How 1 Ethical Ghostwriter Collaborates

In my newspaper journalism days, I learned that reporters must collaborate and cannot do their jobs in a vacuum.

There was a great deal of collaboration throughout the process: I would talk to somebody who had a story idea, I would consult an editor to get permission to work on it (or the editor would assign it to me). I would have to interview the subject and other supporting people to flesh out the story and get a more complete article, I would have give and take with the editor or editors who worked on my first draft of the story, I would talk to people again (or talk to different people), and then I might work with the headline writer to come up with what would appear in the paper.

It’s the same with ghostwriting, but even more detailed. Ghostwriting a book of 50,000 to 100,000 words is more in-depth than any newspaper article I ever wrote.

In fact, I would argue that ghostwriting is one of the most comprehensively collaborative careers there is. No ghostwriter can do the job alone. It takes somebody else to provide the story. Only then can the ghostwriter determine the best way to tell that story. Let a professional ghost writer in San Francisco serve you well.

How a Ghostwriter Collaborates

The collaboration begins before the ghostwriter is hired. Both sides ask a series of questions to find out more about each other and see if they want to work together. The ghostwriter asks questions such as why the prospect wants to write the story, what is this story, who is it for, what goals he or she has for wanting it written, and what kind of book would it be. The prospect inquires about the ghostwriter’s process, philosophy, and experience.

The next step to collaborate on is the contract. I have a standard contract I send out, but sometimes prospects want changes made. That needs to be communicated.

Once the contract is signed, the real collaboration begins. 

As I’ve previously written, the entire process from wanting to write a book to getting it out there takes seven steps. The ghostwriter can help with all seven steps but emphasizes the first three: idea, format, and writing.

Idea

Sometimes, the client has the idea completely thought out before coming to the ghostwriter. In my career, Guy Powell wanted to collaborate with me to write about how COVID affected marketing, how some companies overcame them, and how the steps they used can be extended to everyone.

Cindy White knew she wanted to collaborate with me about marrying a psychopath who stole money, how she found out, how the state came after her for $1.4 million, how she got out from under it, and how she changed the law so it couldn’t happen again. Marc Lieberson knew he had to collaborate on how he went into a coma one May from a mysterious heart ailment but woke up after sixteen days and recovered fast enough to start school that September.

Sometimes, the client doesn’t quite have it focused enough. One current client wanted to tell a story about how he and his brother grew up in a bad neighborhood, made different choices, and either thrived or suffered. But he gave me so much detail that we had to go back and streamline the narrative, eliminating some very compelling pieces that just didn’t work anymore.

Sometimes, circumstances force a change. One current client wanted to tell of how he wanted to be big and important his own life, only to discover in his eighties that he accomplished it, just not in the ways he dreamed. Then the Palisades Fire hit, he lost everything, and the story’s beginning and end had to be altered.

And sometimes, the idea isn’t completely developed. I had a prospect once talk about how he wanted to chronicle how he coached his daughters, only to have one develop an eating disorder, which put a strain on his marriage that eventually collapsed. Sounds promising, but I wasn’t sure how and if those parts connected. Did his coaching style lead to an eating disorder, or might that have happened anyway? Was the marriage on the rocks anyway, or would it have survived without this crisis? Why did the other children not develop any issues? How did they react to their father? Would the children participate or not?

I never found out the answers because we couldn’t come to terms on price.

Format

Once the idea is finalized, the two sides briefly discuss format. I say briefly because this typically has been resolved in the early discussions. The prospect tells the ghostwriter what the story is, and the ghostwriter has a pretty good idea that this story could be either a short ebook, a novella, or a full novel.

Writing

Then comes the outlining. The client and ghostwriter must spend a lot of quality time together to detail what’s going into the book. The ghostwriter must have a long list of open-ended questions that begin with who, what, where, when, how, and why. The client must be ready to answer those questions. If the topic is of a sensitive nature, the client has to be vulnerable with the ghostwriter, and the ghostwriter has to respect the client’s words, feelings, and experiences then treat the information with all the care, decency, and sensitivity it deserves.

Some clients’ outlines are really evident: They do certain things, and certain outcomes result. The outline lists all those things and all those outcomes. 

Other outlines are more challenging: The two brothers I mentioned above had an outline that was to detailed, so we had to go back and cut a lot out.

Once the outline is done, the ghostwriter actually writes. The sides really don’t collaborate until the first draft is submitted. Then it gets detailed again: The client has to go back through the draft with the ghostwriter and indicate what works, what doesn’t, what needs to be moved or cut, what needs to be added because the client now has something else to contribute, and so on. The ghostwriter must communicate when the suggestions are good and bad and give reasons why.

With each draft, that back-and-forth between the client and ghostwriter continues. If the two are in sync, each draft will take less and less time. 

Once the writing is done, communication between client and ghostwriter doesn’t stop, but it decreases. The ghostwriter can collaborate on recommending editors, designers, publishers, and marketers, and the client can continue to collaborate with the ghostwriter through those other steps.

But the majority of the collaborating will have already happened.

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