A Question about Crossovers

So for all the veterans out there, how do you guys go about creating crossover. I mean, do you guys go out of character during e-mail conversations or actually meet up in person or what?

I'm hardly a veteran, but I've done a couple of crossovers. For the stuff I've done I just e-mailed back and forth with the other creator. It's fastest to start out of character and go from there. If you're doing a crossover try to plan it far in advanced of when it is actually going to take place (or at least be retold on your blog), that was a mistake I made with both of mine that resulted in me staying up until about 3 a.m. playing e-mail tag for a few days in a row. Also, try to be as detailed as possible in the creation process, even if it doesn't all come out in the post, plenty of it can be referanced later, or used in comments section.

The most I done was the brief interview with Freedomcaged above me. Yeah just emailed back and forth followed by using some skype.

It is quite fast to start it off out of character. At least for me it was. It just helped to sort things out better. I don't know how others done it, but that was easier and quicker for me.

And yeah, some advanced preparation probably would really help. the tour and interview crossover was literally just spur of the moment.

Hopefully some of the others involved in the bigger crossovers post here, they should have some great advice for you.

I've personally always just done everything over Skype and out of character.

For the most part, my crossover planning strategy is as follows:


Discuss the basic details of the event with the other party(ies)
Once we have a the basic outline of how things should take place, each write out their own post
Read each other's posts
Discuss changes that should be made
Edit posts
Final check before actually publishing posts


Or, something like that. That's really probably not a very good description of the process now that I look at it. But that's sort of the basic gist of how it works. The only time I actually do anything in character is if we need to do an RP for a specific scene.


I do have to concur that you should try to do it as much in advance as you can. The first couple crossovers I did on my current blog were all done rather hastily, mostly due to certain characters happening to be in the right place to meet up and so planning had to be done quickly. One of those had me creating a plot hole that took me about five months to finally go back and tie up.

Now, if you want advice from some of the really big crossover people... you'd probably have to get in the creator's chat, as most of them don't come around the forums much.

First things first: it is nearly impossible to do a good in-character crossover. This is because a good crossover requires a bit of complexity that you can't discuss without brainstorming, and you can't brainstorm in-character. It's MAYBE possible for people to do a crossover through in-character contact/e-mails/etc, but it's not a good idea to have the characters actually meet up and interact without going out-of-game.

For dialogue-heavy crossovers, a large part of what I do is done through Skype RPs. Skype is the best way to get in contact with most bloggers, and RPs allow both of you to write your own characters. It's always best to have a general plan beforehand, though.

For something a bit more long-term that doesn't require RPing things, I usually brainstorm with the people involved, and then the person who's writing up the post writes up the post and sends it to whoever else is involved for approval.

Please note, though, that the way you're doing this implies that you're wanting to do crossovers for the wrong reasons. You should NEVER do a crossover unless you think it will add to the story. I police my crossovers very carefully, because I'm focused on telling my own story, not on telling everyone else's. If you're planning on crossing over because you want to cross over, please don't.

If you must, though, it's best to find people willing to cross over. For example, I'd never cross over with your blog, because I don't feel like it fits into what I can consider my canon and a crossover with your blog wouldn't add anything to my story. Even some of my favorite blogs (like Fabulous) I wouldn't cross over with, just because it'd be pointless. You really should never cross over unless it adds something.

Doesn't stop some people, of course -_-