We would throw characters in, hand them off when we got stuck.
We'd rewrite each other, footnote each other's pages, sometimes even footnote each other's footnotes. We'd plot, delightedly, and then hurry off the phone, determined to get to the next good bit before the other one could. Nine weeks of gloriously long phone calls, in which we would read each other what we'd written, and try to make the other one laugh. We wrote the first draft in about nine weeks. Terry had borrowed all the things about me that he thought were amusing, like my tendency back then to wear sunglasses even when it wasn't sunny, and given them, along with a vintage Bentley, to Crawleigh, who had now become Crowley. Terry took the first 5,000 words and typed them into his word processor, and by the time he had finished they were the first 10,000 words. This BBC website 4 offers an interview with Neil Gaiman, where he says mostly the same things: Since the Internet was not a thing back then, they would exchange their drafts in the form of floppy disks.
Then we'd go footnoting each other's bits, and adding gags Mad dash to get to the next good bit before the other one could They would discuss the plot on the phone, and then it would be a They had divided the characters 2, 3 - Gaiman wrote the parts with the four Horsepersons (before they get to the air base, at which point Pratchett took over), and Pratchett wrote the parts with Agness Nutter's execution and Them (before they set for the air base, at which point Gaiman took over) - but by the end each had written some parts for each character. They state in the introduction to the book 5 that Gaiman had more influence on the beginning of the book, while Pratchett had more influence towards the end. He sent it to Pratchett (among other people), and the latter said he wanted to know how it ended, so he proposed Gaiman either sells him the idea of the book, or they write it together. Some time after, Gaiman had a short story (5000 words) 2, but he did not know how it ended. Gaiman met Pratchett during an interview - he claims he was the first person ever to do an interview with Terry Pratchett. Pratchett had only begun the Discworld cycle, and had only Colour of Magic published and The Light Fantastic about to be published. Gaiman hadn't written any novels at that time (okay, one novel - Don't Panic, a companion to H2G2).
In fact, they make this point multiple times - in the introduction to the book and elsewhere - that they were not " the Terry Pratchett" and " the Neil Gaiman" 1. "two authors who are each well-known and have distinctive styles in their own right" - not according to them.
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