How do you avoid the problem of a collaborative work having separate voices?

Question

I've not done collaborative writing before, but I've read several works, and sometimes the text strikes me as having a split personality: some parts were clearly written by one author, while others were written by another. (Note: I would give examples, but I can't remember any off-hand because I'm a bit sleep-deprived at the moment!) So, the story itself is cohesive, but lacks a unified voice, so much so that it's distracting. Obviously, authors have very distinctive styles, and this can shine through very easily, so my question is really how do you ensure a unity of voice, or at the very least, incorporate the distinct voices of the authors in such a way that it isn't glaringly obvious that two different people were writing? Would this come down to the editing process, or should you look at structuring the story in such a way that it can accommodate these different voices e.g. different narrators, POV's etc.?

Answer 1

This comes mostly down to editing, as it is the editor's job to blend the two voices together so that it still comes off as one character or one narrator. If you wanted to build a story around the idea of using different writers then actually you could have a really cool project by incorporating the use of different points of view or different narrators. The most interesting idea off the top of my head would be a narrator with dissociative identity disorder, who naturally experiences different points of view or "voices".