In one of my current Works, I am playing with the thought of writing a few chapters from a woman's persepective. Now, since I am a man, I know next to nothing about what goes on in a woman's head.
I have been thinking about finding a co-writer, but I don't know how to go around this. It has to be someone who can relate and write/possibly develop the character as well.
Has anyone here used co-writers? If so, how was the working experience and how did you find this "secondary" writer?
I meant his second novel 'A thousand splendid suns and 'difficult to relate to' not for elate to. I really wish one could edit's one's mistake-I received a call and pressed enter almost instinctively-apologies
What an interesting discussion-Dor and Alice, I loved your answers.
I felt really frustrated recently when someone reviewing my work said it was clearly written by a woman-and being a man, he couldn't relate to many of the things. I didn't particularly want to be a woman at that point, his feedback drove me up the wall, all I wanted was that you understood my MC's POV. My MC is a woman and it is written in first person. I wrote from that point of view as it is my first novel-and that was how the idea came to me. One of my favourite authors always writes from male POV, as he says he can only do that way truthfully, he cannot occupy a woman's head and also not many character POVs at the same time.
It is a personal choice, I think and Alice and Dor summarise it sublimely.
Khaled Hosseni's first novel 'The kite runner' was written from a child's POV and was about very distressing circumstances-he did it so well-I struggled to read it. And then 'A thousand splendid Suns' from a woman's POV and also about circumstances that are difficult for elate to and yet so convincingly done. He gave an interview about gender POV on Goodreads-look it up. He is an inspiration. Perhaps one day, I will write from a male POV.
I once co-wrote a novel-length book with a friend. Admittedly, this type of arrangement was more for 'fun' and not meant to be taken too seriously, but I'll say that in my limited experience writing something with someone else is awful. The product of our labours was a complete embarrassment. I think that if your co-writer is a friend - which is likely - it's hard to tell them that you don't like something. At least, that's what we found.
As Dor and A Fox have said above, I think that one of the things about writers is their ability to portray different people of whom they perhaps have little experience. Women have written very convincing male characters and men have written very convincing female characters. People have written stories from the points of view of people very different from themselves - I don't think anyone would want to co-write a book with a murderer or Alzheimer sufferer, yet there are successful 'examples' of both in many books out there. Nobody knows exactly what's going on in somebody else's head, even somebody of the same gender. Try and 'get to know' your character a little more and you shouldn't have a problem.
Good luck :-)