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How to… decide if you need to use a…

Congratulations! You have decided to write a book. You might already have put pen to paper to brainstorm ideas or opened a Word document to start a chapter with enthusiasm, energy and… then what happens?

Everyone who has tried knows writing a book isn’t easy. Structure, flow, drying-up of ideas, lack of momentum, editing, putting in the hours needed… There are so many reasons for stalling or giving up completely.

The world is full of books that were started with the best intentions and never finished. Every single book you see sold in a shop has an army of people who helped produce it. Not only a writer, editor, proofreader and copy editor but designers, marketing people and sales teams.

So where does this leave you and your book? At what point do you decide you need professional help? Let’s look at the reasons first why a ghostwriter isn’t necessary.

You won’t need a ghostwriter if:

1) You’re not interested in having the book published.
If you’re writing a book for family or friends or a personal project and a particularly professional standard is not the goal, then there’s no need to hire anyone!

2) You feel confident with your own writing and have experience putting prose together.
If you’re talented at writing, know your audience and have plenty to say, you might be better off with a good editor. An editor can direct your writing, chop chapters, beef them up and make suggestions on style, quantity and overall tone.

3) You have lots of time to hone your craft.
If you’re not a confident writer, but still feel determined to do all the writing alone, you’ll need lots of time. If there is no particular deadline and you want to learn along the way, there are thousands of courses, books and podcasts aimed at amateurs longing to improve their writing skills. If you’re aiming at finding a publishing deal afterwards, you will still need an editor, however. Doing your own editing is like doing your own dentistry.

So when do you need to use a ghostwriter? Seriously consider employing a ghostwriter if you want to:

1) Save time.
Most people underestimate the amount of time writing takes. A professional writer will be faster, taking an average of three to six months, depending on the length of the book. Writing it alone, you will need to commit to giving up evenings and weekends, especially if you’re working a full-time job too.

2) Have the prose appeal to your audience.
Ghostwriters can adapt their style to appeal to different readerships. They know what style of writing appeals to what audience.

3) Find a publishing deal.
Many ghostwriters work for a range of publishers and know what the current market requires. A professionally written manuscript is always far more appealing to publishers than any amateur attempt, however good the story is.

4) Make your book a commercial success.
Even if you’re self-publishing, using a ghostwriter will produce a professional-grade manuscript and appeal to a mass audience. Publishers are only interested in books that sell and make money, and a ghostwriter will know what they’re looking for.

Using a ghostwriter is not cheating or lazy. It’s an opportunity to use a professional to make your book the best it can be.

Revisiting an Old Friend

Thirteen years ago, the first book I worked on – Beg, Steal or Borrow, the authorised biography of Babyshambles – was released, and my freelance writing career was set in motion. For the two years prior to that, I had the unbridled joy of balancing night work at a media monitoring firm and spending time with the nation’s hottest, most chaotic indie/rock band as they rode numerous waves of controversy, due in large part to the media obsession with frontman and vocalist, Mr Peter Doherty.

Anybody who has worked nights knows that few on that kind of shift pattern will find sleep easy to come by, and for me it was utterly torturous. Every flat and surrounding shop was renovated, and the resulting noise (I still shudder at the sound of a drill) was so bad that I tried sleeping in every room (including under a sink, curled up in a cupboard) and in an outside garage – all to no avail. Only as I neared the end of the book did I give up the night work to focus on the final chapters. I couldn’t have gone freelance before then because I wouldn’t have been able to survive financially, but in taking a gamble on my writing skills, I threw myself in at the deep end, and those first few years’ earnings were so poor that I could barely label them as earnings at all.

But, like many things in life, I found that by sticking with it, I continued to improve and demand more of myself. Rather than pouring in, work trickled in, before I was in a position I never expected to hold: to be so busy that I had to turn assignments down. In all probability, if I hadn’t gambled when I did, I’d probably still be working a more standard job (not that I believe night work can ever really be called that, for it betrays one’s body clock and leaves you with near-permanent jetlag from switching from nights to days: one week on, one week off); and while writing can be a difficult profession to make a consistently good living from, I wouldn’t swap it for another role.

As for the Babyshambles boys, I remain indebted to them for giving me the chance to write their story. There aren’t many instances in life when coming from a working class background goes in your favour, but Peter and co often hung with people from the wrong side of the tracks, and couldn’t possibly judge them for it. Despite the bedlam enveloping the band at the time, there was a warmth about them that I’ve found to be rare in life, their gigs could be utterly raucous, and their fans among the most passionate I’ve ever seen. The tales they told synced with the rock n’ roll cliches, but there was an underlying sensitivity about them that in many ways presented them as perfect complementarities.  

Had it not been for my paid work, I would’ve been able to complete the book much quicker than the two years that it took for me to get it over the line (then again, if I hadn’t had the paid work, I wouldn’t have been able to write the book at all). I did all of the transcribing myself, which took an absolute age, but because of the sensitivity around the band, and especially Peter, I couldn’t outsource the job, as I didn’t know anybody who did that, and would’ve been too cautious of a leak (Peter was on the front pages of most newspapers at the time, and I didn’t want to risk fuelling the media’s preoccupation with him).

As with most books, there was a fair bit of material that never made it into the finished product. In fact, there was probably enough for a few more chapters, but they’ll never see the light of day now. My time with the band made me realise that so much of the stuff written about them, and one member in particular, was utter fabrication, while there was more than a grain of truth in other stories. It’s impossible for anybody outside of that circle to be able to separate fact, or part-fact, from fiction, which is why a book can help to clarify certain matters (though when people remember events differently, that process is far from clear, leaving readers to make up their own minds).

I suppose my message here is: if you get a chance to do something you desire, and you have belief in your abilities, then go for it. It might not have a happy ending (there were many times when I nearly bailed out), but persistence is key, especially in a profession as precarious as writing and, I’m pretty sure, the rest of the arts, where even the most in-demand protagonists endure quiet periods. So thanks, Peter, Adam, Drew and Mik for giving me the chance to strike out on my own, for having faith in an unpublished writer; and, ultimately, for giving me a platform to do what I love as a career.

(Beg, Steal or Borrow is still available to purchase online for anyone wishing to explore what Babyshambles brought to the music scene, and the pandemonium they engendered).

Manuscript emergency? Call the Book Doctor…

In a recent episode of a sitcom set in the offices of a New York publisher, one of the super glamorous editors holds up a manuscript and says, ‘We want the author because she’s a big name, but her manuscript is limp,’ (wrinkles nose in disparaging way). ‘We’d better send it to a book doctor.’

‘What’s a book doctor?’ asks her wide-eyed assistant.

‘Oh,’ says the editor, waving a perfectly manicured hand in the air. ‘They’re people who are stuck at home with kids and happy to do some freelance work for peanuts.’

What?

At this point I’m looking at the TV and our glamorous ‘editor’ with mingled fury and disbelief. OK, I know it’s only a sitcom. But even in that context it’s difficult to hear this critical job dismissed with quite so much contempt.

In the light of which, I feel obliged to put the record straight.

We book doctors, for that is what all of us at United Ghostwriters are when we wear our editing and manuscript rescue hats, make the difference between a manuscript that lands in the bin and one that ends up as a bestseller. So while in the sitcom world we might be dismissed as minor cogs in the publishing wheel, we are actually an exclusive and vital group.

We pride ourselves on being top-rated professionals, able to diagnose and treat the most dire of manuscript cases – those that are too short, too long, too repetitive, missing key information, in need of a complete overhaul, or, as the ‘editor’ so succinctly put it, limp. In short, we can bring a dying manuscript back to life, inject fresh energy and interest and get to the heart of what it really needs in order to stand out.

Book doctoring demands experience, expertise, precision and skill. It requires a calm head, a steady hand, a passion for words and a finely tuned sense of how they need to be strung together to bring meaning, enlightenment and joy. We give a manuscript a distinctive voice. We add the structure and the shape, the pace, momentum, mood and texture.

Without us, the whole publishing process grinds to a halt. The publisher, the author, the publicist, the distributor and the bookseller – everyone in the chain relies on the book doctor to breathe life into a struggling manuscript and to transform it from a malnourished shadow of a concept into an all-singing, all-dancing success.

When we have done our job, everyone is happy. At which point the book doctor, with a nod and a smile, will slip quietly into the background, to be forgotten until the next emergency.

 

 

The one that got away

Hnnnrrmmf,’ I remarked. ‘Grrm myffyd ng wah. Wuggel marghh drrrg.’ The dentist laughed. ‘You’re always so enthusiastic about your work. Can’t stop talking about it, can you?’

Creeping out of my cave and going back to the dentist after nearly two years away wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Teeth wait for no man, and I knew mine wouldn’t have miraculously improved in the course of the Covid era.

But this dentist is special. So patient and meticulous, so willing to explain what she’s doing and why, so skilful and good-humoured, she is a gem. If anyone is going to be strapping on the crampons and scaling my cavities, it has to be her.

She’s also deeply interested in the art and craft of what she does, in the new discoveries and technologies that carry it forward and in the psychology of a profession that necessarily involves breaking bad news and inflicting pain from time to time. She’s got a lot to talk about, and it could add up to an interesting book. When I’d got my mouth back, I said so.

‘Ah, no,’ she said. ‘I’m not a natural writer. I’ll stick to teeth. I find writing difficult.’

Well, she’s not alone in that. We all find writing difficult, one way or another, including those of us who do it every day for money. As Thomas Mann said: ‘A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people.’

That’s not the point, though. If you’re a good talker, like my dentist is, and you’ve got interesting things to talk about, as she has, there are several different ways of getting a book done and getting your ideas out into the world.

One is to struggle through it yourself, hoping, as often happens, that the actual writing will become easier as you get into the swing of it.

Another approach is to find someone who is interested in writing about your subject and effectively ‘donate’ your ideas. (The chances of there being any substantial profits to be divided between you are so low that carving up the proceeds is unlikely to be a problem.) You can decide between you whose name is to be on the cover or whether you wish to appear as joint authors.

The third route, of course, is to invest in the services of a ghostwriter. That’s not a cheap option, but it can be rewarding in all sorts of unexpected ways.

A good ghost will quickly get onto your wavelength and start to draw out of you thoughts, memories and perspectives you never knew you had, sometimes inspiring or guiding you to completely rethink your idea of what your book could be. Your ghost will steer you away from being too self-absorbed or too self-effacing and will help you shape and structure your thoughts to make sure that what’s produced is crisp, readable and engaging.

Your writing partner will be there throughout the process to keep you going when self-doubt creeps in or your energy is flagging. After all, ghosts, too, have an incentive not to let things straggle on indefinitely. If we’re going to make a decent living, we have to finish two or three books a year.

I’d like my dentist to write a book, despite her doubts about whether she has one in her. I’d love to work on it with her, but I doubt that’s going to happen now. After two years in which they’ve been badly hit by Covid-19, with months of forced inactivity followed by an uncomfortable return to work with reduced patient throughput and a lot of expensive adaptations to reduce the chances of infection, dentists are no longer making fat six-figure incomes and buying holiday homes abroad. Engaging a ghostwriter is almost certainly out of the question, so my dentist’s book will probably never be written.

That’s a shame. But it does point up one of the roles United Ghostwriters and our peers play in the cultural life of the country. We are the midwives who help bring all kinds of oddball, interesting and unexpected projects to fruition. Publishers who might turn down an idea on the basis of a brief proposal often react very differently when faced with a complete and well-written manuscript. We help broaden the range of voices that get into print and make sure that readers will always find something new and surprising to catch the eye in their local bookshops. I won’t pretend that’s why we do it, but it’s good to feel we’re making a contribution.



Ian Shircore’s latest book is So Brightly at the Last: Clive James & the Passion for Poetry (RedDoor Press)

Structured arguments

If ever (or, should I be honest and say ‘the next time’?) you’re watching a hokey standard-issue romantic comedy movie and you get to the inevitable scene where boy and girl have a tearful break-up, look at your watch. You now know you are exactly two thirds of the way through and can therefore predict to the minute when the movie will end.

This is because movies like this follow a three-act structure. Act 1: the heroes indicate dissatisfaction with an established status quo and take action to rectify it; the story could end there with their situation slightly improved, or at least the end being in sight. But then, Act 2: it all goes horribly wrong and they reach their lowest point, worse off than when they began. Finally, Act 3: they rally and fight back, and things end even better than before.

The three-act structure is not the only one available; others may apply. This page on Screencraft.org has a pretty useful summary of other choices used in many movies, with examples that you may have seen. The point is that a story must have a structure, in some recognisable form. It’s not just movies; it also applies in writing, though in a book the transitions and turning points can be done far more subtly. Maybe halfway through a chapter or even a paragraph, and certainly more subtly than the requisite tearful break-up two thirds in.

The three-act structure is very easy, both for authors and readers, which is why romcoms use it. No one goes to see one expecting a non-linear Tarantinoesque cerebral workout (although, if Tarantino did make a romcom, I would definitely watch it). But that shouldn’t be held against it. The same trick works for The Lord of the Rings (book and movies), the three original Star Wars movies (both within the individual stories, and the trilogy as a whole) and many more.

Whatever structure the storyteller uses, it can be done well, or it can be done badly, but it must be done somehow.

This is where so many would-be writers come unstuck. Many people think (rightly) that they have an interesting story to tell – maybe fiction, maybe factual, maybe a bit of both, with one based on the other. And so they sit down and start to write. Then they get bogged down, because any story has to be more than just straight reportage of facts.

There must be a sense of purpose that carries you from cover to cover. Scenes must be linked to draw the reader inwards and onwards. Readers don’t read as a favour to writers; writers write as a favour to the readers.

This basic fact of writing can be hard to swallow. Your story is so personally yours that you can’t see how anyone else can fail to grasp the wonder of it. Or, you may feel that you can’t alter the flow of the story, hide facts or elide scenes because it happened this way, dammit!

Which is precisely why it helps to have someone on your side who isn’t quite as invested as you – someone who can take a step back and view it both as a reader and as a writer. An editor will perform this service on the completed manuscript, assuming you ever do get it completed and in front of an editor’s eyes. But why not get someone in at the start who can work alongside you and streamline the whole process of turning in a readable manuscript in the first place?