PREPARING FOR THE WRITING PROCESS
It is critical to understand the bearing this journey will hold for all parties involved, including successors who will pass on these stories. Moreso, the process will affect both you and your parents, providing a profound understanding of family matters by revealing your parents’ perspectives at pivotal points in the past. It takes fortitude to recount such experiences, especially because your parents must accept vulnerability in recalling joys, sadness, trauma, and some audacious truths about your family. New information can change the perspective and impact all parties involved. As a relative seeking a story from the past, there is no resolute advice that can prepare you for the unknown; all you can do is proceed with openness.
Properly Inform your Parent:
Your parent needs to be honest throughout this process; that’s why this project should not be broached if your parents have not given their willing consent. If the story delves deep into stormy waters, they need to know they can trust the writer’s reception ahead of time. They also need to be comfortable with you (the child or relative) writing the book or the writer you have hired for the book. If the case is the latter, legal agreements between the family and the writer should be reviewed by your parents beforehand.
The first crucial accord between you and your parent should be on the need to preserve their stories and the meticulous care that must be taken to write the story. If your parents are open to the idea of writing their story, you have passed the first hurdle in the way of achieving this goal.
Keep an Open Mind:
In over half a decade of ghostwriting memoirs and biographies, I realize that some clients are often oblivious to harmful secrets or truths waiting to be unearthed. In a few cases, some discoveries were poorly received and caused an abrupt pause in the project. As I mentioned earlier, stories present new information you may not be privy to, so be prepared to receive it wholly.
A common mistake that hinders the storytelling process is when the author feels judged by the ghostwriter, or they are fearful of what people may think of them thereafter. To salve these sentiments, you must support your parents throughout the process. It is interesting to note that your parents may be more comfortable with your presence during these interviews, or they may prefer to have you as a mediator between them and the hired ghostwriter. Whatever the case, be supportive of them throughout the process.
Be Patient:
Writing the life story of another is an intricate process, and even more delicate when interviewing the elderly. The elderly may need more time to recollect memories than younger people, especially if those memories are traumatic. Sometimes, clients tend to remember the answers to some questions much later in the interview, and the interview process should be able to accommodate this. The rule of thumb here is to create a conducive discussion where the author is at ease; the writer must have strong organizational skills.
Your parent may also need to revisit places or engage in activities that stimulate their memories. It would be a good idea to include trips and activities to aid the writing process. Critically, dealing with trauma requires tact and prudence, especially as a victim may need time to answer questions relating to these experiences. The writer must be aware of the tumult associated with these memories and be skilled to navigate them carefully.
A different medium may be considered for some types of answers. It is wise to allow your parent to answer some interview questions in writing or with voice notes, especially if they have had some time to contemplate that memory. This way, they may feel more comfortable sharing rich details needed for such a story.
Do not rush through any part of the process! By making these accommodations, you allow for the writing of the best book possible. And, although your writing is another important factor, storytelling gets only as good as the materials provided.
By stepping into the shoes of a ghostwriter, you are committing yourself to four important stages of the book-writing process:
· The Interview Stage
· The Book Structuring Stage
· The Writing Stage
· The Editorial Stage
The Interview Stage
For the Interview Stage, there are four main hurdles to overcome in writing your parents’ story, leaving the rest of the work to the structuring, writing, self-editing, professional evaluation, beta-reading, copyediting, and proofreading. All these phases of the work are included in the aforementioned stages. However, this first part of the article partly gives a guide for the first stage of the process, and only addresses the first two hurdles of the interview Stage:
1. How YOU can Contribute during the Interviews
2. Getting Your Parents to Talk
3. Corroborating the Story
4. Outlining and Structuring the Book
1. How YOU can contribute During the Interviews:
During the Interview Stage, a period where you are having regular meetings with your parent to learn more about their lives, you must be versatile in combining the following tasks:
· Getting the writing resources together: See if your parents kept diaries, journals, letters, certificates, photos, art, and other articles you can link to important memories in their past, or items that are relevant to the memoir.
· Put together a list of Important Questions and Characters: You can contribute to the overall quality of the book by making a list of relatives and friends who should be included or interviewed for the story. Depending on the narrative structure, such individuals may or may not be interviewed. In past contracts I have worked on, an important character may give their input to questions in written format. However, noting down important characters that may need to contribute or corroborate parts of the story is a task that may continue throughout the interview process.
· Reach Out to Corroborators: You should also set dates for interviews with friends and relatives who will corroborate your parents’ story. It is important to have willing participants for the story so their testimony is not coerced or falsified (which can mean legal trouble if the right conditions align). When considering interviewing other characters in the story, be prudent about who you interview and the relevance of their input. Consider carefully if their perspective is important to the story and if your parents agree.
· Have a Questionnaire in Mind: The questionnaire is an essential guide comprised of template questions used to keep the interviews on track. It is not meant to be a fixed regulator of the interview but rather a reference point to aid in achieving the interview’s goal. A good writer knows when to make room for new questions that may arise from the author’s memories, and how to press into those memories to gather more critical information. However, it is also the writer’s job to visualize how the information received best comes together to make an outline based on the story’s theme. After the interviewing process, the next phase is given to Book Structuring, and only an attentive interviewer would already have a mental framework to build on.
2. GETTING YOUR PARENTS TO TALK
The main aim of interviewing your parents is to gather relevant content for the book. This would mean asking several questions to dig into those related memories. Here are a few guidelines to help you along:
· Allow your parents to ease into the process: The more comfortable they are during the discourse, the more likely they are to give you rich information about the past. You do not have to delve right into the interview questions from the start. Instead, you could start with a few casual questions to help your parents settle in. Focus on fond memories they can easily relate to, and this will help in stimulating their minds.
· Record the Interview: Keeping a record of the interview will be crucial to the Book Structuring and Writing Process later. The record is reference material for the writer to revisit and present the truth as it is. You do not want to gloss over critical details or miss important facts, so having a record to revisit is essential.
· Be specific: If you want to get the best out of your parents and other characters, then you must be specific when you ask questions. Vague questions should only be used when you aim to lighten the mood and keep the interviewee attentive. However, for essential information, ask specific questions, and when the answer is not satisfactory, probe with a question leading from recent information. This will give your parents more room to recall something from that memory. Whenever a question seems unclear, rephrase it for better comprehension.
· Listen Actively: During interviews, you are not listening to simply respond or barrage the author with a series of questions. Rather, you are listening to ask crucial follow-up questions from new information; these follow-up questions help to unfold more details from important memories, so you are listening for things they may have deemed unimportant but hold key connections to how they lived. You are also listening to capture key information that will add to the mental picture of how the book will be structured.
· It’s a Marathon, not a Sprint: You don’t want to rush through the interviews; rather, a good interviewing session, much like a work session, has a slow start where the interviewer allows the author to talk about a stimulating item of the story, before delving into more important questions. This is a technique that should be repeated throughout the interview process, with the interviewer listening for cues to allow the author a break in recollecting memories, by just letting them digress to things they are fond of.
Here is Part 1 in case you haven’t read it.
My name is Racheal Asikpo. As a Memoir and Autobiography ghostwriter with a decade of experience, I am passionate about how stories impact lives and change futures. When I work with aspiring authors, I seek to immerse myself in the writing process to realize the best delivery of their voice in their story.
As a science fiction and fantasy ghostwriter, I enjoy plunging into challenges of unboxed imagination, creating thought-provoking journeys for readers.
You can learn more about me from my Linktree.
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I look forward to hearing from you