Creative writing: How do you co-write a novel?

When a book goes out into the wild there’s nothing more an author can do except wait with trepidation. Thousands of words you’ve spent so many months writing, honing and editing are about to come under impartial scrutiny for the first time. Readers out in the real world, as opposed to the polite and supportive offices of your publisher, are honest – sometimes brutally so.

Early reviews generally appear on book blogs or on NetGalley when an advance copy has been sent out in return for unbiased appraisal. It would be an almighty fib to say that authors don’t refresh Google (other search engines are available) from the moment they hear that their novel is in flight to see what people think.

Given that The Blackbirds of St Giles is based on a little-known aspect of London’s past, we were doubly anxious. The story is centred on the real Black community who lived in a notorious slum, The St Giles Rookery, in the Georgian era. We were determined to bring them to life in an authentic, sensitive way to honour the real men, women and children behind our fictional characters.

Fortunately, Blackbirds garnered some fantastically positive early reader reviews, which enabled us to stop biting our nails and breathe a sigh of relief. One of them (a satisfying five-star belter) posed this question:

'I’m always amazed by dual-written books. Do you write one chapter each? One character each? Do you each write the whole thing and then merge them together? Does one write it and the other edit? The logistics of it baffle me.'

Good questions! And ones we’ve been asked at every stage of the project. People are fascinated by writing duos, and, like the reviewer quoted above, they are interested in the mechanics.

In our case the germ of the idea came from our agent, Eugenie Furniss, whose attention was caught by a conversation during which the historic St Giles Rookery - and more specifically its Black inhabitants - was mentioned. It was she who brought us together and asked if we might write a novel based on the idea that 18th-century London had a hidden Black history.

Although we had never worked together, Eugenie rightly suspected that we would hit it off and that our different interests and skills would make for a good mix. One of us, Marcia, is the daughter of Jamaican migrants to the UK who were part of the Windrush Generation. A former lawyer and publisher, she has a forensic interest in Black history and at - the time of our first meeting - was developing as a writer*.  Former journalist Kate was already a published author with a passion for people, history and for London.
Knowing our strengths, Eugenie surmised that we might take this idea and ‘fly’ with it. And she was right, but as neither of us had co-written a book before we had to negotiate the way ahead.

Blackbirds began to take shape in the second Covid lockdown – those long dark days when Christmas was cancelled. As we live 200 miles apart, meeting up was impossible. Many, and we do mean many, hours were spent on Zoom where, wine glasses in hand, we slowly pieced together the core components of our story.

As a first step we individually undertook some research into the 18th-century rookery and its likely inhabitants. It’s an old trope that history is written by the victors, but in this case the trope proved to be true as very little information exists. But what we did discover was bleak indeed. These people were terrifyingly poor. Black or white, there was nowhere further to fall for London’s despised and dispossessed.

After comparing notes, we created a set of characters likely to inhabit this harsh place and the wider world of 18th-century London. We developed a rich mix of personalities that we became passionately attached to. Once we realised that we were squabbling about them all as if they were our children, we knew it was time to weave a story around them.

Again, we did this in a series of Zoom sessions, each of us presenting plot ideas that sparked off even more inspirations and exciting avenues for our characters to explore. Sometimes our brains – and our tongues – worked so fast that we could hardly keep up with each other, but somehow, after each session (and despite the wine) we both managed to summarise the key points and swap notes so that nothing was forgotten.
Importantly, we agreed that we had to add hope to the darkness of history. We were so invested in our principal characters that we could not allow them to fail. Siblings Daniel and Pearl are at the heart of Blackbirds but having escaped enslavement they are about to discover the cost of freedom.

After a month we had co-written a detailed framework for their story. Exciting as this was, it was also the moment when we had to think practically and strategically about the way forward.

How would we do it?

The answer was surprisingly simple. At one point during a particularly lively Zoom exchange, Marcia exclaimed: ‘This is feels like something by Dickens, but with Black characters.’ That was our ‘eureka’ moment, encapsulating exactly what we should aim for in terms of the atmosphere and structure. But to make that work it needed one author voice for consistency and coherence. Given her background and writing experience, we decided that of the two us, Kate was best placed to breathe life into the framework and detailed character profiles we had written together, information that already filled 70 pages!

One chapter a week was a workable goal. Every Friday Kate emailed a first draft to Marcia who edited, refined, polished and added to it. In particular, Marcia brought what can openly be described as a Black perspective to the manuscript.

So, what did we learn about co-writing? Distilled to five (hopefully) helpful bullet points, we would say:
●    Listen to each other
●    Learn from each other
●    Respect each other
●    Check-in with each other properly (meet up, Zoom or chat on the phone) to make sure you’re on the same page literally and metaphorically
●    Make sure your technology matches – we learned this the hard way ; )

And then...?  

Well, when we finally came up for air, blinking in the cold light of our computer screens, we were amazed. After 14 months of writing, re-writing, editing, arguing, excising and adding, we had a book we were proud of.  In some peculiar way the finished manuscript seemed to have appeared as if by magic. It belongs to us both, and yet to neither of us, existing in the liminal imagination of Lila Cain.**

Returning to the questions posed by that early generous reviewer, all the scenarios she imagined played a part in the writing of our novel. It truly was a joint creation, but if pressed to explain, it would not be untrue to say that Kate is the wings of The Blackbirds of St Giles and Marcia is the fluttering heart… and we are already co-writing a sequel.

*Marcia’s debut solo novel, The Mercy Step, will be published in July 2025 and had been featured as one of the Observer’s ten best debut novels of 2025
**Lila Cain is an amalgamation of the name of Marcia’s daughter and Kate’s maiden name.

The Blackbirds of St Giles by Lila Cain is published by Simon & Schuster (£18.99)

If you're interested in co-authoring a book, read more about the process from writing duo Ben Creed