Hello, I’m Robert Metzger. I’m a ghost writer. We are behind the scenes in a video studio. I’m going to take you behind the scenes in the process of ghostwriting a book.

Today’s topic is the writing process, which is the third in a series of videos. If you haven’t already watched the first two, please watch them first, to get the context.

The process of creating a book can seem very scary or very messy to someone who has never done it before.

There is a well-known spiritual song from the Old South, called “Dem Bones”. One verse includes the line, “Knee bone connected to the shin bone.” Maybe you’ve heard it. It is loosely based on a story from the Hebrew Bible.

In the original story, the prophet Ezekiel has a vision of a valley full of dry bones. God tells the prophet to speak to the bones, and the bones assemble themselves into skeletons, lying on the ground. Then, muscles and tendons appear on the bones, and then skin covers the flesh. God tells him to speak again to the inanimate bodies, and they begin breathing, stand up, and become a mighty army.

A ghost writer’s job is a lot like the prophet’s task, but our raw material isn’t even bones. We begin with piles of dust. Those piles of dust are all the ideas that you have been thinking about.

In the discovery step, you do a lot of talking and I ask a lot of questions. I record all of your ideas, and when I have our conversations transcribed, I have a valley full of bones. Your ideas have now taken physical form, but they have no structure.

Next, I have to create a design or blueprint from all of your ideas. Every chapter is like a skeleton.

I find the structure by looking at the pieces and figuring out which ones have to connect with each other. Every idea has connections to others, just as each bone has joints that can only connect with certain other bones.

The next step I take is to put flesh on the bones by writing a first draft. This draft may bear little resemblance to the final version. Sections may be missing and sections may need to be removed. The result may seem as gruesome as an inanimate body with muscles and tendons, but no skin.

Don’t worry. It’s much closer to being a real book than the piles of dust were. I normally present the draft to you one chapter at a time, as I write the chapters.

Technology books tend to have many more diagrams, screen shots, and source listings than other types of books. Good diagrams are like tendons. They connect the underlying concepts of the book (the skeleton) with the text which moves the reader (the muscles).

Next, I begin the process of revision. In one book I wrote, I removed two entire chapters of very good material. They needed to become part of another book.

Revision gets the internal organs all correct and puts a pleasing skin on the outside. This is the point where the content is fixed. You can’t add a second heart once the skin is sewed up.

Finally, I polish the prose and subcontract an independent proofreader to find the typographical errors I can no longer see. At this point, I’m done.

You make your final payment, and the work belongs to you. The manuscript has been given life and is worthy to be read. But you still have to work with a publisher to put clothes on your army (like a cover) before the army is ready to deploy.

That’s it for now. Check back soon for the fourth episode in “Technology Ghostwriter behind the Scenes.”

You can learn more about my ghostwriting business at www.robertmetzger.com.