by Charis Joy Jackson
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash
The past few years, I’ve dedicated my skills to ghostwriting a book for some friends. Their life is amazing and it’s been a privilege to be a part of seeing their story told.
From the get-go, I was clear with them that I’d never ghostwritten a thing before, but shared a few samples of my work: articles, blogs, a sci-fi short story or two. On paper, it didn’t make sense for me to take on the project, but I’m so glad they were willing to take the risk with me.
Just this last week, I passed the project back to them. We have a complete book and we’re close to the next phase — publishing.
All of us were learning as we went, so hopefully you can learn from my mistakes.
THE LINGO
Learn how they talk. If you’re about to start a ghostwriting project or just want your WIP characters to sound like unique individuals it’s important to differentiate between how you would say something and how they would say it.
Early on, I’d ask investigative questions like, “How did that make you feel?” or “Were you scared?” I was often bemused by the answer because it wasn’t what I was looking for to make them relatable to the reader.
It wasn’t until Easter of that first year, when I was sitting at the table with their whole family, that I realised why we were missing each other. One of their family members made a joke about being the only “feeler” in the family, and something clicked.
I am by nature, very emotive, I am a “feeler.” Much of my language is around feeling words, my friends are not. They are genuinely loving and caring people, but their language and thought process doesn’t come from a baseline of feeling. I started paying more attention to how they spoke about difficult situations. My language would’ve been, “It was really painful”, their’s was, “It was tough” or “it was hard”.
The more I paid attention to these small changes the more I was able to write from their genuine perspective.
REGULAR COMMUNICATION
In those early months, when I was recording their stories, regular communication and meetings were a natural part of the process, and some of my favourite moments. There I sat, gleaning from their incredible adventures, and I had the privilege of interrupting at any point to ask more details. What did it look like? What were you thinking then? And now that I knew better, was that tough?
As the slow trudge of transcription and puzzling the book together took over, the meetings slowed. I don’t think any of us knew what we’d discus if we met. It’d have just been a lot of, “Yup, so I’m transcribing this section and writing out this story.” Looking back, I wish this had been more of a steady rhythm for two reasons.
Reason One: To pray for the book and the process
Reason Two: Just to keep us all focused
As the months turned into a year, the book slipped from our main focus a few times. There were health issues among other things that slowed the process down. If we’d met on a monthly basis to pray, I’m convinced we’d have kept the book more front and centre.
LOGISTICS PART ONE
Oh the logistics! I’ve put this into two parts because there’s much to consider when working on a project of this scale. As, I’ve mentioned, there was a lot of transcription. I recorded those early meetings on my phone’s Voice Notes.
When recording those meetings, it took me a while to figure out how best to label them, and how to transcribe them. There are many online platforms that will transcribe meetings for you, but I wanted to do it the long way. It helped me really sit in their story.
At first, I would sit with my phone and let it play a few seconds, pause it and then type what I’d just heard. This was VERY tedious. Then, a wonderful friend told me about this cool program that you used with a peddle. Some of you may be familiar with the type. The one I used was called Express Scribe Transcription Software. It did cost some money, but it was well worth it.
Once your recording was uploaded into the program with a push of the peddle at your feet, you can play, reverse or fast forward. I don’t know why, but it made me feel (there goes my emotive language) very official and cool.
Yes, I am a nerd.
It cut the transcription time in half if not more and allowed me to soak in the stories more than just passing the process off to an online AI transcription platform, which if I’m honest, I’m not comfortable using anyway.
LOGISTICS PART TWO
Once I began to have scenes and chapters for my friends to look over, it became a bit of a juggle to find the best way forward. At first, I was sending word documents but then we were getting lost in too many files of the same chapters. Or emails were lost.
Our workplace used Outlook, so then we changed to online sharable files. I’m sure Outlook is a blessing for many, but I loathe it. In my few years of using it, emails went missing, files didn’t actually show up right … I’m just not a fan. Neither were my friends, so I suggested we move everything over to Google Docs and try the process there.
This worked much better for all of us, but in the processes we were losing some of their edits because we hadn’t fully established turning on “Suggesting” aka Track Changes. A few chapters were such a slow process for me to incorporate back into the original Scrivener project that if it had been a race with a snail, well, let’s just say, I wouldn’t have won!
Still, once we started really working with it, things got better and communication around edits became clearer. In the end, we got the project there.
ONE LAST THING ...
If I ever tackle another ghostwriting project, these tools will definitely help me for the future. Who knows, maybe some of them can be helpful for you too, even if you’re not doing a ghostwriting project. Using what I learned for “The Lingo” can definitely help build a strong voice for characters, and when looking for an editor, maybe some of my mistakes with logistics can be something you avoid, at least that’s my hope.
I’ll end with this, whether you’re writing non-fiction or the next epic fantasy, who do you have praying for your work?
I’ll never forget being up in Toowoomba, for the Omega Writers Conference, sitting with lovely writerly friends, when one of them said, “Tell me what you’re writing, and I’ll tell you what you’re struggling with internally.”
This prophetic woman was so right.
At the time, I’d been writing a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and my MC, Averie was struggling with forgiveness. The theme of my take on the fairytale was, can you forgive even the worst offenders? And, lo and behold, I was struggling to forgive some people in my life.
What an eye-opener and, for me, all the more reason why it’s good to cover our projects with prayer. This ghostwriting project has come with hurdles and I was able to find the energy to get over them with the help of a wee group of friends who’ve prayed at every step of the process.
Why not reach out to a few friends and see if they’d pray for your WIP? And then, get typing!
Happy writing all!
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