4 More Bad Fails to Avoid

Last week, I wrote about four common ghostwriting fails and how to avoid them. Here are four more.

1. A weak first draft. Some would argue that’s inherent and unavoidable, that all first drafts are incomplete, rough, unedited, foul, ugly, rotten, disastrous, and not close to what the client wanted or expected. As a result, some might think all first drafts fail. I’ve written about this before. Read it here.

Unfortunately, many clients think they’re going to get near-publishable quality in a first draft instead of the reality: “a pile of words thrown together,” as Callie Sutcliffe on The Write Practice called it.

How to avoid the fail: A ghostwriter must set realistic expectations. Never should the ghostwriter promise anything in a first draft except to say, “This is nothing more than a first attempt to get your story out of your head and onto the page.”

A ghostwriter can promise successive drafts will get better, provided the two sides continue their collaboration. He or she can suggest steps to take to improve each successive draft. For example, I have a client that didn’t like my first draft in part because he said I got facts wrong (to be fair, the information was really technical). He suggested I put what he wrote through an AI program so we can still have the facts but in layman’s terms. I did that—and then he rejected it because AI got the facts wrong, too (but that’s a different post, right?).

Over time, it will get better. For one current client, I’m on my twelfth draft, and I fully expect at least two more before it’s done. That’s okay because the client has seen them get better. “Thank you for the good work you do. Great job,” is a common reaction I get from him after the latest draft.

2. Breaching confidentiality. Imagine this scenario: A whistleblower who worked on a television show wants to write a book exposing the behind-the-scenes chaos on the show and blow the roof off the difference between the star’s on-screen persona and what he or she is really like off screen.

A ghostwriter might salivate at the possibilities. Here’s my chance to write a book that could really be a bestseller. Picture the possibilities of what it could do for my career! 

The ghostwriter starts excitedly talking about this project, whether online or with friends. Others get excited, but somehow, the talk gets back to the prospect or client, and he or she immediately feels betrayed, walks away, and then possibly sues the ghostwriter.

A well-known case was Gwyneth Paltrow’s denial that she used a ghostwriter for her cookbook My Father’s Daughter. A New York Times article credited Paltrow’s assistant, Julia Turshen, as her ghostwriter, which upset Paltrow.

There was no lawsuit, but everyone must remember that the ghostwriting default is anonymity.

How to avoid the fail: First, treat every project as if there is a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, in place, even if there isn’t. Second, never share anything without explicit permission. It’s why there are certain former clients I never talk about, and it’s why I often ask the client if I can share their unpublished work with a prospect. Third, keep all client materials off public storage. If the Cloud is too risky, don’t save anything there. 

Common sense should prevail here. If ghosts really exist, they would keep secrets. So, too, should ghostwriters.

3. Poor interview techniques. To tell a story thoroughly enough, a ghostwriter has to really dig deep. That means asking the client a lot of questions. Hours and hours worth of questions (I estimate that between forty and fifty percent of my time with my clients are spent interviewing them). If you don’t do that, you will end up with a manuscript that either is or feels shallow.

Example: I have a client who wants to write about this great invention he had that, in his words, “changed the world.” He had previously written a manuscript about it, but not only is it too technical for the average reader to understand, it is very flat and incomplete, requiring me to ask a lot of questions to expand and clarify.

How to avoid the fail: Sometimes, it’s not the volume of questions, it’s the quality. The trick is to ask as many open-ended questions as possible. These are the questions that begin with who, what, where, when, how, and why. When an interviewer poses queries with those words, it becomes more difficult, if not impossible, for the person to answer with a “Yes” or “No.” Those kind of questions increase the likelihood of a fail.

Speaking of why, ghostwriters should consider using the Five Whys Principle. This is a technique in which an interviewer asks “Why?” as many times as necessary to get to a root cause. This works really well for business books because the method focuses on process instead of people.

A person might not need to ask “Why?” five times to get the answer, but five is a good rule of thumb. More than five isn’t necessarily a fail, however.

But asking the questions is only half the solution. A ghostwriter then must listen carefully to the answer and use critical thinking to determine what part(s) of the reply are valid and necessary to include and which are irrelevant or detract from the story.

4. No direction. A common fail among non-professional writers (and inexperienced ghostwriters) is writing without a clear audience, direction, or angle. They just start writing. 

This often results in a manuscript that 1) goes off on so many different tangents that the story becomes incoherent and hard to follow, 2) becomes fictionalized because the writer has the notion that the story isn’t interesting enough so there’s a need to make it more fantastic, unbelievable, amazing, incredible, etc., 3) they write themselves into a corner, don’t know how to get out of it, and abandon the project. This is partly why only three percent of people who start a book actually finish it. 

How to avoid the fail: Ghostwriters should have a system in place to make sure they know the following before they begin a project: Why the person wants to have their story told, who is the target audience, and what exactly is the story.

My system calls for me asking those three questions first, in that order. I provide professional ghost writer services in Dallas, helping clients turn their ideas into clear, compelling content that sounds like them. The why and the who provide context for the what. They also tell me how much the prospect has thought about the project.

Ghostwriters are human and will make mistakes. Hopefully, these tips will help you not make these and fail as a result.

Feel free to read and check out my other posts related to ghostwriting. Go to leebarnathan.com/blog.