: How can I keep up with my co-author's detail creation? Keeping track of details invented for a work of fiction is never simple, often requiring writing bibles and continuity editors. But when

My own habit is to use either Dropbox or Google docs to store what I refer to as "lore files." Each file contains all current details for a particular category: cities, characters, items, species. When making a minor change, the files are changed directly. If it is a major change or addition, it is added to a discussion file, to be added later. Before referencing something in your writing, simply check the lore file for that item. While this requires a bit of work keeping everything up to date, I find that the work translates directly into making the end result as congruous as possible. Additionally, it can help to record in the lore files the locations of references to the entry in your writing. This way when a change is made to the lore, it is easy to find chapters and pages that may be affected by the changes. Again, a lot of "not writing work," but in personal experience, it helps immensely.

As a slight aside, these lore files can also be helpful if you feel the need to include an index or release a sort of encyclopedia to your book. :)

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Another suggestion would be to use some sort of distributed source control system to keep track of the changes that you each make.

Dropbox

Dropbox has built in source control, so you can roll back to previous changes, and it is fairly simple to use. Their Terms of Service kind of trouble me, but I may have donned my tinfoil hat in recent years.

Benefits

Easy to use
Easy to get started
Track changes
Syncs to multiple machines, making backups easier

Drawbacks

Your work is stored on someone else's servers
May not be able to see fine-grained changes easily

Git

If you're decently technical, something like git might be a better option, as you can easily see differences between check-ins, and keep track of who is changing what. As a programmer, I use git every day, and that sort of mindset has become second nature to me. This is beneficial when you're working with 10 other programmers/designers, and you need to keep track of who is doing what.

This would also give you the benefit of keeping all of the content on your own systems, making sure that it's not inadvertently copyrighted by some other entity.

The downside might be that Git was designed to work with non-binary files (such as flat text files), rather than proprietary Word files (or other proprietary file formats), so the change tracking might not be best used with Word files.

Benefits

Track changes at a fine-grained level
Your content is always in your possession
Allows you to keep multiple branches of the same work
Keep multiple versions in local source control before committing to the main repository
Don't have to keep multiple, differently-named files to track versions
Tons of resources to get you started, and keep things going
Many GUI application options to choose from, regardless of the operating systems used by the contributors

Drawbacks

Works best with non-binary file formats
Requires more technical knowledge to learn and get setup

See what other writers here on the site think about using source/version control with their writing in this question.

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The first step I would suggest is to develop a timeline and then place your characters on that timeline. It would be better if each of you is writing from the perspective of a different character, because then you wouldn't have to worry so much about what the other person is writing.

It would also help to periodically exchange content so that you can see what the other person is doing. If they have a significant event happening that your character should know about, then you'll be able to react to that. (For example, if your character sees a pink glow around the moon, and both of you are writing about characters in the same city/region, then your co-author should probably comment on how their character sees it as well.

This would be easier if you have a detailed outline that identifies any critical bits of information. Define your setting for each scene/chapter, and document any major events happening in that scene. If there are fireworks going off, then each character might describe them from different perspectives.

The main point is to document as much as you can up front. Then if either of you goes in a different direction and decides to add something big, then just communicate that to your co-author.

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