What is the similarities and differences between the individual writing process and collaborative writing processes?

Answer 1

Some people think that 'The writing process is the writing process; it does not change.' They believe that the only difference between the individual and collaborative writing processes are that ' Individual means by yourself; collaborative means working with other authors to create a work.' This is not true.

Actually, when we speak of the process of writing, we are referring to the different kinds of tasks that go into a writing project: things like brainstorming, gathering material, drafting and editing. When you are working alone, you have to do all of these things yourself. When you are working with others, sometimes you do these things yourself, and sometimes you share the work with others.

For example, you may get together to brainstorm what to write about with other people. Obviously, this fundamentally changes the process of brainstorming. Rather than an internal mental process, brainstorming becomes a kind of conversation.

Often in collaborative writing projects, people divide up the work, so different people might do different tasks. For example, one person might be responsible for the research, another might be responsible for drafting the document and another might be responsible for editing.

There are good and bad ways to divide up work. Dividing up work based on clearly defined stages or tasks seems to work quite well, especially if tasks are assigned based on different people's different talents. Trying to divide up one taks (e.g. researching or drafting) may not work so well. For example, if several different people are assigned to draft part of a document, the team has to deal with the additional challenge of putting together all of the pieces to form a coherent whole