I am, hoping to impart something to others in turn! Whether it's just an idea of where/how to start, a burst of inspiration, or to answer questions about writing and publishing. (Yes, please leave any questions below 👇)

I'll be talking more about my writing journey in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more posts! In the meantime, you might also like to check out:

• It's Okay If You Don't Write A Novel