Collaboration Briefs

I know there are folk that haven’t heard from me yet, sorry, I will get to you! Please be patient.

The one thing I’ve refined is the brief. I feel getting everyone on the same page is insanely important at the start. I always worry it sounds super serious, but most people comment on how helpful the first email is. Awesome.

Set out your goals together. Outline what you want from the person/people involved. If you need to set deadlines at the beginning, do so in the brief. Ensure everyone knows of any word counts, genres, post types, social media sharing requirements and required image sizes are laid out from the start.

Someone once asked me to collaborate with them giving almost no guidance. “Draw me an image showing *XYZ*,” he asked. So I did. Took me 30 minutes, scanned it, sent it over. He replied, “not enough colour.”

God damn. Could you not have told me that before I spent 30 minutes drawing something for you? Suffice to say, I walked away from that one.

The flip side of this. If you send someone a specific set of instructions and they ignore them, send you completely unwanted content or repeatedly ask you questions answered in the brief, you know that collaboration will be more trouble than it’s worth.

I’m still taking names for collaborations, but that’s not the aim of this post. If you want to collaborate with me, please email me at fears@gmx.co.uk BEFORE you write anything. I don’t mean that to sound rude or mean, but, well… You know…

The aim of this post is meant to be informative and a sharing of a process. With that, I thought I’d share my current brief for the Sunday collaborations. This goes out in an email to everyone who’s interested in collaborating with me. It changes over time. People ask questions on all sorts of things and I adapt my initial email to include all answers I can.

Feel free to copy/cut/paste/tear apart/rehash for use anywhere for yourself. I figure it’s helpful to see how people run collaborations.

Dear Sir/Madam/Alien/Demon/Puppdawg

(Something personal to each collaborator goes in this space, and then…)

The Goal

I’m trying to break up my constant telling of my own tales by bringing in a Sunday collab in which readers submit their own fearful tales. I love what I do, I just want to mix it up a bit. As for yourself, I’m hoping this will be a fun jaunt into the Fears world for yourself and give you a bit of exposure (urgh, the E word!).

The Collab

I’d love for you to write a story up to 512 characters long. I’ll draw the panel and make a video for the story. I post it to the LittleFears.co.uk and share it across all my social media. I’ll include links to your blog or social media of your choosing in every post.

The Story

There’s no specific genre I would like. Humor, kooky, philosophical and horror all fit. Whether it has a punchline or not, if you could imagine it being an episode of the Twilight Zone, Outer Limits or Black Mirror, then your spot on.

The length should be under 512 characters. It’s not an arbitrary limit. But I’m hoping this can be fast and fun for both of us. No 12 page essays are required.

You’re more than welcome to use my characters or make up your own. The only characters that I do not want a story written for are Copper and Iron because they’re part of an ongoing story.

Once it’s written, get it over to me via email, social media direct message or however else you fancy.

The Image & Video

I’ll then draw up a panel for the story and email it to you. If you’re happy with it, I’ll make a video. I’ll email you the audio along with social media specific panels (such as a Pinterest long image). If everything is good with you, we’ll get onto posting.

The Scheduling & Post

When all the contents made and agreed we can decide what Sunday we want to post it. If you want to post the story, image and video on your blog too, we can schedule a specific time and synchronize the posting with links to each other’s posts.

In the post, I’ll include a link to your blog/social media of choice. When the story is posted, I’ll share it across all of my social media with links to you in everyone. My total audience is about 80k followers and subscribers, so I’ll hope you get a bit of exposure from it (urgh, the E word again!).

If you would like to include a link to my site or share the post across your platforms, that’d be awesome, but certainly not required.

The Next Bit

If you’re up for this, please do let me know and start writing a story. Again, any questions, queries or anything else, please do drop me a line and a query.

Thanks

Peter

Not being melodramatic… Honest…

Cheers. Erm. /endpost?

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