Organize Your Source Materials
Why organizing your book ideas matters — and what your ghostwriter actually needs from you
Ideas need to be revised. Before you ever sit down with a professional writer, you have to think through your book idea and iron it out. You may need a few planning sessions for this. Put your ideas on the page and include everything you have that has at least a glimmer of merit, even ideas you’re not sure will work.
If you’re trying to perfect your idea in your mind, try improving that habit and put your ideas on the page. Some of these ideas will be diamonds in the rough, some garbage, others will inspire something good.
Outline it
When I’m working on my own fiction, I discover ideas locked in the place they might be: an idea for a scene or for the plot structure
When I was working on my fiction, I’d find that I'd have an idea for a novel thought through scenes at a time, a timeline to frame the story, and when I would go to outline the idea, I would see that the scene that I knew so well in my head would not work together on the page. One scene would cancel out the plausibility of another, so you have to make decisions. Now you may make those decisions on your own, but if you don’t, be prepared to talk about making them with your ghostwriter.
Writing is methodical, and there's a way to do it successfully at every stage of development, but it’s not a science—creativity requires room to breathe and adapt.
Map a Working Chronology
Sketch your book’s plot, capturing the main idea and the most significant supports in a paragraph. If you find it helpful, think of the beginning, the middle, and the end as each being a paragraph drafted in three paragraphs.
Plan for the Interview Session
Your ghostwriter can do their best work once you provide your idea as a chronological outline. You don't have to have every question answered or even know a great deal of it. However you see your idea, with the points you want to express in the way that you want to express it, will give your ghostwriter the information they need to be able to ask you questions that will help finish the idea and outline and storyboard it, then write your book.
You may want to meet over the phone or by video call. Either is fine for follow-up meetings, but for initial planning meetings, it’s best to meet in person or by video call. Unless exceptions are made, expect that the calls will be recorded. Your ghostwriter will have to go back and listen to the conversations to refresh on details.
What Prep Can and What it Doesn’t Do
Solid preparation will help you explain your idea clearly to the person drafting your project; it will save time in the outline process and give your Ghostwriter a better idea of the questions to ask to fill in the gaps. The more you know about your idea, the quicker the writing begins.
Preparation, however, will not mean that the drafting of the chapters will be faster. Chapter generation depends on the idea, the research required to express it, and the ghostwriter's ability to put the ideas on the page. The more complicated an idea, the longer it typically takes to express it.
Ghostwriters often charge a premium and make no promises about when a book will be finished. Everyone wants their book to be done quickly, but great work comes from revision. It’s one thing to have the core idea clearly stated on the page; it's another to make every page execute that vision with precision. A talented writer will have quality words on the page the first time around, so the second pass through the manuscript improves on the first and crystallizes the author’s vision in a much quicker run-through of the text.