Start chasing that ball too early and you're business will never be profitable; wait too long and you're leaving money on the table. How can you manage this balancing act?
The post SNM158: How to Ghostwrite an Amazing Book appeared first on Serve No Master.
Connect with Jonathan Green
Start chasing that ball too early and you're business will never be profitable; wait too long and you're leaving money on the table. How can you manage this balancing act?
The post SNM158: How to Ghostwrite an Amazing Book appeared first on Serve No Master.
Connect with Jonathan Green
speaker 0: 0:00
had a ghost Write an amazing book on today's episode. Today's episode Brought to you by Convert Kit To find out how Conferred Kid can help you grow your business, save money and increase your relationship with your email list. Head over to serve no master dot com Backslash Convert kit Right now, Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host things a little different today. I'm on the road again without a towel for my wife working on a bunch of paperwork passports for her marriage visa for me, and that means I'm in a different location. I'm actually in a hotel room right now recording. I also have a little bit of a cold because I'm going in and out of air conditioning and in and out of meetings and all these government offices the last few days. So I have a little bit of running notes of Sorry if there's a little difference in the background noise, maybe it sounds better and it's actually a treat. Today we're gonna talk about some really exciting stuff with ghost writing. I don't take a lot of ghost writing projects, but lately a couple of really cool ones have come my way that I've chosen to accept as I'm working on them and put them together. I thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you exactly how you could replicate my process for creating a great book. And they're really three key elements to a great book. There's the facts, the things that happened when you're writing a biography for someone or the story of someone's life, you start with the facts. On top of that, you have the emotion, the emotional journey, how they felt about the story, how you feel about sorry and really have the audience would feel about the story when you start to put those two things together. The final thing you have is the structure of events. The series of events you're gonna tell, How are you gonna organize your chapters? And we've seen some great movies in the past where stories were told out of order. And sometimes when you're writing a book, the best wayto open that book, it was something out of order. We start with the lead up to the final movement that we jump back in time to the beginning of the story. Research as a process is absolutely critical. Finding things that the client didn't even know themselves could be amazing. One of the projects I'm working on right now is a historical book went to his father. And so I dug really deep, and I found some newspaper articles, very old newspaper articles that he hadn't even seen Excited about those, I found him a new picture of his father by being fastidious with your research. By digging really, really, really deep, you can start to find things that are amazing. You confined these wonderful moments where I'm very fortunate that this particular person was famous enough to be in the newspaper all the time. If someone's writing something about me, they would struggle to find me in the newspaper. I've only been a couple of small newspaper articles certainly never been in the cover of a section, but we want to begin to find those events as well as the things that happened around them. What's really great about beginning to find the story for someone you confined the context. When were they born? What was happening in the world? What's happening? The world only turned 18. There have been a great deal of wars in the last 100. Years have been World War One, World War two. The Korean War, Vietnam. The first war in the Middle East. The second line, Middle East. All these air major events that concolor someone's life. So we want to look beyond what's happening in the moment and look at the context of the things around them. Did they go to school with someone famous? Did they work with someone famous? Were they influenced by someone famous? We want to go and find that narrative, and that provides the context where the world in which the person lives. When you're writing a fiction book, you want to create that world around them. One of the greatest fiction books of all time is called Dune and it was read That book falls in love with it. Run by Frank Herbert. He never finished the Siri's. His son took up the mantel on, wrote the rest of the books in the series. They're actually all amazing. It's a wonderful Siri's, and the reason it's so powerful is because he creates such an in depth world and universe. He creates religions and cults and political affiliations and science and the weather. All those pieces are put together so well, you remember the world even better than you. Remember the story within the book. And when you're working on a project for a client that happens in the real world, you want to understand the world in which they dwell. If someone was born for the 19 sixties, that was before desegregation. That grew up in a world in America where black and white people were separated and that could be a very important person. Someone's story and we want to understand that part of the story. I mean, I need to tell that part of the story someone grow behind the Iron Curtain, their stories different. One of my friends, one my great friends in life she was 13 when the Berlin Wall fell down. Her childhood is something that most people don't understand in the West. She was never allowed to leave her neighborhood. The thought of traveling one kilometer from department of which was born was unimaginable to her. She's usedto walking down the street, expected have her papers checked over and over again. And then she walks too far. Trying to go to the other side of the park will stop her, and they say, This is too far. You're not allowed to leave where you're from. One of the main tenets of Dictatorships and most Communist states followed the Dictatorships that you don't look, too. People leave. The board wants out. No one living inside of communism ever wants to stay. They always want to leave. That's why they always have strict border controls, letting nobody leave. They're more worried about letting you believe in letting people in. They have to worry about immigration problem because no one wants to go there. You never hear about the Soviet Union, have any keep all the people out there trying to flood there for their amazing bread lines. She grew up in that world. She grew up in a world where the never people she knew was very little. She grew up in a world where you're not allowed to have your own place. Even if you get married. On the way can move out of your parent's apartment is when you have your first child so people will rush to get pregnant because it's the only way out. And that colors many of her decisions. If you don't understand someone's past, if you understand the environment in which they started where they were, four words, you can miss some key parts of the story. Now when I talk about events in someone's life, I mean the particular thing that person did. So we have the events of the world, the people around them, the setting, the environment sometimes agree. Biography is filled with specific events that happened and influence the person that they were at a little bit. But we want to move into the things that person did that were great or that were significant, that mattered to this person or that affected the rest of their decisions and finding those pieces. It's very critical and sometimes it comes from talking to the client talking to the person or ghost writing with and you're telling the person's story. Of course, they're gonna ask him a few key questions. With each project I work on, there's a different balance. Sometimes someone wants a really great educational book with this flickers of their personal story within it. And sometimes they want a more heavily biography fueled story that's really much more about the story of them or that main character in the book. Then it is about a teaching lesson. They want one teachable principle, and so we want to find those events and someone's life that are interesting enough to engage you. I work very hard in each of my books to fill them with the most interesting stories, the things that will fit the lesson of that book but also be very interesting. I finished the final edit for Control your fate a few hours ago before I went to sleep last night, and I sent it off to the editor and I also set it off to the guy who will hopefully be writing the forward. I'm very excited about that, and as I was going to that book, I have all these stories that you haven't heard before. Almost all of them are totally new stories that happened to me that from my real life but their key lessons that matched the message of the book. So we have to determine when creating our book, whether the overarching message is more important or the journey is more important in control your fate. Each chapter teaches a different small lesson. Different technique for helping you take control of your life. So have small stories that support that lesson. But for this ghost writing private, most ghost ready projects, there's a single overarching message and where much more engaged in the journey of the story. The third and final element is the emotion of the story, and this is so critical. This is where many people struggle. We want to have a singular emotional journey in fiction. We often start off with a flaw. What's wrong with this person happen? They overcome it. Person doesn't believe in themselves, Dumbo working through the journey and finding his father so that they and he can fly and then finally realizing he doesn't even need the feather. He can fly without it because he has enough confidence Dumbo is the story of an elephant with no confidence. It's tempting to start a biography or story about someone making them sound perfect, but if they start off perfect, there's nowhere for them to go. Now. Sometimes your book will start with an emotional hook. We're start telling that big story that's gonna be end. That's okay. You could wait until Chapter two to introduce the flaw or the person's weakness and weakness is not bad. Witness means there's room for growth right now for my new book, I just after all my research for this new ghost running projects and a bunch of questions to the client, I said, What do I do with this? Would you think about that? We're gonna find that starting point once we have the right pieces and I'm very close to having all the pieces of the story. I'm just getting a little feedback. Making sure he's happy with where I am on the track will move into the next part of this, which is where it really choose. Where does this story start? And it could be a story that starts with someone who's big floor, big challenges around them. Stop by them. It could be that they started behind the Iron Curtain, were limited. And it's a story of overcoming that challenge because that's a big enough problem that it's interesting to watch someone rebel against it and to make it a stronger story. It could be the story of someone who doesn't follow the rules or who's always close to getting in trouble for pushing the envelope when they grow up behind the Iron Curtain when they grow up in a restrictive environment. We remember the stories that are emotional. Remember the stories that hit us in the heart, whether it's because of the passion of the person deposit emotional, it's a negative emotion. One of the books I like to talk about the least is called A Bridge to Terabithia. They made a movie of it. I'll never watch it. I remember this book because no book has made me cried more. It's one of the most devastating books I've ever read that has such an amazing story and such a painful movement. In the end, sorry for spoiling the book for you. If you haven't read it, it's been out for years and years. I read it 30 years ago, but the movie's been out for almost a decade. But I remember the emotion because it kicked me in the heart, and even now I'm tearing up a little bit. I don't know if you can hear it over the audio, but just thinking about what happens in that book devastates me. You can tell a very passionate and powerful story. Emotion is a key part of a lot of our modern storytelling. Most modern romantic comedies are heavy and the emotion most dramas or heavy on the emotion. This is why they're a great deal of movies out lately, where characters have some devastating illness. There's so many movies lately where two people fall in love. One of the cancer or one of them has the germ disease where you can't leave the house. They're making another one of those persons in the bubble movies. And I remember watching the boy in the bubble. What else? A little kid. So I've already seen part of that story where someone is limited by that particular disease. But as with anything an idea, they always circle it back and that I have a new idea in that setting just like they've made dozens of movies where someone's under house arrest and then realizes their neighbors a murderer of some kind. How many of those movies said they made at least 30 that I can think of off the top of my head? Repeating stories. Get away with it when they have a strong emotional journey. This is where people have the hardest time in nonfiction. In fact, this is where I struggle the most with each of my books. The first and final chapter have tohave the beginning and end of emotional journey. I often split a story in half to put the beginning of the end so that you feel engaged enoughto want to finish it. So when you're writing a book about someone else when you're doing ghost writing project those of the key elements beginning that emotional journey, having in pieces that are interesting enough to people stay engaged. Characters don't have to be perfect. It could be tough when you're writing a book about someone so much family don't wanna make the person sound awful. We want to do is make them sound human. If we go too far and write a book, if I read a book about how my dad's superhero it's hard to make that engaging if I just talked about how he's always been perfect will always be perfect. Where is the interesting part of the story? I love British TV shows because there are real stakes I watched today another those big action comic book movies that they have and I'm watching it the whole time. And it was very hard for me to care, because there's no stakes now. They tried to generate stakes by killing character, which is an old old plot device. Every movie about a cop there partner dies having times. Have we seen that in a movie? This is the one where the persons of warrior and the person training them dies, and it supposed to create the motivation. And it didn't work for me because and watching scene after scene where this character is fighting against drawings. When someone is fighting against a C. G I creation, it's hard for you to care. You know, the humans always gonna win. There's no really steaks. They tried to do it in that ghost squad movie suicide squad. If you watch that movie, I did apologize for that. They introduced a character called Climber or Super wrote Man. I forget the guy who can climb anything. They go. This is a guy who can climb anything and then they kill him within 30 seconds to go see anyone can die. And it, Signore knows that hiss of a character with the name we never heard of. It doesn't demonstrate real stakes, and they're trying to create real emotion by creating real stakes and one of the big problems in this type of moving. It's probably why people are gonna burn out on them because you don't care. You always know who's gonna win, and it's fun. But there's no emotional connection. One of the great biographies that I read is an 800 page biography of Patton. They made a movie out of it, and at the beginning it talks about certain things about him that were great. And then it goes into all the things about him that were terrible. Patton was an unbelievable general and an unbelievably terrible politician. They made him forget the exact name for, like, the vassal or the senator, like the boss of North Africa. After we conquered North Africa the beginning of World War Two, when he won his first campaign Terrible mistake. He began to make huge political mistakes and very regrettable ones had no idea he was doing in politics. They finally figured it out, sent him into Europe, and he basically conquered Europe. Very close on a boat. If you're English, you probably hate me for saying that. But, man, we'll talk about unstoppable General. He was really great at one thing, but that's what makes the book feel. So, really when they go, No, I'll show you what's wrong so that you believe more on what's right and create that balances, of course, something that comes from more skill. But when you have ah, flaw when you could demonstrate real stakes, that's when a book becomes powerful. In America, we have a problem with our cinema. We like in our moat television Joe's. We never want there to be the possibility that the main AC trick it lost. Part of it is that we always look at the money in the waiting room, was intelligence or shows a major, but how much money can make. And the main character is often the draw. The main actors. The draw for the finance. And that's one of the problems with the structure of American cinema, because it means main characters can never die. And that means nothing feels really as much as it's exciting. And I love watching every season of 24 I do recommend 24 as one of the best ways to learn about cliffhangers. You know, going into their seventh seasons that show that even though he faces 24 times seven different crises, he will never die. Even when you see scenes where he's killed, he comes back to life. Even though you see scenes where he's captured and shipped off to China to be tortured for years, you know he'll be back, Episode one of the next season and that small piece hurts stakes. Now any other character on that show is fair game that does make it good. That's one of the reason that shows great that even though the main character can't be touched, anyone else is fair game, and I'm not gonna tell you who loses it, and that is one of the great things about that show. So you have all these things where there's no stakes where there's no emotional journey. We don't have any flaws, and we don't feel engaged with that. We don't remember them very well. We don't watch them over and over again. Comic book movies struggle with this part because they're thinking about. I want to make seven more moves of this character there, thinking about all these other movies they want to make. And that's why those movies are becoming very similar. Were always either seeing this complicate or shoved in the World War Two or World War, and they try to create this villain. We know how those movies and we know how those words ended. I don't want to go too far down the path of talking about just movies and things, but I want you to get a feeling for the importance of steaks and emotional journey that seeing someone who has a flaw, it lets people know you're honest. I used to read Rolling Stone magazine. I used to really like looking at their album reviews, and this is quite a while ago, just before that magazine basically turned into garbage. But at one time it was a very respected rock and roll magazine, and you can watch their fall from grace because first used to be larger than other magazines that it had to switch to be in the same size. Now I'm not even sure if they do a print edition now. If you read Rolling Stone, it's mostly political articles or them falling for hoaxes and writing about things that never happened and then getting sued for millions of dollars for slander on libel. Rolling Stone magazine now is known more for their inability to fact check than they are for their rock and roll's. But when I grew up, the covers of the magazines were seminal. There were amazing covers of amazing musicians, and I used to read the reviews. And then one day I read a review of the album that everyone knew was terrible. It was another Yoko Ono albums. I don't know why anyone pretends her music is good. I don't know anyone who's ever liked her music. If you go to Japan, everyone's a fan because they're all Japanese. But no one actually likes music. I've never been with someone who turned on the yoke of the CD, and this is like her tend to have him after John Lennon died. So this was late nineties and I opened Rolling Stone magazine. They gave it five stars or four stars. I saw this good review and I said What? I've heard this song and it was off like, awful like, Painful like Listen to someone smashed pots and pans with a hammer. It was very discordant, very painful to my ears. It wasn't just bad music, it was off. And they wrote this glowing review, and I realized that the person who wrote the review had no integrity. They wrote positives for everything and an even stronger version of this age to Rita. Some deejay magazines that would review news short songs coming out, and I looked one time every single song they reviewed had five stars, and I said, I'll never read this magazine again. If you won't give a bad review, your good reviews mean nothing. The person who complements everyone their comments have no meaning. If you won't ever give bad feet back in, your good feedback has no variance. It has no meaning. If it rained every single day, we'd always be sad, but it was sunny every single day, and we've never seen rain, so don't have less an impact. We need contrast to appreciate the value of things When you can have an element of your story, we start offs pointing out the flaws and somewhere the challenges that we're facing when they finally overcome them, it has more meaning. That's what is critical when you're telling your stories. Find that journal. Be willing to push the envelope a little bit. Now every part of this story of these books, when I'm working with a ghost ready client, is it okay for me to tell this part of the story? Or here's how I want to tell it. It's important to show and humanize you or the personal. Writing about that element creates a greater book, but we do want to make sure that we respect the opinions and feelings of the person working for. Of course, that's the balance in the challenge of Ghost right. That's why I don't do a lot of ghost writing projects unless the person writing out it's amazing the ghost running project work out right now. The main character is so good the person I'm writing about it so amazing the things he accomplished are unbelievable that I want to put my name on the book. I want to have it, you know, Britain by selling Don't Ghost Written by Jonathan Green. I'm excited about the character, that much that would love for you to see this book on the listings for other books. I've done okay with all of that. That's something for you to think about. We could get project. They were so excited about that. We see the greatness there. So as you're working on writing longer books as you're working on becoming a better author, sometimes we need to take ghost writing jobs to keep the war chest filled up. And that's absolutely fine. I actually love ghost writing. I like doing it. I'm working on several new ghost writing project now because we're all really exciting, interesting and benefit my family. They're helping to rebuild the finances after we went through all those medical challenges, Last month's really helps to take a couple of fast cash projects, and the fact that I'm excited about them and think they're gonna come out really, really well creates that perfect balance. So when you're writing your books, whether it's a ghost writer project or something else. Remember, you wanna find those key events, the world of which the personal ISS born in which they did their great things. Then you want to choose the right events in their life to talk about. Not every book needs to be 800 pages like Patton. That's double the length of any of my books. Double That's a long book, and then find that emotional journey. Find that challenge the overcome Show, the story of someone starting someone finishing somewhere. That's where you create amazing book. And that's how you ghost, right? Like an absolute champion. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's bestseller, Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. You've just listened to another amazing episode of the serve no master podcast. Make sure to subscribe, and we're back tomorrow with another amazing episode.