Working Together

Since Becoming Finnigan was released, we’ve been surprised by the number of people who are curious about our team-approach to writing. We talked about how Becoming Finnigan became in a previous post, but that was just one aspect of our collaboration as writers.  We’ve been writing together – and separately - for almost as long as we’ve known each other. Our collaborations have included journalism, screenplays and novels.

Back in the mid 1970s when we both worked for the Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, NJ, apartment buildings were popping up everywhere and along with them were a stream of apartment building fires and tenants rights issues.  We decided separately – but at the same time - that it was an issue to be looked into, and we ended up looking into it together.  We won a New Jersey Press Association award for interpretive reporting for our joint efforts. 

During that first writing project, Karen outlined the stories she thought should be included in the series.  We decided who would do which story and after we’d written a first draft, we passed it along to the other person for comments.

Later, we started writing screenplays together.  One of us would come up with an idea and then we’d brainstorm about what could happen – sometimes with unexpected results such as the time we were having lunch at our favorite pizza joint and one of us asked, “How shall we kill Vanessa?” You could almost hear the heads turning in our direction. That, of course, led to another story idea. “What if someone overheard two writers plotting a fictional murder and thought they were planning a real murder?” We are always asking “what if?” and talking out the possibilities.

In Becoming Finnigan, Karen wrote a novella that Tony expanded into a full-length novel.  We passed it back and forth so many times that we often couldn’t remember who wrote what.

With all of our fiction – screenplays and novels – we always read what we think is the finished product aloud.  It helps us hear clinkers.  And sometimes we find ourselves reading something other than what is on the page – a clear sign we need to change it.

Writing together has always come easy to us even though the process changes depending on what we are writing.  And when we ask ourselves why, it always comes down to three things:

·        We have complementary skills. Karen tends to write spare, pay attention to detail and likes convoluted storylines and getting inside characters’ heads.  Tony loves history, putting things in context and embellishing.  We both constantly ask “what if?”

·        We respect each other as writers. This lets us speak freely and honestly without worrying about hurting the other person’s feelings.

·        We always put the story first.  This lets us get rid of things we love that don’t advance the plot or reveal the characters.