Don’t fear the ghostwriter
Image: Glenn Cartens-Peters on Unsplash
Q. When is a writer not the writer?
A. When they’re a ghostwriter.
A ghostwriter is someone who writes on behalf of someone else (quite literally an ‘out of body’ experience). At Red Pony, we are often called on to write copy for blog posts, websites, articles or presentations for a client. Our job requires us to convey their voice in the written piece, whether they are an individual or an organisation.
When we ghostwrite, we aren’t starting from scratch. What we write will be based on the ideas and original thinking of our client. We will often interview them first, to hear what they have to say in their own words. We follow up with questions to further explore their thinking and to make sure we understand what they want to communicate.
In some fields, ghostwriting is so common it’s the norm. For example, when you hear a politician give a speech, it’s generally safe to assume much of what they are saying will have been drafted by a professional speechwriter or political advisor (and possibly both).
Many autobiographies, particularly those of celebrities, are written with the assistance of a ghostwriter – even if their name doesn’t appear on the cover. Prince Harry’s account of life as a member of the English royal family, Spare, involved a ‘collaboration’ with prolific ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer. Moehringer famously helped Andre Agassi produce the former tennis star’s account of his love/hate relationship with his chosen sport, Open.
The degree to which the role of this additional contributor is acknowledged varies greatly. I have quite a few autobiographies of former AFL footballers sitting on my bookshelf. Many of these are described as being written ‘with’ someone else (most commonly a journalist, such as fellow Colac High School alumni, Scott Gullan), without necessarily providing further detail as to the exact nature or extent of their involvement.
For some people this might seem strange or even dishonest – it’s supposed to be the thoughts of the writer or speech-giver after all, right? At the end of the day, the person putting their name to the content is taking responsibility for it, so it should be about the words and not the process. This assumes that one, the words are factually correct and two, the author isn’t deliberately lying about how it was produced.
For our projects, we are engaged as professional writers to help our client communicate with their audience, whoever this might be. We have done our job well when the message represents the client’s thinking and when it resonates with the people they are trying to reach.
