Ghostwriting

Andrew Crofts

• Publisher: A&C Black Academic and Professional
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781408103418
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Desarrollo personal
• Subtopic: Habilidades de escritura y presentación

Ghostwriting is a thriving, secretive industry. As a ghostwriter you can create best-selling books for film stars, footballers, pop singers, presidents, business tycoons, gangsters, gurus, spies, mercenaries, courtesans, four-star generals, royals and anyone else with an interesting story to tell. This book reveals all the essential secrets of how to turn ghostwriting into a successful and lucrative career.

Andrew Crofts has ghosted more than forty books, many of them international bestsellers, including Sold by Zana Muhsen (nearly 4 million copies sold), The Kid by Kevin Lewis, Heroine of the Desert by Donya Al-Nahi, Kathy and Me by Gillian Taylforth and Crocodile Shoes by Jimmy Nail.

1

Why Become a Ghostwriter?

The Great Gatsby theory

'I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.'

F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby

When I was 17 and unsure what I wanted to do with my life, a far-sighted schoolteacher gave me a copy of the The Great Gatsby. As I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's account of that glamorous world, I decided that was who I wanted to be - Jay Gatsby. There was the immense personal fortune, the mysterious past, the magnificent parties, the mansion, the wardrobe full of pink suits - who could ask for anything more?

Now, when I reread the book I find a telling sentence from Fitzgerald about his hero: 'So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a 17-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.' No wonder I was hooked.

As I read further on in that first exposure to the story, I gradually realised that the interestingly mysterious past I so envied was about to catch up with my hero; that he was in fact something of a skunk, a vain man with an empty life who was going to come to a very sticky end on an inflatable mattress in his own swimming pool. I decided to revise my plan.

I was still deeply attracted to the idea of getting inside the lives of people like Gatsby, as long as I could be sure that I could walk away before the swimming pool scene. The answer was suddenly obvious. The book was narrated by Nick Carraway, a writer staying in a cottage in the grounds of the mansion. Nick became involved with the dissolute lives of the main characters, uncovered the very stuff of their souls and then went back to the solitary safety of his home to write his story once things turned nasty.

Eureka! That was what being a writer would be about. It would mean dipping into interesting and exciting lives, finding out as much as I wanted before returning to the peace and security of my own garret in order to write the resulting story whether it be a book, a film script, or an article for the local parish magazine.

At one stage, when Carraway is deeply involved in the convoluted lives of Jay and his wealthy, dissolute friends, Fitzgerald has him writing, 'I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.' That, I think, sums up the attraction of ghostwriting. When I chose to write a novel about a ghostwriter (Maisie's Amazing Maids), it was because our lives are episodic, just like those of policemen, lawyers and doctors. It is ideal for any dramatic series if the profession of the main character involves different sets of people with each adventure; after all, nearly all television drama series work to the same premise. It is a fascinating way to live if you are someone who enjoys trying out new and different lives, and who is comfortable being a spectator for much of the time.

Finding stories

The greatest problem facing any professional writer is finding a steady supply of ideas and subjects so dazzlingly certain to appeal to the book-buying public that publishers are eager to buy and willing to pay. However, not only are saleable ideas in short supply, it also takes an inordinate amount of time to research any new subject deeply enough to be able to successfully write a book about it. You might spend months, or even years, researching a subject from a number of different sources and still be unable to find a publisher who will offer enough money to make the project viable. As a result the book will either become a labour of love or will never get written at all.

One answer to this apparent 'Catch 22' situation is to collaborate with other people who lack writing skills and experience but have good stories to tell, either as fiction or non-fiction, or who possess all the necessary information to create a book. If these people are also distinguished or celebrated in their own fields, so much the better, since you will be much more likely to catch a publisher's attention if you have a famous name attached to a project.

The man in the white suit

This realisation came to me when I was working as a freelance journalist, interviewing a 'management guru' for a business magazine. He was a flamboyant showman who had created a business for himself training salesmen. Dressed in white suits, travelling in a Rolls Royce (just a hint of the Gatsbys, there), he would hire venues like the Albert Hall and fill them with salesmen eager for tips on how to increase their sales and consequently their incomes. As we reached the end of the interview in one of the drawing rooms of his recently refurbished mansion (another Gatsby touch), he told me that a book publisher had commissioned him to produce a series of 'how-to management titles'.

He'd written books before and was perfectly capable of doing so again, he assured me, except for the fact that his schedule was packed with touring dates, and the sort of money the publisher was offering was not enough to get him out of bed any more. He did, however, still want the books to be written and published because of their promotional value for his business. Nothing adds to a management guru's credibility more than to have penned a best-selling tome or two.

'Why don't you write them for me,' he suggested, 'then I'll get the glory and you'll get the money?'

Since the money on offer from the publisher was more than enough to get a humble scribe out of bed, if not a crowd-pulling management guru, I agreed to the idea. Initially I was a little uncertain, having always assumed that writers had to be totally in charge of the creative writing process, from the first germ of the idea to the final copies reaching the shops; but as work progressed I realised that I had stumbled across the perfect way to gain instant access to the sort of material needed to create books.

Had I myself decided to write a book on 'doubling your sales', I would have had to go round interviewing any number of experts in the business. Then, when I finally approached publishers with the idea, they would - quite rightly - have wanted to know what my qualifications were for writing such a title and how I was planning to promote it, given that I had no track record as a salesman or as an expert in the management field myself. But this way I had all the guru's credibility behind me, not to mention all the material in his head and in his filing cabinets, which I could call on. The publisher was already on board and desperate to receive the words; the hardest part, i.e. the selling of the project, was over; all I had to do was understand the subject and then write the material, which were the two processes I enjoyed the most and the reasons I had chosen the profession of writing in the first place.

It dawned on me then that the world must be full of people who have the material for saleable books in their heads but who lack the time or the inclination to produce the books themselves. They might be celebrities whose notoriety would impress publishers, or ordinary people who had undergone extraordinary experiences. Alternatively, they might be experts in subjects that sections of the reading public wanted to know more about, like my man in the white suit. I realised that if I wanted to spend the rest of my life as a professional writer and be able to feed my children, and if I wanted to track down some of the best material around, then offering my services to the world as a ghost would be a very good way of going about it.

The publisher's point of view

As I started to talk to publishers I discovered that in most cases, far from seeing ghostwriters as some sort of second-class citizens, many of them were delighted whenever they discovered that an experienced professional writer was involved in any project.

It's much easier for them to market books by celebrities or established experts than those by unknown writers. The biggest problem that their marketing departments face is making the reading public aware of a book's existence, and in most cases that is down to how much exposure can be obtained for the author. In Britain alone something like 100,000 new titles come out every year. It is virtually impossible to bring the name of an unknown writer to the attention of people who would be interested in what he or she has to say without spending a fortune in advertising, which publishers are always loathe to do until they can be more confident of the likely sales. But someone who is already known to the public immediately has a head start, as potential buyers will recognise them and the media will be more likely to interview them and mention the fact that they've written a book. It's much easier for someone to recommend a book to someone else if the name of the author is famous: trying to remember the name of a first-time author we've read and liked is a struggle for all of us.

Apart from a handful of literary stars, few people buy books because of the names of the authors, and the media have a limited amount of space in which to write about them. But if you write the autobiography of a soap star, controversial politician or sporting hero, the resulting book will be widely written and talked about in the media and the author instantly recognisable to the casual browser in any bookstore. While the famous author is spending several weeks being whisked around all day from breakfast television to late night radio, the ghost can stay comfortably at home and get on with their next project which, with any luck, will be something entirely different.

I ghosted an autobiography of Gillian Taylforth, an excellent actress who was at the time enduring a high-profile persecution in the tabloid media while she was still appearing in EastEnders. At the time the book came out there wasn't a radio or television chat show or book programme that didn't want to have her on, and the publishers were able to keep her talking to the public about the book from the moment she woke up on the day of publication to the moment she went to bed. If I had written a biography of her under my own name, the publishers might have been able to lever me into one or two of these slots, but it is unlikely that anyone would have taken much notice, or rushed out to buy the book as a result of listening to me. Far better to leave the promotion of the product to a professional entertainer who knew exactly how to hold the attention of the viewers, listeners and journalists.

Having realised that they want star names (or well-known ones at the very least) attached to as many of their books as possible, publishers will next have to worry about how to get these busy and successful people - whether they are revered academics or popular footballers - to sit still long enough to produce a manuscript to a publishable standard. If they know that the project is in the hands of a reputable and experienced professional ghost they will immediately feel more comfortable. Editors in the modern world are under the most enormous pressure and have far less time to work on manuscripts themselves than they might have done in the past. If they know that the text is likely to arrive by the due date in a more or less finished state, they're much more likely to be willing to pay decent advances and to gear the marketing and sales teams up to give the resulting book their full attention. They do not want to find themselves in the uncomfortable position of having to nag an eminent cabinet minister, Shakespearian actor or international footballer about missed deadlines; they would much rather have the ghost doing that for them.

Avoiding the 'slush pile'

Between the would-be author and the promised land of 'publication' lies a terrible, treacherous marshland known as the 'slush pile'. This is a ghastly, dark and inhospitable place where most people's dreams and aspirations become mired, strangled and suffocated, and eventually sink from sight leaving only despair in their wake. The slush pile seeps into every publisher and agent's office, taking the form of a thick pile of unsolicited manuscripts, synopses and letters of enquiry lying in wait for someone to pick them up and respond with glowing encouragement. These days, due to the ease of word processing and increased literacy, this bog of despair has become so deep it's impossible that anyone will ever get to the bottom of it. If all the publishers and all the agents hired an army of readers to work 24 hours a day, they would still never be able to clear it. Once you have sunk to the bottom of this pit your hopes of ever being noticed pretty much vanish. You have to find a way to stay visible if you want to be noticed.

One way to float to the top is by donning the ghostwriting lifebelt.

If an agent or a publisher can see in the first few lines of the pitch letter that there is a famous or distinguished name attached to the book, and that this will help with the marketing and product distinction, you will immediately receive more attention. If you are an unknown exercise and diet expert, for instance, and you want to write a book on your theories, you may or may not be able to catch someone's attention. If, however, you have a client who is glamorous and constantly on television and you can persuade her to put her household name to the book with you, your chances of being noticed will be instantly transformed. 'Mary Smith's Diet Book' is never going to be as good a potential seller as 'Nicole Kidman's Diet Book, written with Mary Smith'.

Even if you are writing the book for someone who isn't quite as famous as Ms Kidman, there are likely to be promotional angles to the story that wouldn't exist if you were writing it under your own name. If you are a writer and you produce a book on fishing, for example, you will have more difficulty getting the fishing industry journalists to write about it than if you are a well-known professional fisherman and could provide masterclasses for journalists.

Writers who don't have anything with which to catch the attention of eventual readers - and before them, bookshop buyers, the media, publishers and agents - can seldom extract themselves from the slush pile. Ghostwriting is all about hooks and angles, and ways of making the voice of your subject heard above the competitive din.

Increasing the dramatic efftct

It's much easier as a writer to make a scene affecting if you are writing it in the first person rather than the third. I would imagine that most of us write our first novels in the first person for exactly this reason.

The following scenes are from a couple of books I wrote for Zana Muhsen, called Sold and A Promise to Nadia. Imagine how different they would sound if I had been describing them in the third person. I'm not saying it would be impossible, but I don't believe they would be quite as effective.

In this extract from Sold, Zana, a 15-year-old Birmingham girl, discovers once she arrives in the Yemen that her father's offer of 'a holiday of a lifetime' is actually something very different.

When we got back from the shops Abdul Khada and I were sitting outside on the platform, talking to the old couple and the children, when Mohammed's younger brother Abdullah arrived up the same path that we had first climbed. I knew there was another boy and I'd been told that he was in a different village about two hours' drive away called Campais. Abdul Khada owned a restaurant in Campais, which was next to the main road out to Sana'a. Abdullah had been helping his father to fix it up in preparation fo...