Hive-mind writing: how two children’s authors brainstormed a book on Twitter

They had never met and lived 3,000km apart, but Zana Fraillon and Bren MacDibble conspired online to write a YA pandemic novel – well before Covid hit

It’s a chilly night in Melbourne and children’s and young adult fiction writer Zana Fraillon is trying to write dialogue for her character. She’s stuck. Instead of making more coffee, she’s hitting up Twitter for some ideas. It’s a hive-mind moment.

Fraillon posts asking her writer buddies for help: “My WHOLE book relies on me discovering the next line.”

Of that night back in 2019, Fraillon says: “I was working on a novel, and I was having a plot problem. I’m not big on social media but I posted a question on Twitter to all the writers out there, asking, if this is the situation, where can I go with this?”

To read the full article on theguardian.com, click here