Public Relations: Reviews & Interviews > Turn of the Screw monthly bonus feature section, August 2006 Interview

Jodi Payne and Chris Owen answer reader questions:

V: I really enjoyed Bareback - in fact that brought me to Torquere and opened up a whole new genre of reading for me. What's happening with the sequel?

Chris: I'm so pleased that I played a part in that! That's so cool, and I'm really glad to hear that you liked Jake and Tor so much. The sequel is a really family based story; in Bareback Jake found out a lot about family, both blood and chosen, and in Natural Disaster it's all brought home to him in a new and devastating way. The story is all done and going through the editor now, I'm pleased to say, and will be released in both e-book and print format in January 2007. I'm incredibly pleased with it -- not only because it's coming out and I get to share it, but also because I just love writing about those two. I hope you enjoy it!

Jodi: You will! ;-)

A: Is there a difference between writing serials and writing regular novels? And why did you choose to write Rough Draft mostly in the form of letters?

Chris: Not really, because Jodi and I tend to write all in one big splash, and that's how I work solo as well. Rough Draft was complete before we offered it as a submission for Turn of the Screw, as were all four books of the Deviations series. Rough Draft was written in letters because I was bored one day and literally posted on my journal that I wanted to write a story told through letters and was hoping someone would volunteer to write the other character with me. Jodi stepped up and after a few e-mail exchanges of "No, really?? YOU want to write with ME? For real? EEEE!" we got going. We'd never worked together before and we certainly had no plot in mind at the start. We got really lucky and very quickly discovered that we work well together and for there things have only blossomed.

Jodi: And here's where I laugh, because I actually found the experience completely different. With the letters, I would write several hundred words about Paul and his little world on the West Coast and then send it off in an email to Chris, who would respond to it from Gray's little world on the East Coast, and so on. Paul and Gray didn't influence each other's day to day lives, they rarely saw each other in person, and there almost no dialogue for a huge portion of the piece. I got many a surprise from Chris in my inbox because when you write like that you have no idea what might come back to you.

The Deviations series, on the other hand, was written in a more "ping-pong" fashion, usually line by line or paragraph by paragraph. Writing that way puts you right into the moment and each scene evolved and took shape as we wrote it. Often, we knew the scene we wanted to write but had no idea where Tobias and Noah would take it, so there were still some surprises. Because it was dialogue, though, Tobias and Noah could respond to each other immediately while the emotions and the sensations were fresh.

R: First of all congratulations on "Submissions" and "Rough Draft". I've enjoyed reading about Paul and Gray in "Rough Draft", and hope to see more of them in the future.

My question for August is; How does a writing 'team' work? Does one author "voice" one character and the other author "voice" the other? or do you both write for both characters? Also... Are you physically close to each other? or do you collaborate via Email? or IM? or telephone? Keep up the great work, and thanks for sharing your talents with us...

Chris: Thank you! Sadly, we are separated by pesky land masses. We're only one time zone off, though, so that really helps! We use a lot of different methods of writing, all dictated by Jodi's job. *grin* No, really, it's all a matter of timing. We prefer to work in chat for narrative, but something like Rough Draft really worked better in e-mail. Deviations was written mostly in chat, but also in journal posts on Live Journal that were locked so only we could see them (that was our daytime writing when Jodi had to go to that day job of hers that won't let her have AIM on her computer! They're kind of smart that way, darn them). We do the changes from our editor over the phone, and there were all kinds of random phone calls that started out as "OH! I have an idea and I must talk to you right now!" and then fell into, "So, how's your family?"

As for the characters, we pretty much lay claim to our boys and keep them. If I absolutely need her character to say something specific, or she mine, we ask permission or say 'Um, borrowing X for a moment, feel free to change if it's really not right, but this is what I'm going for..." There are side characters of course, and in Deviations in particular we both kind of passed around people that only turned up for a scene or two.

Jodi: Note that Chris said that my "job" did the dictating, not me, that should tell you something about our writing relationship right there. ;-)

We do have "our" characters, and we are sometimes even possessive or emotionally obsessive about them. For example, I recall one moment when Chris said something like "okay, for this scene to work for me Tobias must end up with the moral high ground", and I made sure that happened. However, we've never had a problem writing for the other person. I can't recall a single time that Chris wrote something for Noah that I said "um, no…", and I don't think Chris ever took issue with my running off with Tobias either. So while we've always reserved our right to veto, we were/are really in tune and have a great partnership that way.

M: Is there any chance you’ll do a pre-quel to Rough Draft about when Paul and Grey first met and got together?

Chris: Heh. Well, the story we wrote for this very feature is from the early days at school.... *grin* Hope that helps your curiosity a bit!

Jodi: Consider the feature flashback story a tease! I personally think that if we do anything at all it's far more likely that we'll write a sequel than a prequel. We both have a fondness for Paul and Gray, and we think about them every so often, so you never know!

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