One of the things I'm involved in at the moment is developing an opera with a friend who is a composer. (A bit left field, I know!) We've been at it for years now, batting ideas backwards and forwards, getting closer and closer to the story we want to tell. It's a very interesting process collaborating with someone who is not a writer of words, but a writer of music - and so approaches the storytelling aspect from a completely different perspective. Anyhow, the project was notched up quite a serious level last week as we had a meeting in the Royal Opera House with the guy who runs their ROH2 new opera development programme. His background is as a director, and there was another director present, both feeding other ideas into the project.

For me it was incredibly stimulating and challenging. At one point the ROH man, who is very much enamoured with film screenplay writing theory, said "structure IS story!". I had written the spine of a story, which was being deconstructed left right and centre - why does this happen? Should he do this? Do you need that? Isn't something missing here? The scenario I'd written stood up pretty well, and the main thing to come out of it were new elements that could be incorporated to help set things up and make things clearer for the audience.

The ROH guy had this benchmark, which was how would it come across to the Serbian in the back row. And he kept on reminding me that people might not catch all the words - so the story had to somehow be told outside the words. The story had to have an inevitability to it - as well as being totally unexpected. What we were trying to do was find the best way to tell the story we wanted to tell.

The music had a job to do, but so did the visual. The use of physical props etc. Anyhow, I've been reworking the synopsis/scenario, in the light of the meeting (which lasted from 11.00am to 4.30pm - we had lunch, but talked about the opera during lunch! - an intense day.) I think it's stronger now, and I've just sent it off to my composer, after some more to and fro-ing with him.

I feel that everything in the story is very buttoned down now, and there for a reason. It's a hell of a lot stronger for the day's meeting. When it comes to the actual writing, that should make it easier. It occurred to me that I like this way of working - cooking and analysing and refining the story structure before starting to write. It seems to be essential when you are working in a collaborative way and have to bring other people on board with your work (film and theatre). One of the things we kept coming back to was what was the essential story we were telling. What was the meaning of the story, what were we trying to say. It's then a question of making sure that everything that goes in contributes to the telling of that story.

Certainly all the narratives I've come across which are designed for a collaborative art form - plays, screenplays, opera plots and so on - seem incredibly bare bones, compared to fiction, because so much that I'd write into fiction is in those forms supplied by something or someone other than the author. (I think that's also why synopses are sooo awful for novelists to write: we're so horribly conscious of what we're leaving out.)

So I guess it's true, for an opera director talking to his librettist or the writer of the book (do operas have a book as musicals do?) that what he wants you to supply is literally the bare bones: the skeleton, the architecture, what fits with what in the story and how it articulates in the physiological sense): where the joints are and how they move. We think of 'story' as encompassing things like motivation and setting and so on, but in opera that's supplied by the music and the acting.

To change the metaphor, if architecture is frozen music, then surely music is liquid architecture? You're supplying the main forms: the spacing of the pillars so it'll stand up, the proportions of the wings and the central block, the way the windows punch through and punctuate the facade. Someone else is in charge of which kind of stone face it with, and the door handles, and the ducting for the aircon...

Emma

Did somebody say synopses? Garrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggh! (Falls to the floor frothing at the mouth and quivering uncontrollably).

Yes, I agree. When you read plays there is very little embellishment, is there? Hardly any description above the rudimentary except from the actual dialogue.

That opera sounds interesting. One day, I'd love to develop something I wrote into a piece of theatre.

JB

This sounds very interesting, very Robert McKee. My boyf. is a composer, so this is particularly interesting for me. I had considered writing a libretto with him but my heart really isn't in it. However, would love the name of your ROH contact if possible!

Yes, Leila - Robert McKee is spot on. Though he kept citing William Goldman.

Emma, the idea of liquid architecture is very interesting. What's interesting working with a composer is that you get instructions like, "Well, in that scene I want to have some set piece ensemble singing."

I'm very excited about the project (despite the pain of repeated synopsis writing, JB!) but at the same time I am supposed to be getting on with the next Porfiry novel. I think I might work best under pressure, which is why I have to take on too many projects.

Roger - that's pretty much exactly how I write. I have to be able to tell someone (usually my agent) the entire story all the way through and answer all the 'but why' and 'how come?' objections before I even start.

By the time I actually allow myself to start writing I'm frankly, desperate to write.

The plot, by the time I feel it's ready, should feel like a tangible object that I can actually pick up and examine from all angles, searching for the flaws.

I'm sitting here in a tiny little pousada on the almost-deserted Northeastern coast of Brazil, thinking every day about how Joshua feels about the other characters in the story and what's happened to him and how he'll react when It All Kicks Off in Book 3...

I've just got back from the States and they collaborate a lot there. TV shows, films, theatre is pretty much all done by committee. For the lonely old novelist it seesms so appealing.
There are also some novel writing teams but I don't know if that would work so well. You'd have to be so like minded no?
HB X

Hi Maria and Helen, the experience has made me look again at how I write novels. I'm at the same stage - story development - in the next book I'm writing, but it's all down to me. Now I'm trying to ask myself the questions I think need asking. The problem is as a lonely old novelist you fluctuate between complete self-doubt and, well, partial self-doubt. So every time you challenge one of your own ideas, you inevitably say, "yes, that's crap, what were you thinking?!" Whereas in a collaboration with others, people rarely say anything brutal or destructive at all - they just either blank your suggestion, or smile politely, or say hmm, that's an idea but what if we did X instead. Or, they really love what you suggest and get incredibly excited about it, to the extent that you can almost believe in it yourself. That never happens when you're on your own.

Two-author and team writing is getting more and more common in children's books - two-author in particular is fashionable at the moment.

Roger - I know what you mean. I have found - simply by experience = that my first idea usually is a cliche, the second is obvious, the third might start to get interesting...by the fifth iteration I have it down, usually.

So for example - if a character is going to get abducted - who? Which character's abduction would impact most on the MC...that takes a while to think through. But that can be improved, give it a few days reflection. What could be the circumstances of the abduction be, to get prime dramatic effort? How about a brutal row, minutes before the character is ripped away from the MC?

So a simple idea - a character is abducted as the inciting incident - can take days to give up a really decent turning point. Some people might get this right away. With me it takes days AT LEAST. In my head I hear my agent's voice going...'but so what? why should I care?'

I think that's the single most useful challenge question during plotting - WHY SHOULD I CARE? Reader is bored, tired, has other things to do, is a ten-year old boy (in the case of many of my readers). Why should they care?

And endings take the MOST thought of all. We've talked about that elsewhere.

Seriously talented folk like Stephen King claim simply to discover the already existing story...but obviously they do all this planning in their head, maybe even unconsciously.

I know PJ Tracey are in fact a mother and daughter team.
Can you think of anything less likely to work than writing with your bloody Mum?
HB x

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6545682.html?nid=2788

is a related story.

And everyone knows that neither Lennon nor McCartney ever wrote anything so good after they split. Even if a Beatles song was mainly one or t'other, it's still collaborative when you've got someone else's ideas and opinions darned in with your own all the time...

Emma