Potentially Limitless Sounding Boards for Collaborative Development with Blogging

Have you ever heard of the book, Naked Came the Manatee? The book is a parody of mystery thrillers from 1996, published originally as a series in the Miami Herald’s Tropic magazine. Each issue contained just a single chapter of the book. Famed columnist Dave Barry wrote the first chapter, but each chapter after that was written by a different person. It fell to Carl Hiaasen to somehow conclude the book after all those different people brought their own influences to it, and of course each chapter had to be finished on time before the magazine issue could be put out. Any profits from the book were donated to charity… but the point was the collaborative development.

Collaboration is something many writers have no done. It is said that writing is fundamentally a solitary act, and that’s true for a lot of it. Most authors spend their time in solitude, writing away lost in the worlds in their heads. Sometimes, seeking human contact, they go where people are, like a coffee shop or some other public place. There they sometimes talk about their work or share their ideas, but mostly, they are alone with other people together.

This where collaborative development becomes important. We’ve shared at length how you can use your blogging audience to further your goals, give you ideas, research material, and so on. But did you know that you can actively collaborate with your own audience?

“A clear purpose will unite you as you move forward, values will guide your behavior, and goals will focus your energy.” – Kenneth H. Blanchard, Collaboration Begins with You: Be a Silo

The beauty of blogging is that you can choose how to engage with comments on your blog. You can post polls; you can ask for written submissions to an email address; you can confine all the responses to the comments. There are very few limitations. Leveraging your blog audience to work out new material, field ideas, and even collaborate with you after the style of Naked Came the Manatee can really opens up whole new worlds for you to explore as a writer. It will take you in directions you haven’t thought of.

I’m not saying everything you do has to be a ‘novel in the round.” If you’ve ever tried this type of writing with a single partner or many partners, you know what it can be like. Sometimes, they work great with you. Other times, they don’t pick up the threads you are putting down, which can result in an awkward back and forth. One chapter ends with, “And now… his very life was in danger.” The next chapter starts with, “Except that it wasn’t…” and so on.

When you work collaboratively with your audience, therefore, set some ground rules. Determine just how much input and control you want them to have. Determine your goals. Look at where you want to go… and then, with this framework established, set them loose.

I can’t stress enough the unpredictability of collaborating with your blog’s audience, because that’s the whole point. They will take you in directions you did not imagine because there is nothing quite like the power of multiple people with a common goal. They have different ways to get there… and that journey is what will make all the difference.

Don’t forget to have fun!

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*This blog was written 100% by a human and contains no AI-generated written content.