Ghost Writing

[Un-registered]

On the Story Ideas forum there are often requests for stories to be written, and some stories posted on here carry credits such as "by Unregistered from an idea by AnotherUnregistered". Is it really practical to do such "ghost" writing, or are the stories mostly the authors' ideas with just a hand wave to the original?

Biographies which claim to be autobiographies of the protagonist are often ghost written, but in many cases this consists of little more than intelligent editing of an otherwise somewhat incoherent series of anecdotes.

I have been toying with the thought of taking one or more ideas from the forum and playing with them to see if a meaningful scenario can be developed, but is it worth the effort?

Any advice from experience anyone cares to offer?

 

[Octavian]

I tried it once and was not successful.

I found it very difficult to see what I was writing on account of the white sheet over my head!

 

[three eyes open]

^^
Lol!

But what you're really talking about isn't ghost writing. That's just what's called challenges, kind of an exercise in creative writing. Ghost writing is giving another person the whole credit for the story.

-3eyes

 

[deliciously_naughty]

megan my dear is such a story.

Again, ghost writing isn't the correct term, but that's not really important.

the ideas forum is a fun place to try out story ideas, see what people think and such, or if you're fishing for ideas, you may see a new twist that you'd like to play with.

For example, I wrote protect and serve on my own. Then, at the advice and suggestion of sirhugs, I wrote P/S 2...at the end of the story I have a short note saying something like "thanks to sirhugs for the inspiration and the editing help"

 

[Dirt Man]

I use feed back from other brains all the time

I got started writing erotica over at Dark Wanderer, a site where people are looking for fantasy stories. Mostly the husbands, though a few of the wives post their fantasy of what they want to have happen secretly there. Often posting a lude, sexy, or ordinary picture of the wife to inspire someone to write these fantasies for them, giving just a general discription of the fantasy. So I would e-mail those whose pictures inspired me, and send a letter of introduction requesting more details of the fantasy, and to see if they were for real people. The more details I could gather, the better, and more personal the story turned out for them. In this case, it was writing on demand, but using another persons brain for the essence of a story. A very challenging method of writing I can tell you from experiance as you have to sculpt a story around someone elses life.
The same is true for writing a story from someone elses suggestions, or inquiry. Knowing the details helps, but the story becomes yours the moment you start writing it as it is your mind, and hands doing all of the work, not theirs. I have no problem with crediting others for inspiration, or ideas, nor should any author, but the credit for writing the story should always go to the one who actually wrote it. Though in the case of ghost writers that is totally contrary to the purpose.

As Always
I Am the
Dirt Man