Podcast Episode 5: Interview with Ghostwriter Tim Vandehey

Ghostwriter Tim Vandehey Meet Tim Vandehey, ghostwriter extraordinaire. Over his fifteen year career, he's written 55 books for his client-authors—and a couple of his own. He's hit the New York Times bestseller list, and one of his books recently won a coveted Axiom award. Join us as we discuss how his practices and procedures can improve our own work when writing legacy stories for our clients. What is ghostwriting? It’s a hidden economy, but Tim estimates that 80% of the nonfiction titles you see on bookstore shelves are ghostwritten or co-written. The more famous the person, the more likely their book is ghostwritten (except, of course, if the person is famous because he or she is a writer). On saying yes to an opportunity, even when you haven’t done anything like it before. Tim went from a career in copywriting to being an author of 55 books and counting. His training in journalism made it a smooth, natural transition, because with ghostwriting, as with journalism, you need to enjoy telling people’s stories. How one referral led to another, including work he did for Mark Victor Hansen, creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The difference between personal history and ghostwriting: the readership for personal history projects is family and friends; for ghostwriters, it’s the wider public. But we’re both trying to write a compelling story in someone else’s voice. A lot of writers have the skill to be a personal historian or a ghostwriter, but they can’t set aside their ego. To do either well, you have bring a sense of service to the project, have a higher purpose than getting your name on book (sometimes Tim is credited, sometimes not). You need to suppress your ego and take pleasure in telling other people’s stories. On getting the writer’s voice in ghostwritten books (hint: it’s tricky!) The authors think you’ll come up with a voice that reflects how the speak or write today. They don’t want that, but they don’t know it. What Tim tries to do is come up with an idealized version of their voice. To get to know their values and stories, but not to mimic their voice patterns. It’s a matter of craft and practice and getting to know the author and why the materials matter to them. My take on voice in a life story book: I try to write in the voice the storyteller would write in if he or she were a writer. Tim ghosts nonfiction books only, most of which are used as a medium to teach something. As such, they rely heavily on structure. Just like a class has a syllabus, a book has to have structure. Tim’s ghostwriting process: Step one: phone conversation with the author to talk through concepts and ideas. Tim is always thinking in terms of story. Step two: first outline; what’s the overall concept of the book? What will be its broad structure? This outline runs 4-5 pages or shorter, with bullet points and descriptions. Naming conventions are addressed. The final preliminary outline serves as a blueprint of how the book should be built. Once the author signs off on it, it’s time for the next step. Step three: Face-to-face meetings with the author. Tim does a LOT of traveling! He conducts several days of recorded interviews one time. Step four: Working from the transcripts of the recorded interviews, he creates the comprehensive outline. At 30-40 pages (sometimes longer), it lays out the entire book in bullet points and descriptions. After the author approves, it’s on to the writing phase. Step five: Tim writes the book. It's all about the outline(s) How this outlining process can be adapted for doing life history projects. How outlining can help the writer find the scaffolding—the structure—of a book, and how it can take the fear out of a personal historian’s first book-length project. Tim’s work on a book with a three-week deadline, and how the outline is keeping him afloat. The outline for Tim's book Lovability ran 80 pages and was the hardest part of do...