United Ghostwriters

Use your voice, you don’t have to ‘find’ it

February 4, 2019February 5, 2019
by PhilipWhiteley

When I worked on news desks, we had a rule to live by: if you’re struggling hard to make the headline and top of the story sound exciting, give it up, go out and get a better story. The most compelling narratives don’t require fancy editorial footwork. The clearest language will simply take your readers along, sometimes involuntarily, if they had been planning to do something other than read your story. Another thing I learned from being a journalist was that many people who say they ‘can’t write’, articulate themselves perfectly well in interview. I became accomplished at shorthand and

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019
by Teena Lyons

So you are thinking of working with a ghost? If you are trawling through the blogs on this site, it is quite possible that you are weighing up which of the highly capable ghosts featured here will be able to do justice to your story. It’s likely that this is something you have been thinking about for a while and, now you’ve almost made up your mind, you’ll be keen to get some words down on the page. One question that could be uppermost in your mind is: whose book will it be? In other words, if you work with

January 24, 2019January 25, 2019
by ChrisWest

Repetition is one of the things we look to sort out when editing a text. Repetition soon bores the reader. (It’s probably already beginning to do that – so if I were editing the first sentence of this paragraph, I’d remove the R-word and simply say ‘It soon bores…’.) How do you avoid it? Don’t bother when you start writing something. Just get the thoughts down. It’s at the editing stage that you weed out repetition. Can you replace the repeated word with a pronoun (this, she, his etc.)? Can you rephrase the sentence? Can you find another word or phrase

January 18, 2019January 18, 2019
by ShannonKyle

Fame, fortune and acclaim, those are the dreams to lure many people into wanting to write. But how realistic is it? If I had a pound for every time someone said to me: ‘You could be the next JK Rowling’ or ‘This will be a bestseller and you’ll be rich from the royalties!’, I would be made richer than from any of the royalties I’m currently contracted to receive. One certainty is, writing a book is unlikely to be a get rich quick scheme. B,ut if you still have a desire to write, you are not alone. Becoming an author

January 7, 2019January 7, 2019
by Emma Murray

Read, read, and read some more. You can’t improve as a writer without reading. Set up a cosy place to enjoy what others have achieved. If you’re stuck, take a walk. Yes, the hard graft happens at the desk but the inspiration often comes from a change of location. Read aloud. When you’re editing your own work, print it out and read it out loud. Remember: when you stumble, your readers will too. Always carry a notebook and pen with you. You never know when inspiration will strike. Deadlines are your friend. Focusing on a delivery date keeps you and

Our Blog

Use your voice, you don’t have to ‘find’ it

Copyright and why it is important

Repetition, repetition and repetition

Dispelling the writing myths

Writing a book in 2019? Here are 13 Tips…