Allow me to explain the situation. I am writing a story with my partner to publish in the future. I have a third friend of mine who was interested in joining the project and asked for a writing credit, but I disagreed as it was a story between me and my partner. My friend wanted to do feedback, so I agreed – but I told them me and my partner write the story.
The third friend does give feedback, but also gives new ideas that tend to affect the plot – sometimes significantly. He delivers them with such passion and persuasion that we sometimes incorporated them into the story before discarding them. Sometimes I felt pressuring into including these ideas, and I personally feel uncomfortable about this situation.
The thing that is bothering me is that despite advising him that me and my partner write the story and make the ideas, he keeps suggesting new ideas and concepts that invoke rewrites. One idea completely changed the main character and my partner is considering the change. This third friend talks to my partner without me, potentially about the story which I might find concerning. This has been severely crippling to my motivation to write the story because it might change again – potentially from scratch.
I felt like my third friend was going too far, so I confronted them about it as I felt conflicted and uncomfortable. He told me that they didn’t have to listen to his ideas, and that my partner seems receptive and potentially wanting to include them. I feel very uncomfortable about the whole situation. My third friend might be a third writer at this point but I’m not sure.
To summarize – I basically told him his actions were bothering me and communicated that I might not want him to influence the story anymore. Why I might be the jerk is because this is one of my trusted friend and I allowed him to do feedback. My friend also helped me though an abusive situation and him helping the story was my way of thanking him. Am I the jerk here?
Info
Are his ideas better than yours?
What do you mean? Are you asking my opinion or objectively?
“Hey friend, ive been really enjoying writing as a project with partner but its gotten to a stage where the feedback and concepts we’re getting is derailing the progress and negatively impacting the storyline by making us second guess ourselves before coming back around to the idea we already settled on. I know this isnt malicious, i am enjoying spending time with you but its becoming overwhelming and makes me not want to partake in my own passion project.
I was thinking that maybe we could have a seperate project for us all to work on together, something that can fully incorporate your ideas where we’d all have equal say and read eachothers iterations before combining the best of them.
I hope youve received this the way it was intended, I value you and your friendship has meant so much to me over the years. You have some really good ideas and interesting concepts to write about and they deserve to be fully explored which would be best to do on a clean slate with a new project where we’re all on even footing.”
NTA. People write a story with one other person all the time, but I have literally never heard of three people collaborating on a short story. I’m sure it happens, but it’s not common and for good reason. And it’s very normal to get feedback and critiques from multiple people; that doesn’t get someone a “writing credit.” It’s a short story, not a feature film. Your friend can write his own story instead of whatever he’s doing to yours.