Could you write a novel with a friend?

What makes the whole premise even more interesting is that “Frances Wise” doesn’t really exist — the name is a pseudonym for two writers, academics Chloë Houston and Adam Smyth. Both are professors of English literature, Houston at Reading and Smyth at Balliol College, Oxford. In fact, it wasn’t so long ago that I was studying a module taught by Smyth. As we meet in a café in London, I have to shake off my memories of deciphering early modern handwriting (I don’t recommend it) and the hours spent in the special collections room of the Bodleian, armed only with a pencil and a dubious understanding of the library rules.

The pair met in 2007 when they both taught at Reading. But they stayed friends when Smyth moved on to Oxford, even going on camping trips together with their families. Then, in August 2022, Smyth upped the ante and organised a writing retreat at his home. “After the retreat had finished we got thinking about how it would be interesting to try and write as a pair,” Houston says.

Collaborative writing is no new thing — just look at crime, where husband and wife duos like Nicci French (Nicci Gerrard and Sean French) and Ambrose Parry (Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman) are storming the bestseller charts. It’s much less common in literary fiction, perhaps because of the importance placed on individual voice, although that might be changing. In 2022 friends Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams won the Goldsmiths prize for their jointly written novel Diego Garcia.

For Smyth, it’s a step in the right direction — and reflects his own work in Renaissance literature, when collaboration was rife. “Being early modernists, you have to be interested in, say, Eastward Ho written by Jonson, Chapman and Marston, and Pericles with Wilkins and Shakespeare,” he explains. “So it always seemed to me weird that at some point in the 19th century the novel gets linked very powerfully with a single author, to these post-Romantic ideas of voice, intention, expression, confession. That just always seemed to me inhibiting and limiting and weird.”

It’s all very well to channel Shakespeare and George Wilkins, but how do you go about writing a novel together in the 21st century? Does it involve hours of spying on the other person in the shared Google doc, watching them write a mediocre paragraph, then deleting it? They shake their heads, their eyes wide. “There was a decisive moment early on when I wrote something and then you edited it with track changes,” Smyth says to Houston. “I remember saying, we cannot do this, this is madness. So we just have to write and then edit as though it’s just ours without any kind of fear.”

Their solution? A Dropbox folder that only one of them could access at a time. “‘I’m going in’ was always the expression,” Smyth says with a laugh. They wrote early in the morning and late at night, the only times free of work and childcare obligations, and within seven weeks had a 50,000-word first draft.

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But surely there must have been bitter battles over phrasing, I say. “We did argue,” Houston concedes, “but not too badly.” Instead they were able to spot and eliminate each other’s writing tics, like, for example, Houston’s obsession with shoulders. “People were always squaring their shoulders or touching each other’s shoulders,” she confesses. “But I think shoulders do say something about your physicality, right? Right?” Smyth was having none of it.

Naturally they hold different views about their characters too. While Houston holds a fair bit of sympathy for the slightly ridiculous host Lawrence (“I sort of love Lawrence in spite of myself”), Smyth is scornful. “He hates him,” Houston says solemnly. Why? “Well, there is a definite, particular fiftysomething male type who performs that kind of liberal inclusivity, but then when the doors are closed behaves like a Victorian tyrant,” Smyth says, barely holding back a sneer.

I wonder how much of Smyth’s disdain for Lawrence is born from an anxiety about the things they might have in common. After all, the novel is based on a retreat hosted by Smyth (“Adam didn’t have a full timetable like Lawrence,” Houston clarifies). His home was used as the “floor plan” for the fictional Hawton Manor. Smyth even has his own printing press, just like Lawrence.

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Smyth displays none of Lawrence’s pomposity or insecurities, though. For both authors, the novel was something they had to squeeze in alongside a busy teaching career — but life on campus is changing. AI is a new threat, although at the moment, Smyth claims, it’s pretty easy to spot when students have used it. “If you want to get, like, a 52 [per cent], then you use AI,” he says. “My son’s in Year 10, and a GCSE history essay, that’s the level it’s quite good at. But it’s less good at writing about Tennyson or Middlemarch.”

The real difference AI is making is that it’s pushing universities back towards the traditional sit-down exam format, without any access to the internet. Smyth explains that at Oxford, “we were going to do more open book exams for finals. I was quite keen on that. But it got totally scuppered.”

Houston, on the other hand, would prefer a return to traditional exams, but thinks that even if AI cheating becomes a bigger problem, universities like Reading won’t be able to revert to the old ways. “Most universities don’t have the capacity now to put students back into rooms for exams. And some students will choose a degree path which allows them to avoid exams.”

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For now they’re briefly exiting the world of academia for that of publishing. Smyth has written one non-academic book before, The Book-Makers, a history of printed texts, so he has already experienced the ups and downs, including, of course, fan mail. “Someone sent me this really angry email saying, I like the book, but the hyphenation is a disgrace.” For Houston, though, it’s all new. “You know, you get a launch party,” she tells me. “That’s fun. My launch parties have almost always been in teaching rooms with a box of very warm wine.”

The Book Game by Frances Wise is published on Jun 5 (4th Estate £16.99). To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members