Confessions of a #ghostwriter! Meet happily-hidden talent, Lynn Wolf.

My guest today is Lynn Wolf, an award-winning poet and a published editor and author. She has also written, produced, and acted for the independent filmmaking community. But, of all her talents, I'm most intrigued by Lynn's ghostwriting. She kindly agreed to share some insight into that field. 

*   *   *

The Writer Behind the Curtain

by Lynn Ellen Wolf

If you've ever seen the movie Singin' in the Rain, you know all about ghostwriting. The performer is on stage, entertaining the audience while the singer is behind the curtains providing the voice.

Hello, I'm Lynn Wolf, and I'm the voice behind the curtain. I'm a professional ghostwriter, and I'm able to fulfill my love of writing by helping writers fulfill their love of storytelling. While some people consider it 'cheating' to have someone else write their book, that's not what ghostwriting is about. At least, that's not what professional ghostwriting is. What we do is help people who have great stories to tell, but might not have all the writing tools to tell it. Quite a few times I've also been approached by a storyteller whose native language is not English, and they just need someone to write their story in English. Either way, it's a win-win situation for both of us.

I wasn't always a ghostwriter; I've done my fair share of writing in my own name, in various pen names, and have gone through the same submission and rejection process as every true aspiring writer. I've studied, practiced, and I continue to refine my craft with workshops and daily writing exercises. When I started editing for other writers, I found that I loved coaching, teaching, and showing other writers how to develop their own writing, and from time to time, a few people asked me to write for them. They had a story, but they didn't have the confidence or the time to study the craft. Well, I had the time and the craft, so my services evolved to include ghostwriting.

The best gig for me is when I'm approached by an author who knows their characters, knows their story, and has a good idea of where it begins and where it ends. My job, then, is to flesh out these characters and tell that story in such a way as to please the readers. So far, my collaborations have been both pleasant and successful. It's not important to me that my name be on the cover; I'm just proud to do the best I can and to see a smile on the face of the storyteller who created the world inside.

Being a ghostwriter isn't for everyone; it's difficult sometimes to quench the ego, or to write a story as someone else sees it when I see it differently. I must maintain an open mind at all times and remember that the story isn't mine; I'm just painting by numbers – the picture my client drew needs color, and I wield the brush.

One of the best payoffs for me, though, is that I am deeply inspired by the people I work for. I find myself driven to write more for myself and finish some of those dusty WIPs I set aside long ago. I'm happier about writing and don't see it as a job so much as I appreciate it as a gift.

When I first started studying the craft of writing, I couldn't have predicted that I'd end up as a writing coach and ghostwriter – and loving it –but that's exactly where I am. I love my clients, love their stories, and I'm grateful that they trust me with the brilliant expressions of their imaginations.

*   *   *

Want to hire Lynn Wolf? Inquiries may be sent via email to lew[at]lynnellenwolf[dot]com. 

Matthew Guerruckey on using Marvel's comic techniques in storytelling

I got to know Matthew Guerruckey when I contributed some stories to his wonderful online literary magazine, Drunk Monkeys. He's a writer as well as an editor, and I'm delighted

that he's joining us today to share a very interesting (and practical) perspective on storytelling.

*   *   *

HOW TO WRITE FICTION THE MARVEL WAY

By Matthew Guerruckey

I ended up a writer, but my earliest ambition was to be a comic-book artist. One of my first memories is of lying on the shag carpet at my grandmother’s house drawing stick figure superheroes. (Superman was a blob with a cape and a curl, Batman was a blob with a cape and pointy ears).

The first college course I took was on the Art of Cartooning. It was my first formal training, not only in art, but in storytelling. While other writers were analyzing Hemingway, Woolf, and Fitzgerald I was doing the same with Peanuts, Looney Tunes, and Marvel Comics. During that time I came across an instructional book that remains my favorite to this day: How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way by Stan Lee and John Buscema.

Stan Lee is the co-creator (along with artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko) of some of the most enduring characters in pop culture history. In 1962 alone Lee and his artists created Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor (that last one with an assist from ancient Norse legend). Stan imbued his comics with a folksy, alliterative charm. The same goes for How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Stan boasts that by reading the book you will be able to tell your own stories in the “mildly magnificent Marvel style”. In spite of its cheesiness, the book contains solid tips on how to approach not just comic art but any kind of storytelling.

In the book, artists are advised to begin drawing the figure using basic shapes, like circles and cylinders. After those basic forms are in place, you scribble lines to fill in the rest of the figure—after all, the drawing will be erased and covered in pen later. At that early stage there’s no such thing as a wrong line.

That holds true for writing as well. A common cause of writer’s block is the fear that your words must be “correct” right away. But if you look at that rough draft as a scribble, you’ll see that there are no mistakes. In the same way that a comic artist traces over their previous work to refine their drawing, you’ll rewrite each word until it finds its proper inflection.

How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way can tell you how to write a scene as well. It presents several examples of ”boring” composition, and then next to them shows the correct “Marvel” way of drawing the same scene. Their examples seem like self-parody, filled with extreme angles, high drama, and zero subtlety, but it’s an important lesson. Every scene you write should contain enough drama, even if it’s subtly portrayed, to keep the reader engaged. You don’t have to be a garish showman like Stan, but continually crafting interesting moments is the key to holding a reader’s interest.

In drawing comics, you absolutely have to know what your story is and how it will be told before you begin drawing. The medium demands it. Fiction does as well. If you don’t know why you’re writing your story and where you would like it to go (even if the ending isn’t set in stone), your readers won’t know why they should be reading it.

But the most important thing I’ve learned from comics about writing isn’t contained in the pages of How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, but spread out over the collected works of Lee and his collaborators. For decades on end they just kept creating. Some of it was garbage, some of it was genius, but they kept at it, and the garbage made way for the genius and the genius elevated the garbage. Keep writing, no matter what it is, and you have no idea how far you can go. Excelsior! 

*   *   *

Check out Matthew Guerruckey's lit zine Drunk Monkeys and his indie publishing company Marginalia Publishing.

Film vs Fiction: Paul Almond compares novel writing and screenwriting

Today's guest comes with a perspective unusual on this blog: Before turning to fiction-writing, he had a career in TV and film. I asked Canadian writer Paul Almond to discuss the differences between these two types of storytelling.

*   *   *

Yes indeed, there is quite a difference between writing a screenplay and writing a novel.  After some forty years directing and producing television dramas and motion pictures, during which time I wrote quite a few, I realised that since screenplay writing was a very tight little craft, novel writing might well be that also.
    So when I had open heart surgery in 1990, and could no longer make movies, my wife, Joan, insisted I turn to my first love, writing.  So now what?
In a screenplay there were so many rules, so many points at which the plot had to turn — as Linda Seager so cleverly outlined in her modest, but essential, book, Making A Good Script Great, I thought that perhaps the same kind of skill might required in writing a novel.

So I enrolled for two or three years in the full curriculum of writing programs at UCLA extension.  Curiously enough, most of the students (of all ages) seemed to want to write screenplays to submit to the studios.  They believed (rightly, I’d say) that studio executives were such idiots, they didn’t know how to read a screenplay.  So they wanted to learn novel writing only to submit them to studios for screenplays.
The first thing that alarmed me was that in a novel you can't just say:
INT LIVING ROOM
and leave it to the art director and set decorator to do their job.
You had to write that description and find a way to do it in a few sentences. That was the first big difference.
The second big difference was that screenplays are written in the present tense.  Most novels are written in the past tense.  I found that out when I started to turn one of my screenplays into a novel.  My instructors soon showed me how wrong I was.

There is, of course, the question of literacy.  When George Lucas wrote “Star Wars”, it was apparently horribly illiterate.  I had the pleasure of employing several from his British production crew right after it, who told me.  It is of course hearsay.

For advice on the actual writing, there are as many different “experts” as there are novelists: whether to use adjectives or not, adverbs or not, and other adjuncts to simple good writing.  Writing schools with their own rules proliferate, the best being one (I hear) in, of all places, Iowa.  But two or three years away to study at a school was not possible, so I did my best with UCLA extensions.  And yes, I did learn a great deal.

But even so, I still wrote two full-length (unpublished) novels (one did come out in a French translation) before I sat down to The Deserter, the first book of The Alford Saga.  It went to practically every agent in Canada and several publishers, to no effect whatsoever.
I sat down and wrote the second book, and then the third, and so on.  After six or seven years, my wife again took me in hand and said, “Paul, just get them published.”  So by that time, I found a couple of publishers.  Indeed, the first five books of the Saga are now in print, and my new publisher, Red Deer Press, a subsidiary of Fitzhenry and Whiteside, has happily taken all eight books.  The next two, The Gunner (spring 2014), and The Hero (autumn 2014) are coming out next year, and The Inheritor in 2015.

The fact that a couple of them have become national bestsellers in Canada just shows what agents know.  As you can see, I'm not a big fan of agents.  Every publishing contact, I did myself.

*   *   *
You can learn more about Paul Almond on his website.
You can buy The Chaplain (The Alford Saga, Volume 5) on Amazon.