3 Specialized Skills in Great Ghostwriting

About a year ago, I wrote about a reason ghostwriting can be expensive: Time is money. Read all about it here. There is another reason, however.

Ghostwriting is definitely a specialized skill.

Not everybody can do it, Just like critical thinking, public speaking, problem solving, leadership, driving, cooking with charcoal, predicting the weather, and taking care of pets, writing is not innate. It takes desire, training, and hours and hours and hours of practice.

Any good ghostwriter worth their value possesses the following three skills, all of which figures into the price a client pays.

1. Writing as someone else. It is not easy to sound like a different person, but a ghostwriter finds ways to implement their client’s rhythm, tone, cadence. and words so when the client reads the work, they’ll recognize themselves. If the ghostwriter does it right, the client might shed tears of joy, as I’ve had the good fortune to experience. If the ghostwriter gets it wrong, the client might walk. Unfortunately, I’ve also experienced that, too.

Two of my current clients are as different as any two people. One client likes to cuss because that was the way he spoke as a kid, so I’m using the F-word much, much more than I ever would. He also has his own slang: “take it to the hand” meant to fight, “touch your butt” meant you were gay, and “be a man” referred to slitting a pig’s throat at age 13. I’ve included it all.

A different client, a therapist, “invites” his clients to “experience” a three-minute meditation at the start of a session. He also prefers “healer,” “curator,” and “collaborator” to “therapist.” Also, “profound” comes out of his mouth regularly. Those words figure in the manuscript as well.

2. Organizing a massive amount of information. Books are long stories, and most people get overwhelmed trying to take all those details and turn them into a 200- to 250-page coherent narrative. Ghostwriters have tricks they use to keep track of what’s important and will go into the manuscript, what’s incomplete and needs expanding, and what’s trivial and can be cut.

One former client didn’t want to include details of her sex life during marriage—until she changed her mind and wanted to. That meant I had to first get the information, which required sensitivity and neutrality and skill, and then go back and insert (no pun intended) the information into the narrative.

A current client gave me no fewer than 159 stories of various lengths to incorporate. I had to first hear them all (remember that time is money), then use my skill to decide which stories fit and then organize them into a compelling narrative.

3. Understanding what is a compelling story. I just wrote about this. It’s a story that has a powerful and irresistible effect; or earns admiration, attention or respect; relates to the reader, puts the reader into the characters’ world and environment and lets the reader walk in their shoes; and has an emotional component.

I’ve previously written about compelling stories, from being tricked by a psychopath and having to fight the state over stolen monies to almost being killed by a psychopath, from overcoming a faulty heart valve to being falsely accused of sex trafficking, from suffering parental alienation to exposing how foster children are not being properly cared for.

I won’t take on a story if it does’t compel me.

Next: Three more specialized skills a ghostwriter should have.

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