Building your business’ presence on YouTube is a critical step in content marketing, second only to maybe optimizing Google as far as its power to reach and educate your customers. A large part of converting viewers to customers is a process of education. You need to teach them what your product or service can do for them. You’re a problem solver, right? Show them how you can make their lives easier. If reaching your customers through YouTube is an objective, then you need to consider video scripts for your business. 

There is a misconception that YouTube’s open nature means that it’s a haven for amateurs. The reality when it comes to marketing your business is that while you don’t need a Hollywood level of professionalism, you still need to convey a clean, clear message that your viewers will find engaging.

What does conventional wisdom say about impressions? That you never get a second chance to make your first on someone. Whoever said this must have been thinking about business marketing. If you put something up on YouTube that looks rough and comes off as unprofessional, you risk alienating potential new customers at the most critical juncture. 

You don’t want to do that. In the rest of this blog, I am going to talk about a few relatively simple ways you can reach viewers and convert them into customers using basic fundamentals, most important of those, developing high-quality video scripts for your business.

Don’t Overthink Things

More timeless advice. Making an effective YouTube video for your site isn’t rocket science. If you search YouTube right now, using any relevant keyphrase, you’re going to find a lot of what marketers might call “talking head” videos. A person, speaking to a camera, delivering a simple message.

Did you open another browser and look for a video? 

Most successful videos feature basic lighting, simple backgrounds, and minimal editing. You don’t need to hire a Hollywood film crew to make a compelling video.

There is something else I want you to do. Check the video you looked at for the number of views. Were there hundreds? Maybe thousands? 

It’s not uncommon to see videos on subjects relevant to your business on YouTube featuring tens, if not hundreds of thousands of views. That’s a lot of eyes on you, talking about your product. 

How do you get them to your video? 

Elements To Reach Your Audience

In order to reach your audience, there are some basic elements you need to know. Every one of those successful videos is different on the surface, but if you look closely, most of them follow similar principals.

The first is that the video answers a question. People often use the search bar in any search engine (which is what, in a sense, YouTube actually is) to post questions they’re considering at any given time. As a business owner, you need to think about the questions your customers need to answe.

If you’re in the home maintenance market, someone might ask how to repair something.

Do you work in the healing arts? Your question might be, how do I treat a particular malady. 

For me, a ghostwriter and editor, I seek to answer questions like how do I write a book? Or, in this case, about how to write video scripts for your business. 

Once you know the question you want to answer, your objective, in a short amount of time, is to answer it for your readers. What is an ideal amount of time? According to recent data, five to fifteen minutes is perfect. However, don’t take that relatively longer amount of time to mean you can ramble. 

Figure out the question. Settle on the answer. Deliver that in a complete yet succinct manner. 

Video Scripts For Your Business – A Simple How To

I just made that sound a little easier than it actually is. Deliver your message in a complete yet succinct manner? For most of us, expert practitioners in our particular field, getting the message out in a reasonably short amount of time is a real challenge. 

The question then becomes, how do you achieve that brevity? How do you get in and out of a marketing video without laboring over the details. 

While doing a talking head video for your business doesn’t exactly depend on an Oscar-worthy kind of performance, you still should have a script of some kind, in hand, before you press record. A script, or some basic talking points, gives your message structure. Writing your message beforehand allows you to make sure everything is included, the right terminology included, ordered in a way that makes sense.

What’s the difference between a video that gets hundreds of views and one that gets thousands? 

Clear and concise, highly searchable, messaging that gets right to the point. Video scripts for your business videos are a critical element of their success. The same optimization that brings viewers to your website and blog, think of SEO, will deliver them to your video. A properly constructed message keeps them there long enough to convert them from mere viewer to customer. 

Building your presence on YouTube is an effective way of delivering customers to your content. Going the extra mile, creating SEO rich video scripts for your business, is a cost-effective investment in delivering your key marketing message.   

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I hope this blog addressed some of your questions about video scripts for your business. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. 

Have you always wanted to write your life story? Do you ever sit down to write but find you get lost? Do you struggle to get the story down the right way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, memoir ghostwriting may be the best solution for you. 

I believe every one of us has a book in us. If you’re trying to write a memoir, or considering it, now is a great time (actually, it may be the best time). I have written a book, Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know to help you get off the ground. 

Don’t wait. Get your free eBook Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know by clicking here to download today.

I created this volume to be short and easy to read. My goal is to help you understand everything you need to know, from getting started, to all the reasons why now is a great time to write that book.

Contact Me For A Service Quote

If you are serious about hiring a professional ghostwriter for your book, screenplay, or non-fiction story, or you need help with editing or self-publishing your manuscript, please contact me via email, or call.

Every new contact receives a free 30-minute 1:1 consultation about their ghostwriting project or manuscript consultation.

Additionally, I offer all independent and self-publishing authors a 10% discount on my already affordable services.

I have written quite a lot over the last few years about the ghostwriting business. Specifically, I have focused a lot of attention on what a top notch professional should, in the long run, cost you. Why that topic? When step outside of my place in the business and look at the field from a customer’s viewpoint, I see the potential for confusion. Is really there such a thing as a high quality, affordable ghostwriter?

I’ll spoil the rest of the blog and say, I think there is. Let me try and explain my answer.

Affordable Ghostwriter & Quality

Throughout my career, I have worked very hard to establish a very high standard of quality in my finished product. Whatever end goal you bring to the table, a fiction novel, personal memoir, or feature length screenplay, you should walk away from your ghostwriting contract with a product you can use.

What does that mean when it comes to writing though? Something you can use?

If you want a life story then it needs to deliver something you can be proud to share with your extended family. A film producer with a screenplay project needs a script that can get them funding, or the project into production. Memoirs that can touch an audience go the furthest.

A product you can use is one that ultimately achieves its end goal. Just finishing a book is one thing. When you go to the extent of hiring a professional ghostwriter, a finished book that you can publish and sell should be the expectation. Not the exception.

An affordable ghostwriter should be able to achieve this goal for you. You shouldn’t have to compromise on quality (or anything else) just because you’re looking at overall affordability. 

Dollars & Sense

A ghostwriter is, by definition, a professional writer. By professional, that means we provide high quality work to our clients in exchange for payment.

This begs the question, when it comes to an affordable ghostwriter, how much is enough?  

When it really comes down to it, you’re not going to be able to work with the ghostwriter you cannot afford to pay for. The ghostwriter has a bottom line rate they charge for their work. Every client, regardless of how wealthy, has budget constraints. 

How do we make those two things match? 

Try and think of this like you would a car. Wheels that get you where you need to go come in all shapes, sizes and, of course, prices. You might never be able to afford to get behind the wheel of a top of the line sports car. That doesn’t mean, however, that you’re doomed to an uncomfortable, unreliable ride.  

The keys to the whole question of “do dollars make sense” goes back to that question of quality. In my experience, the ghostwriters that ultimately cost the most are the ones that don’t deliver on the promise of quality. Instead of costing you a lot in terms of money, it’s in the pain of unprofessionalism, re-writes that take up time, a book you can’t publish, a project you’re disappointed in. 

The affordable ghostwriter that makes sense is able to deliver a product you can actually use for a price you can live with. They’re experienced professionals, creative at solving story problems, and are able to clearly communicate on changing expectations. They know how to get the job done. 

The cheaper ghostwriter, the one that came in the lowest when you called around and compared prices, is not terribly likely to deliver on that kind of quality. The lowest price point doesn’t necessarily make them the most affordable ghostwriter. It just means they cost the least. 

Since you’ve already made a commitment to quality, the next thing to know going in is your budget. With that framework in mind, you can find an affordable ghostwriter that fits your needs.

An Affordable Ghostwriter Costs… What?

Let’s get down to it then. When it comes to determining affordability, it really boils down to the bottom line question of how much money. 

How much will it cost to hire the ghostwriter you need for your project? 

I have written extensively about expected costs in numerous past blogs. What it costs to hire a ghostwriter is an ever evolving figure, one that changes all the time. If you would like a more detailed breakdown of current (as of 2023) ghostwriting rates, check out this blog. 

Without going into too much detail, an affordable ghostwriter should quote you a rate on a per finished word basis for fiction, non-fiction or memoir projects. Per page or per finished project doesn’t really make much sense for the client or the writer. 

After trying out a lot of different structures, I have decided to work within a price range. I usually charge between $.50 and $1.00 per word, depending on a wide range of circumstances that vary between clients. If the rate you are quoted comes in above that top rate you may be looking at a “celebrity” type of ghostwriter; too much less than that, then I would guess they’re more than likely inexperienced. 

They may be an affordable ghostwriter when it comes to price. But at the expense of quality? We’ve broken that down already and it really becomes a risky proposition. 

For that rate, you can expect a high quality manuscript, one you can rest assured will get you noticed on the highly competitive publishing market. In my experience, that is the very definition of affordable: a manuscript you can stand behind and be proud of for your money. 

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I hope this blog addressed some of your questions about an affordable ghostwriter. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. 

Have you always wanted to write your life story? Do you ever sit down to write but find you get lost? Do you struggle to get the story down the right way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, memoir ghostwriting may be the best solution for you. 

I believe every one of us has a book in us. If you’re trying to write a memoir, or considering it, now is a great time (actually, it may be the best time). I have written a book, Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know to help you get off the ground. 

Don’t wait. Get your free eBook Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know by clicking here to download today.

I created this volume to be short and easy to read. My goal is to help you understand everything you need to know, from getting started, to all the reasons why now is a great time to write that book.

Contact Me For A Service Quote

If you are serious about hiring a professional ghostwriter for your book, screenplay, or non-fiction story, or you need help with editing or self-publishing your manuscript, please contact me via email, or call.

Every new contact receives a free 30-minute 1:1 consultation about their ghostwriting project or manuscript consultation.

Additionally, I offer all independent and self-publishing authors a 10% discount on my already affordable services.

There’s little doubt that the rapidly changing digital landscape has forever changed the world of business. Gone are the days where a person could establish themselves by simply putting a little ad in the Yellow Pages and waiting for customers to come knocking on their door. The truth is, your potential customers are in more places than ever before, searching for services like yours on sites like Google. The trend many businesses are overlooking, and can hardly afford to anymore, is the power of video content to spread their message. This is the primary reason why your business should be on YouTube.

One of the primary challenges in turning people into customers comes down to a matter of education. You need to educate people about your product, what it does, and how it helps them solve their problem. A simple web page or FAQ may still suffice, however, more and more these days, people are educating themselves through video, whether that is in the form of a talking head explaining something or a simple white board flow chart.

If educating your customer base is a priority, and I’m going to guess it is, then there is a key reason why your business should be on YouTube. 

Why Your Business Should Be On YouTube: The Numbers

Let’s start with what should matter most to a business owner. Those bottom like numbers. If YouTube really is so powerful in reaching potential customers, there should be statistics to prove that.

You don’t need to dig very far to prove the theory. There are a lot of people searching on YouTube right at this very moment. Recent studies show that there are 2.6 billion active YouTube users worldwide, a staggering number that has doubled in the last eight years. Of that breathtaking number, it is estimated that one hundred and twenty-two million of US based users will access the site every day.

However you want to break it down, that’s a lot of users. 

Let’s put YouTube in a different context. If you think of it as a “social media” site, like Twitter and Instagram, only Facebook has more. The trend behind that tells us that while the relevance of those other sites is waning, whether through political pressure or plain old obsolescence, YouTube is gaining ground on its competition. 

The numbers I find most compelling dig a little deeper than just total users though. To me, these speak to YouTube’s power for reaching people, potential customers to your business.

Estimates tell us that over fifty percent of all internet users will encounter YouTube content in some form on a monthly basis. More than half. Even if they’re not searching on the site itself. We can visualize this as a person searching for something on-line, a topic, product, or service, and finding a YouTube hosted video at the top of their Google search. 

Why does this happen?

Why YouTube Is So Prevalent Today?

The main reason you see YouTube video content come up in Google searches is quite simple: Google. The world’s largest search engine, one of the biggest companies ever, owns YouTube.

That’s right, YouTube is part of Google. 

The connection is more than just natural – it’s symbiotic. Google wants users to use all of their vast array of products, not just their search engine. Makes sense, right? Google is going to do everything in its power to keep you right where you are. Their search algorithm is activated when you hit that search bar. In an instant, it sorts through all the sites relevant to your search.

Naturally, it is going to prioritize YouTube when it comes to videos.

If you’re working on your company’s web presence, writing SEO rich content for a site you maintain, making YouTube a priority isn’t just a good idea anymore. It’s foolish not to. Whatever your product, it should be your goal to reach the top of search rankings both for the site and video, too. 

Why Your Business Should Be On YouTube — The Next Steps

We live in an age where, fortunately for most of us, the barrier to entry on a user friendly platform like YouTube is fairly low to start with. We’re not talking about thirty years ago when you needed a professional camera crew, a studio to provide editing, and a commercial star to make the pitch.

People want to see you. Furthermore, they don’t mind so much when the content looks slightly “amateur”. Think of it as organic. In fact, for many, that look lends you an air of credibility. YouTube has revolutionized video marketing by making it more personal.

Starting with an iPhone or equivalent device, knowledge of basic lighting, and some patience, you can create a video that will be suitable for your website. Post the video to YouTube, preferably on your channel, and you’ve broken through that first barrier. 

You can, with little expense, go a step further. You can dominate your industry.

YouTube is, in the most basic sense, a search engine. That means optimizing the content you post on it is ideal. What is optimization?

Optimization is the art (and science) of creating content using terms and phrases that search engines are looking for. Your potential customers are using a specific term to look for your product you need to make sure you use it properly in your copy.

Delivering your message is the first step. If you plan on beating the competition to valuable keywords, using professionally written scripts, designed to satisfy and inform customers as well as bring in the search traffic, can turn that simple video into a money maker. 

Does optimized content really make that much of a difference? Get in touch with me today to discuss developing a focused content strategy, designed to bring people to your site, keep them there, and help convert them to customers. 

*** 

I hope this blog addressed some of your questions about why your business should be on YouTube. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. 

Have you always wanted to write your life story? Do you ever sit down to write but find you get lost? Do you struggle to get the story down the right way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, memoir ghostwriting may be the best solution for you. 

I believe every one of us has a book in us. If you’re trying to write a memoir, or considering it, now is a great time. Actually, it may be the best time. I have written a book, Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know. This should help you get off the ground. 

Don’t wait. Get your free eBook Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know by clicking here to download today.

I created this volume to be short and easy to read. My goal is to help you understand everything you need to know, from getting started, to all the reasons why now is a great time to write that book.

Contact Me For A Service Quote

If you are serious about hiring a professional ghostwriter for your book, screenplay, or non-fiction story, or you need help with editing or self-publishing your manuscript, please contact me via email, or call.

Every new contact receives a free 30-minute 1:1 consultation about their ghostwriting project or manuscript consultation.

Additionally, I offer all independent and self-publishing authors a 10% discount on my already affordable services.

Let me see if this scene sounds familiar. You’re watching a movie at home. Some story that captivates your imagination, sparking a spirited conversation with whomever you’re watching with. As the movie comes to an exciting and satisfying finish, you watch the credits and reflect on what you just watched. The words “Based On A Novel By…” cross the screen and you’re left wondering how that works. How to adapt your novel into a screenplay is a question most authors eventually ask themselves, both traditional and indie published. Sadly, however, few understand what it takes. 

This blog, I hope, will help you answer that very important question.

 The first thing you must understand, if you’re going to successfully learn how to adapt your novel into a screenplay, is just how different the two mediums really are. If you’ve ever read a novel or a memoir and then watched a movie (or vice versa) then you know what I’m talking about. Books, by their very nature, offer a far more diverse array of ways to tell a story; a movie, which is what a screenplay comes out of, is much more limited. Why? Because it is almost entirely visual.

This is a vitally important concept for you to understand.

Don’t start trying to adapt your novel into a screenplay without understanding what this means. In a well-written novel, a successful author can explore what a character is thinking at any given moment. Thought is a reaction to action and the circumstances the world presents. Depicting character thought is, I would argue, one of the foremost important aspects of writing a good book. 

A screenplay is, for the most part, the opposite. Only on very rare occasions does a movie (usually through a character’s voice over or flashback on their past) delve into their thoughts. These elements are, in the opinion of most professionals, highly frowned upon. Almost forbidden. Mostly, when the screenwriter wants you to understand what a character is feeling, they have to show you in some visual way, either in a gesture or an action. 

Sounds easy? Well, in my experience, some writers make that translation to visual storytelling quite intuitively; for me, it was a relief to tell a story where the emphasis was on action. For most writers though, the challenge of visually depicting the emotions in a key moment in a story is daunting, a challenge they struggle to overcome.

The first, most important reality for understanding how to adapt your novel into a screenplay, is that you have to think visually first. 

How To Adapt Your Novel Into A Screenplay – Visual Storytelling

If a visual focus is so important, how are you supposed to achieve that?

If that was your question, I think I have a few answers for you. At least a tip or two to help you orient yourself to the task of translating your novel to the screen.

The first thing you need to understand is that everything has a representative value. Nowhere is that more important than in the setting. This is the “where” the story takes place. Screenplays thrive on the harmony (or disharmony) between character and setting. 

For example, think of the shiny, Manhattan office building. Can you see it? 

When a character struts into the lobby, dressed to the nines, a confident look in their eye, the audience understands they belong. Or, at least for the moment, they think they do. In contrast to that, take the same office building, only this time the character is disheveled and running late, half of their breakfast on their shirt in the form of a stain. 

Do you see the immediately understandable difference? We get a lot of information about these two different characters in a little bit of information, setting the tone for a story.

We don’t need to get into the character’s thoughts, either “I belong here” or “oh no, I’m late again” because we’ve seen them behave in accordance with those thoughts. 

From that starting point, a screenwriter starts to develop the character more deeply and the situation that will challenge those initial viewer/reader impressions. What challenges are in store for our overconfident character? Will he or she end up getting fired? How will our down-on-their-luck person overcome their insecurity? Will they receive an unexpected kiss of good luck? 

These are the seeds of a story. In screenwriting, you plant those visually.

But Wait, My Novel Is Written – How Do Make Those Changes?

That’s right. This article is supposed to be about the process of adaptation. What is a writer supposed to do with their novel, written with the right balance of action, dialog and interior reflection? 

You’ll notice that in a screenplay, there is so much less material to work with in a novel. A novel consists of many thousands of words, while a screenplay is, at most, one-hundred and twenty pages.  

The art of how to adapt your novel into a screenplay comes down to a matter of carefully considered condensation. What elements of the book are you going to sacrifice, or compress, to make that best visual representation possible? 

The first thing I’ll say is that what a character thinks and feels is important – even in a screenplay. The difference, your challenge, is to turn that wealth of thought, in the form of internal dialog, into action.

Are they feeling lonely? Replace long passages of reflection on the state of their life and create a scene. Maybe they’re looking through a window at a loving family eating dinner. When I see this scene in my head, I immediately sense a character who is lonesome. 

Are they excited for the day? Maybe we see them wake up an hour before their alarm, snap to action, walking down the street saying hello to everyone they encounter. 

Contemplating a decision? Show them thoughtfully confronting both possible outcomes. 

A good screenwriter can take a novel, locate those important interior moments, and transform those into a singular, satisfying visual representation. One that stands for all the trauma or thrill the character is experiencing inside in that moment.  

How To Adapt Your Novel Into A Screenplay – First Steps

When I adapt a novel into a screenplay, one of the first steps I take is to figure out who the really important characters are. Create the cast, so to speak. Quite often, as you can probably imagine, going from 500 pages of fiction to a 100-page screenplay, requires a trim job.

Then I answer the question – who are these characters at heart? What makes each one of them tick, both them as a people, and also, to their community. Doing this helps me sort out how to show, instead of tell, their emotional state. 

Lastly, I find the meaningful scenes in the book. What are the big moments that create the core story line? I find those and work on an outline that includes each of them. 

How to adapt your novel into a screenplay is a painstaking task. In some ways, when you’re finally finished with it, thinking of the two stories as one and the same can be difficult. Each represents a kind of compromise to the other, but between them, if you’re careful, you can strike a balance. 

 

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I hope this blog addressed some of your questions about how to adapt your novel into a screenplay. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. 

 

Have you always wanted to write your life story? Do you ever sit down to write but find you get lost? Do you struggle to get the story down the right way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, memoir ghostwriting may be the best solution for you. 

I believe every one of us has a book in us. If you’re trying to write a memoir, or considering it, now is a great time (actually, it may be the best time). I have written a book, Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know to help you get off the ground. 

Don’t wait. Get your free eBook Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know by clicking here to download today.

I created this volume to be short and easy to read. My goal is to help you understand everything you need to know, from getting started, to all the reasons why now is a great time to write that book.

Contact Me For A Service Quote

If you are serious about hiring a professional ghostwriter for your book, screenplay, or non-fiction story, or you need help with editing or self-publishing your manuscript, please contact me via email, or call.

Every new contact receives a free 30-minute 1:1 consultation about their ghostwriting project or manuscript consultation.

Additionally, I offer all independent and self-publishing authors a 10% discount on my already affordable services.

How to write a life story can present difficult answer questions, especially if you’re early in the discovery process. Choices you make on the structure of the manuscript, the story voice, and approach to information gathering can define the direction of a manuscript.

Here are some things I think you should know before getting started.  

How To Write A Life Story: Terminology

Among the most important aspects in understanding how to write a life story is one of terminology. Think of this as the language of the publishing industry. You have probably heard the words “biography”, “autobiography” or “memoir” before and assume they mean mostly the same thing when it comes to a life story. There is, in fact, a great deal of similarity between these associated terms, but let’s underscore how they are different. 

The term “memoir” refers to a manuscript covering some or all of a subject’s life story. In most instances, a memoir reveals an entire life but it focuses intently on a well defined segment of it. Take for example, an actor’s memoir about their time on a particular television program, or a famous couple’s account of their troublesome marriage. In order to understand the whole story, we get the big picture, but the book really focuses on those critical junctures. 

An “autobiography” or “biography” are forms of life story more broadly defined. They are, in most instances, books that take into account the subject’s entire life. Think of them as more definitive accounts, one that I reader can sit down with and gain a perspective on who they were and what they stood for. The former term, autobiography, suggests that the subject wrote the story themselves.

As you can see, these terms all suggest a life story in one form or another, any of which a ghostwriter can help you write. For the sake of clarity, if you’re interested in a life story focused on a specific area of your life, you’re probably thinking of a memoir. On the other hand, if you’re thinking of a life spanning account, a biography or autobiography is likely your best choice.

Now that we’ve dispensed with definitions, let’s dig deeper. I’m going to describe five key aspects you need to know in order to write a life story.

How To Write A Life Story: The Five Key Aspects To Consider

In my experience, these are the five area you need to address before writing a life story.

What Is The Story’s Scope?

This can be a tough element to define early on, especially if you’re writing a biography or autobiography. How to write a life story often comes down to knowing what goes into the book and what doesn’t belong. Allow me to explain.

Recently, I worked on a life story with a ghostwriting client. Her book focused on her family, how she struggled to raise four children in a marriage that was disintegrating all around her. Among the most difficult elements for her in writing this story was how to handle her in-laws. Some of them she had a good relationship with and others, well, not so much. 

Ultimately, we decided it would be best for her to leave her ex-husband’s extended family out altogether. It was, in the end, an easier story to tell if she left them out than if she continued struggling to find ways to bring those elements to the page.

If you’re struggling with how to write a life story, perhaps you need to look at the scope. Are you bringing too much peripheral material in? Is it possible you’re not including enough key aspects? Scope is really important. It helps you identify the heart of your story and then hone in on that.

Who Is Your Audience?

One of the first questions that I work to answer with a life story ghostwriting client is this – who is your story’s core audience?

Some clients, most in fact, answer simply: everyone. 

I hope I’m not the first to tell you that “everyone” is actually not the answer you’re looking for here. Here is a key understanding: there is no book out there that can boast “everyone” as its audience. None. Often people reply, but what about those books that everyone seems to love? 

I’m here to tell you that universal appeal is a myth. It might seem like everyone is reading Harry Potter, but the truth is, they’re not. In fact, a small fraction of all readers read even the most popular books. The success of a series like the aforementioned Harry Potter is that the author did a world class job of writing to that book’s core audience, readers young and old, who loved magic and fantasy. 

 If you want to successfully reach your audience, you need to first identify them and then second, know how to reach them. Without this knowledge, a book tends to lack focus. It loses readers because it doesn’t know exactly who its readers are. 

Know your audience. Learn what they want out of a book. Then write the best version of a life story that will entertain those people.

What Will The Story’s Style Be?

If you look back at old life stories, it’s plain to see that a cradle to grave approach used to be the predominant style. People wrote about how they were born first and proceeded in a linear fashion through to the end. This is what I would call a chronological narrative.

Storytelling has changed – a lot – over the years. How to write a life story isn’t simply an exercise in assembling a chronology anymore. Writers are taking a more cinematic approach, moving forward and backward in time, focusing on areas based more on their impact than where they fall into line.

It may be a lot to think about now, however, understand that the style you choose goes a long way in helping you sell your book. Publishers like a good story. They love a good story, well told. Before you sit down to write a life story, decide on a style that fits, one that’s engaging and fun to read.    

Do You Have A Voice?

Voice is a part of writing that jumps off the page and commands your immediate attention. Addressing the identity of the subject, in part comes down to what they say. 

More often though, it comes down how they choose to say it.

Is the subject of the story angry about what happened to them? If so, a writer chooses to use a tone that connects that. They’re terse, combative, hard to get along with.

Is the ultimate message one of hope? To write that manuscript, a writer would choose a softer look at the world, striving to find the good in whatever they encounter as opposed to the negative.

Voice carries a story. How to write a life story eventually comes down to answering questions of how do you look at the world.  

What Will Your Approach To Gathering Story Be?

Your approach in writing a life story comes down to how you anticipate gathering information. As a ghostwriter, whose job it is to write biographies and memoirs for my clients, getting the story often comes down to basic interviews. We sit down, talk about the story, and I work off of those interviews.

If you’re writing your own memoir or biography project, that can get a little more complicated. Sure, you don’t necessarily need to interview yourself, you lived it, but what about filling in the gaps. Will you interview other people who were involved in your story? If there is an element of history involved, often the case when we work on books like these, how will you create that context? 

Often overlooked, approach is an important part of how to write a life story. If you’re a person who needs their facts in order, I recommend getting them in line first. Other people I know are comfortable writing a loose rough draft, filling in the gaps later, after they’re done. 

A key last word on your approach – if it’s your first time writing, you might not know exactly where you fall. If you are taking on a life story as a first writing project, and find yourself getting stuck, ask yourself what is troubling you. If you’re getting hung up on details and facts it may be an indication that you need to get your research done first.   

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I hope this blog addressed some of your questions about how to write a life story. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below. 

 

Have you always wanted to write your life story? Do you ever sit down to write but find you get lost? Do you struggle to get the story down the right way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, memoir ghostwriting may be the best solution for you. 

I believe every one of us has a book in us. If you’re trying to write a memoir, or considering it, now is a great time (actually, it may be the best time). I have written a book, Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know to help you get off the ground. 

Don’t wait. Get your free eBook Memoir Writing: The Nine Things You Need To Know by clicking here to download today.

I created this volume to be short and easy to read. My goal is to help you understand everything you need to know, from getting started, to all the reasons why now is a great time to write that book.

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