There may be no “I” in team, and usually, there isn’t an author either. Authors have long prized their authority, enjoying total control not only over their writings, but also control over the reader’s experience.
Novelists and others who have made the trip to Hollywood know too well the challenge – they must accommodate their imaginations to the exciting yet confining realities of a studio back lot. In 2014, writers have app developers and not movie moguls to wrestle with, yet the problem is the same: How is an author to remain true to her tale? From Melbourne, Australia, fantasy novelist J.J. Gadd reminds CCC’s Chris Kenneally that content collaboration has a long and rich history.
“You can’t possibly learn all the technologies that are out there in order to create this work that you’ve got building up inside you, so you have to narrow down which is going to work best – which technology will work best for my book,” she explains. “And then you face this reality that, because you can’t create it by yourself, you’re going to then have to look at creating as part of a team. And that’s something that I think a lot of authors haven’t thought about before.”
JJ Gadd worked as a journalist and magazine editor for 15 years before writing the Lunation Series, published by Harper Voyager. Her essay on Team-Produced Stories first appeard in Digital Book World.
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