When most authors first start writing, they dream of entering bookshops
and seeing rows of shelves full of books with their names on them. This
is all well and good but not everybody is going to be able to get the
first manuscript that they submit accepted by a publisher and in the
meantime, aspiring authors still have bills to pay. Okay, so J.K. Rowling might have got the first book that she ever sent off picked up by an agent and gone on to become the biggest name in children’s books but
stories like hers are few and far between. The reality is that authors
often need to earn a living writing books that they get no credit for
throughout the early stages of their career, which lots of people don’t
particularly like but can mean the difference between biding your time
until you can class yourself as a professional writer and making enough
to get by whilst waiting for your big break.
Finding Somebody to Write For
There are two ways that ghost-writers can
earn money: they can either charge people for their services or only
take on projects that they feel have a strong likelihood of getting
published and then take a percentage of the advance and royalties in
payment for their work. The second option is a little bit more risky, as
it can often be difficult to tell what types of stories publishers are
looking for, but can work out favourably if your client is a celebrity
or has a particularly fascinating life story. It is advisable not to
pick the person who you are going to write for solely based upon the
amount of money you think that they are capable of generating though
because you also need to consider the practicalities involved in writing
for them.
In his book Ghostwriting, Britain’s
most successful ghost-writer Andrew Crofts warns that ghost-writers can
often find themselves having to dissuade their clients from ringing
publishers up and ranting at them when they can’t find their book in the
shops. He also says that ghost-writers frequently have to calm their
clients down when the front cover of the book is not to their liking. It
is therefore important to pick somebody that you think is going to be
easy to work with and unlikely to kick up a fuss about every little
detail.
The Nitty Gritty
Once
you have found a suitable client, the next step is to decide the best
method for getting their story out of them. Some ghost-writers prefer to
get their clients to write their stories out in a rough form and then
merely reword it for them. Others hold the view that the person that
they are writing for might not necessarily know which details are
important to include. These writers favour interviewing their clients
about every aspect of their lives. This is usually done using a
Dictaphone, although there are cases when the client might be wary about
being recorded, for example if he or she is a retired criminal who is
writing a true crime memoir or a celebrity who has been involved in a
scandal. In these cases, it may be best to write the answers down.
Once
you have conducted all the necessary research, it is finally time to
put pen to paper and see what you can come up with. Make sure to use the
type of language that you think that your client would use but avoid
including colloquialisms or dialect that the public might not be
familiar with. It is important to get feedback from your client after
every couple of chapters because otherwise you might get all the way to
the end of the book only for them to tell you that you have failed to
capture the essence of their character. How you write will determine how
they are perceived when the book is released, meaning that they will
usually have a lot to say about your style.
What to Do if it All Goes Wrong
One of the pitfalls of ghost-writing is that your client can suddenly
decide at any moment that he or she no longer wishes to continue with
the book. This can be a source of intense worry if you have nearly
finished it but doesn’t necessarily mean that all is lost. In Ghostwriter,
Andrew Crofts states that in certain circumstances it can be advisable
to release a client’s book even if they have told you that they no
longer want to bring it out. He suggests rewording it so that it reads
as a biography rather than an autobiography. Another option is to use
the material that you have written for a different purpose, for example
you could convert a celebrity memoir into a series of articles about the
subject’s life. Hopefully the process will run smoothly and there will
be no need for these contingencies but it is best to always be prepared
for the worst.
Written by Evelyn Anderson