Metaphors elicit emotional responses. For example, if your readers include athletes or wanna-be athletes, you can use sports metaphors or physical metaphors and everyone will be happy. They will get you. For instance, say the point you want to make is that your idea is a winning strategy. You might say, “You’ll make a touchdown every day if you do X.” Now, most people (in America) will get what you mean by the use of the touchdown metaphor, at least intellectually. But it is the male athletes among your readers who will respond emotionally. They might know what it feels like to make a touchdown themselves, or at least to be at the big game when one is made. But if your readers are middle-aged European women, or perhaps most women, your touchdown metaphor is probably going to elicit a yawn.

If you are writing for people in the Midwest, don’t use too many ocean metaphors. Similarly if you are writing for people who live in the tropics, don’t use winter or snow metaphors. If your readers are people who care deeply about the environment, then use a lot of nature metaphors.

This is especially important when you are making a major point. Make sure your metaphors are designed with your target readers in mind. They must resonate within them.

I recommend you start with some generic questions to get you rolling. Here are some that I always ask:

1. Who are your desired readers? (Do NOT let them get away with answering “everyone.”)

2. What do you want your reader to learn?

3. How do you want your reader to feel? What emotions do you want to awaken and why?

4. What is the purpose of this book? Make money? Teach others? Save the world? Entertain?

5. What are the hot buttons, hot topics, or controversies in your subject? What is your take on these?

6. Are there FB groups or Linked In groups on your subject? What are these people saying? Do you belong to these groups?

7. Have you tweeted questions or teasers about your subject to test the waters? What have you found out from Twitter?

8. Who are the competitors for your book? Who else has written about this subject? How is yours different or complementary?

9. If people don’t know what you know, what will happen?

10. If people do know what you know, what will happen?

There are many more tips and tricks to research and interviewing in my class “Living as a Ghost”. Check it out and see.

Ghostwriting is good for your ego. You don’t get any glory or credit. Nobody knows it was your writing that made a book sing, or caused people to weep, or others to cry “aha!” as an idea illuminated their life.

As a ghost, your writing does not belong to you. It belongs to the author, who is not you. Yes, this is a positive thing. It keeps you from getting puffed up with self-importance. You’re not the only one with things to say.

For this and many other reasons (like having a job!), I love being a ghostwriter. I also love to teach, so I have a program you might like to try. It’s called “Living as a Ghost” that teaches writers, editors, and other “book people” all the ins and outs of ghostwriting.

Check out “Living as a Ghost”  – and if it sparks your interest, please let me know. I’m happy to answer any further questions or concerns you may have. Email me at storykim@comcast.net.

From this sentence by Horace we get the phrase “purple prose.” I used this phrase in conversation the other day, and many people, to my surprise, had never heard of it. Possibly because they are not writers or editors. Writers and editors are on the lookout for purple prose. So they can kill it.

Purple prose means a word, phrase, sentence, or any written passage that is too ornate, too flowery, too over the top – in fact, just “too.” Purple prose draws attention to itself and away from the story.

The most obvious kind of purple prose is romantic or erotic prose. It’s the easiest place to go over the top. That’s because the words we give to sexuality are usually either too clinical or too crude. If you say “He patted her mammary glands” it’s not very exciting, but “He grabbed her boob” is crude. Neither is purple, though. Purple would be “His sweaty hand gently caressed her hot heaving bosom, leaving a slimy trail on her rose-colored nipples.”

So now you know. Don’t write in purple. Black is much more real.

If you are a writer who sometimes wonders if you’re wasting your time with writing, The Writers’ Almanac will convince you otherwise. Writers can – and have – changed the world; how we think, how we communicate, how we love. The Writer’s Almanac is a daily radio and on-line program and podcast of poetry and historical interest pieces, usually of literary significance. It is hosted by Garrison Keillor, who I just love and love to plug.

Check it out, it’s a deceptively easy read – things don’t have to be difficult to be helpful. And stay tuned, because Whitney is in the process of writing another book, this one on marketing, and I know it will be helpful too.

When you ghostwrite, you’ve got to take a real live person and put their thoughts, ideas, feelings and stories into words that convey who they are, without inundating your readers with the minutia that real people carry around with them.

I’ve found that a good way to make my real people seem real on paper is to pretend that they are fictional characters. When I write fiction, I have to ask myself questions about my characters – their opinions, their motivations, their histories, and so on. I have to develop their unique voice, gestures, or looks so that readers can recognize them in just a few words. This technique works really well for real people as well.

How to network successfully is covered beautifully and completely in a book I was fortunate to edit: The Intentional Networker, by Patti DeNucci. Whatever your business, this book will help you get known, and if you are a writer (or especially a ghostwriter) you really should read this book.

Trying to winkle out interesting details from these taciturn folks can be quite a challenge. Here is one trick that I’ve found to be effective: I sometimes make up my own details. This is how this goes:

Ghostwriter: “So tell me more about Joe Smith so the readers can get to know him. You said he was ‘funny’ – so what kind of jokes did he tell? Can you remember any?”
Client: “Oh, you know, he was just funny. He could tell all sorts of jokes.”
Ghostwriter: “Like what?”
Client: “Funny ones, you know.”
Ghostwriter: “Did his jokes make fun of himself, or of other people? Or did he make puns, or plays on words?”
Client: “Um…”

And so on. This can take a long time. Instead of making both the client and myself frustrated, instead I’ll move on to something else and I’ll write a paragraph describing Joe Smith, expanding on a situation about Joe, making up details and jokes that I think are funny. Then I’ll show this to my client.

One of two things will happen. Either my client will say, “Oh, that sounds just like Joe!” (This makes me feel so intuitive, even psychic.) Or my client will say, “Oh, it didn’t happen like that – this is what happened, and this is the joke Joe told,” and they’ll proceed to tell me the specifics.

Either way, I’ll get the details that will make Joe Smith come alive on the page.

At least three-quarters of my clients’ books are set somewhere other than where I live or have lived. Right now I’m ghostwriting a book from someone in Cleveland Ohio, and another for someone in Florida. I have never been either place. In both books the setting plays a role in the story, especially in the book from Florida as my client is an athlete and some of the action takes place outside.

So I google Florida, and the immediate district where the action takes place, and the sports fields surrounding this district, and I take details from my client’s stories and google them too. I once ghostwrote a book that was about training horses. One of my client’s stories was of her as a teenager and her “job” mucking out the stalls at the local racetrack. I googled that racetrack and found all sorts of great and colorful stories that enabled me to get a sense of place, and hopefully impart that to the book’s readers.

Don’t forget the where. It’s just as important as the who, what, when and how.