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You have a book inside you. The story, the knowledge, the expertise built up over years of experience it's all there, waiting to get out. And yet somewhere along the line, most people stall in their process of sharing their book with the world. They understand the difference between having an idea and actually writing a book.
This is where professional ghostwriting comes in handy. Having an understanding of the ghostwriting process will help authors to determine whether or not this is the right option for them, and what to expect along the way. Ghostwriting isn't some sort of black box that takes an idea and returns a finished manuscript, with no real process of getting from Point A to Point B.
Many assume that having a ghostwriting service means hiring someone to type. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually constitutes professional ghostwriting. Ghostwriting services are inherently collaborative: your experiences, ideas, knowledge, voice and goals are the foundation of everything that a writer will use to create your book.
A professional ghostwriting service means that the person doing the writing will be temporarily embedded in your project. They're not just transcribing your ideas or following an outline. They're interviewing you, researching your subject, getting to know your views, learning your voice and taking in enough information that they can write authentically in your voice about your idea.
Any good ghostwriting process begins with an understanding of the fundamentals of the author's idea. Before a professional writer starts writing chapters, there is plenty of time spent figuring out exactly what it is you want to write about.
In this stage, a writer and author talk about the fundamentals of your book idea. What's it about, fundamentally? Is it a story from your life, a story of your business, about exploring specific themes in your life, or about something completely else? What's it that you want readers to take with them when they've read your work?
You'll also talk about who you're writing for. Are you writing for other executives in your industry, for people suffering from the same issues in life you hope to resolve, for a specific niche group of people, or for a very general audience? The fundamental nature of your book really defines how it will ultimately take shape.
There are many different approaches that can be taken, and your ghostwriter should work with you to figure out which approach will yield the best results. Many projects begin with structured interviews; others may be a series of more casual conversations that will be recorded and reviewed later on. You may be asked to complete some extensive questionnaires that will help to jog your memory and guide you through certain topics relevant to your book. Some people bring in existing materials such as journals, presentations, documents and recordings that will help the ghostwriter to better understand your voice or your topic.
This stage is often what makes the difference between a well-crafted ghostwriting process and a rushed, half-baked version of one. Before a serious amount of writing begins, a writer and author build an in-depth blueprint of the entire book. Depending on what you're writing, this could take many different forms. Writers of fiction books begin this process by outlining exactly what their book will be about. Memoirs take a similar approach, except that it's about building a book around your experiences in life, as opposed to building a book around invented characters and a made-up world. Business and self-help books are often built as a progression of ideas, building on themselves to move your reader or listener from Point A to Point B.
Why do you need to spend time on this, you ask? Because turning hundreds of pages of material and conversations into a book really does require blueprints of sorts! Once you have an outline of your book, or some other sort of detailed plan, the writing itself can begin in earnest.
It's true that good ghostwriting services rarely turn out books that sound like any other book on the market. But it's also true that a good ghostwriting service should reflect, at least partially, the voice of the author it's representing. The ghostwriting process should allow for a manuscript that reflects a writer's voice.
Ghostwriting services that do this well end up with manuscripts that sound like they could have been written by virtually anybody. That's not a good or a bad thing, necessarily, but it's how the nuance of the author's voice gets reflected in the text.
With writing in earnest, the ghostwriting process begins to get a little more intensive. The writer takes all of the material that has been collected and puts it together into a coherent manuscript of chapters, sections and words.
This first pass at the manuscript doesn't have to be perfect, or even close to being good enough for publication, but it should include everything that's necessary. All of the material that's been collected will be organised in a way that reflects the plan that's been developed together by the writer and the author, written in the voice that has been determined or learned by the writer and presented in a reasonably professional way.
The communication that takes place during this stage is crucial to shaping a book as it should be. If the chapters that have been shared so far don't seem to reflect your voice well, or if the organization is beginning to feel wrong as you continue to review more chapters, you need to be able to let your ghostwriter know. The ghostwriting service that you're working with should make arrangements to allow for this type of feedback prior to the completion of the entire manuscript.
Once a first draft has been completed, the collaborative nature of the ghostwriting process really begins to shine. Revisions are a critically important part of the process, and they really define what a ghostwriting process is all about.
You will read through a draft of your manuscript, giving your feedback. You may say that some things seem right, and you may point out sections or chapters that could definitely stand to be improved. You may have things that you want to add, or you may feel that certain things were unnecessary. You may give comments about tone and organization and content and feedback and anything else you think is relevant.
Your ghostwriter takes this feedback and revises the document, restructuring chapters, adding new material, improving the organization, fixing the tone and making adjustments to anything that you don't feel is quite right.
Depending on the kind of service that you're using and your needs and preferences, this may be a multi-step process. The first round of revisions may have largely focused on structure and content, adding and removing material and making sure that the basic ideas flow coherently. The second round of revisions may focus on writing, tone, language and other surface-level details. Feedback should always be received as an opportunity for the manuscript to improve as opposed to a criticism of the ghostwriter's shortcomings, since there are rarely first drafts of anything that are good enough for publication.
After revisions, manuscripts generally undergo some form of editing. Depending on what the expectations were for your ghostwriting service, you and your writer may have to consider developmental editing, line editing, copyediting and proofreading.
Developmental editing generally focuses on higher-level organisation, line editing improves sentence-level organisation and flow, copyediting addresses concerns with grammar, consistency, style and presentation and proofreading tackles very superficial concerns with writing, grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Not every ghostwriting process is going to tackle all four levels of editing; it's very much dependent on what the expectations were for the process that you're going through. Some ghostwriters offer their own editing services, and some handle their writing but leave the editing to professional services. Making sure you understand what you can expect will prevent confusion about what the final product should look like.
Once the ghostwriting process has wrapped up, and you hold your completed manuscript, there are several things that should be apparent to you.
Your manuscript should feel structured in a way that makes sense, and it should be easy to understand how and why things have been organized the way that they have. Whatever your manuscript's organization, the main point should come through clearly, whether you're trying to tell a story, deliver certain insights or explore specific themes.
Your manuscript's voice should feel authentic according to your preferences and the abilities of your writer. Anyone familiar with your usual speaking or writing style should be able to understand your manuscript as being the work of you, even if you've worked with someone else to complete it. The tone should reflect who you are and what you're writing about.
Your manuscript should feel readable. Your paragraphs don't flow in confusing ways and repeat themselves, and your overall writing doesn't seem unnecessarily convoluted. The manuscript should feel professionally written, with proper organization and presentation.
Most importantly, your manuscript should reflect what you wanted it to say. If you went through the process of hiring a ghostwriter to complete your book and you wanted it to be a memoir that helps people find hope in their darkest times, then your finished manuscript should reflect that. If you wanted to create a book to help you establish your credentials in your field of work, the manuscript should reflect that, too. The ghostwriting process you went through helped to put together a manuscript that reflects your intentions, and that should always be the most important outcome of any ghostwriting service.
If you're considering hiring a professional ghostwriter to assist you, there are several practices you should adopt to ensure that the process goes as smoothly as possible.
Have clear expectations for your book, and make sure to share them openly with the ghostwriter that you're hiring. Being unclear about what it is you hope to achieve with your book makes it very difficult for your ghostwriter to complete your book in a way that satisfies you. It's important that your expectations are met in the end, but those expectations should be clear at the outset of your collaboration.
Share relevant background information and materials with your ghostwriter to help them learn more about how you want your book to be written and what it should be about. The more information you can give them about your life, your book's subject and your thoughts on that subject, the smoother the ghostwriting process will be in the long run.
Stay organized when communicating with your ghostwriter to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
Choosing the right ghostwriter can be important. Look for the right combination of strengths that will get you the best results.
Hire someone with the relevant expertise, based on the kind of writing you need to get done. Someone who has a lot of experience with ghostwriting business memoirs will generally know what they're doing, but may not understand non-fiction writing in the way that a self-help writer might.
Seek out a writer with a communication style that works well with you. You're likely to spend a lot of time communicating with this person throughout the ghostwriting process. Ask around and listen to references from others with similar expectations to see if someone is right for you.
Hire someone reliable and trustworthy who will conduct themselves professionally throughout the process. Ghostwriters should keep your information confidential, complete their work on time and keep clear records of their work with you.
Ask about their process for understanding and replicating an author's voice. It's critically important that your ghostwriter knows how they can learn your voice and successfully replicate it in your finished manuscript.
Ultimately, the ghostwriting process is a great reminder that having an idea for a book and actually writing a book are very different skills. It's important to acknowledge that fact and to utilize the help of a professional writer if you're looking to share your story or your expertise with the world.
A completed manuscript resulting from a great ghostwriting process is the product of a really great collaboration. Your knowledge, experience, voice and goals all come together to form your manuscript, while your ghostwriter contributes their skills and expertise as a writer, interviewer and researcher to ensure that your work gets delivered in the best possible format. The manuscript that eventually comes together is truly something that reflects your voice and vision, and that's a really important part of the ghostwriting process.