LEVIATHAN WAKES and collaborations

Ty Franck, one half of the gestalt entity known as James S.A. Corey, has blogged about how he and co-writer Daniel Abraham went about writing the book and its forthcoming sequels.

"Over the course of the week, we write the chapters we discussed. At the next meeting, we exchange our chapters and do a read and first pass edit of the other person’s work. Daniel winds up adding a lot of sensory detail to my sections. My eyes tend to glaze over when reading descriptive detail, so I have a hard time remembering to add it in my own work. And when I edit Daniel’s sections, my most common edits are to details that keep the technology, if not plausible, at least consistent. Though, that is only in general. I’ve made prose changes to some of Daniel’s stuff, and he’s caught me in more than one inconsistency and fixed it."

Some other interesting stuff there, such as how the book evolved out of a roleplaying game setting. Well worth a look.