Writing Tips :: From the Compost

Dec

Writing Tip: Don’t Write Purple

By Kim · Comments (0)

A very long time ago, around 40 BCE or so, the Roman poet Horace wrote this in his Ars Poetica: “Your opening shows great promise, and yet flashy purple patches.”

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.

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Nov

Tip: Ooh, Writing AND History!

By Kim · Comments (0)

Two of my passions are writing and history. I especially love it when they combine into one. So I have a deep affection for my subscription to The Writers’ Almanac. My tip today is – subscribe! It’s easy to do so, and it’s free.

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.

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Nov

Tip: Using the Media

By Kim · Comments (0)

This tip is a plug for a book I edited some time ago. It is Media Tips for Authors by Whitney Keyes, and if you are an author, or a wanna-be author, you should read this short book that will give you great tips on how to use the media to promote your book. (If you’re like many writers, you’d probably rather stay holed up in front of your computer instead of promoting, so getting the media to help you might reduce your stress.)

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.

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Oct

Writing Tip: Fiction and Reality

By Kim · Comments (0)

When you write fiction, you need to make your characters seem real. They need to come alive. This isn’t always easy, because of course they aren’t real – you’ve made them up, and their existence began in your head.

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.

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Oct

Writing Tip: How to Get Known

By Kim · Comments (0)

One of the challenges of ghostwriting is figuring out how to stand out while remaining invisible. This tip is a simple one: network! Then network some more. It is the only answer to this challenge. You must convince other people to recommend you.

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.

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Sep

Writing Tip: How to Handle Nice People

By Kim · Comments (0)

The most frustrating kind of ghostwriting clients are not the ones you think. Usually they are the nicest people who have been brought up on the adage, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” What this means in interviews is that nearly everything these people say is likely to be boring, because “nice” has got to be the most yawn-producing word on the planet. Almost anything other than bland will offend somebody, and nice people try never to offend. So they stay nice or else – you guessed it – they don’t say anything at all.

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.

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Sep

Writing Tip: Settings

By Kim · Comments (0)

Setting can be problematic for a ghostwriter. But you cannot afford to ignore it. It is incumbent upon you to know something about the place where your client’s book is set, so you can portray it correctly. Settings are a big part of making the reader feel that they are “there.”

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.

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Aug

Writing Tip: Know Your Reader

By Kim · Comments (1)

When I start ghostwriting, the first question I ask my client the author is always, “Who is your ideal reader? Who do you want to read this book?”

This is often a hard question for them to answer, especially if the client is a newbie author. They rarely think about it. Most of them will say something like, “My book will appeal to just about everyone,” and they will act puzzled that you are even asking this stupid question.

This is usually my first educating job. I explain to my client that no, not everyone will want to read their book, and that an exercise in defining their ideal readers is well worth their time.

It is true that no one can definitively know exactly who will be reading any book, but an author can know two things: 1) they can know who is most likely to read a book like theirs, and 2) they can know who they want to read the book.

Knowing who the target readers are is important to me as the ghostwriter because this will clue me as to how to tailor the writing to appeal to particular types of people, by varying my use of metaphors, slang, industry jargon, and so on. Writing for grandmothers is different than writing for teenagers. Writing for financially savvy people is different than writing for people who can’t figure out how to read their bank statement.

Knowing who the target readers are also helps me with research on aspects of the topic. For instance, when ghostwriting a gardening book, I joined a gardening group on Facebook and asked members of the group what they thought about a particular kind of composting. The answers I received gave me insights into what people who’d be interested in a book on gardening were thinking about.

You have to go after the readers if you want them to come after you.

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Aug

Writing Tip: What It Takes to Be a Ghost

By Kim · Comments (0)

There is no ghostwriter’s union that sets uniform standards for how ghostwriters do what they do. (Or if there is such a union, I don’t know about it.) But this is what I think you need to know in order to be a ghost:

First, be aware that writing for yourself is very different than ghostwriting. A ghost needs to write compelling prose that is close to another person’s voice, not their own. You need to put your ego in the background and write what is important to your client, in a way he or she might say it – only better. This skill involves more than writing ability. You must be able to ask penetrating questions that elicit sparkling stories and deep emotions. You must be able to listen compassionately to the answers, and then delve even deeper. You must be able to translate what you find in someone else’s head into written words that convey someone else’s truth. You must be fiercely dedicated to producing an excellent work of art, yet recognize that this work does not belong to you. A ghost is a different kind of writer. Not all good writers make good ghosts.

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Jul

Writing Tip: Writing for the Unseen

By Kim · Comments (0)

I’ve ghostwritten numerous books for people I have never met in person. (I’m not sure of how many – at least 25.) Until I got Skype, I’d never even seen them, except sometimes in photographs. When I teach other writers to be ghostwriters they often ask me how I get around the challenge of not having the physical reality of the author in front of me.

I tell them that this is actually a benefit, not a detriment. This is because the readers of the book will likely never see the author in person either. And yet you must make the author’s voice and presence real anyway. As the ghostwriter, you are coming from the place of the reader – and the reader is who the book is for, right?

Another benefit is that when you are limited to just the author’s voice, your focus on their words increases, since you will not be distracted by environment, gestures, facial expressions, and so forth. And of course, books are made of words!

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