There are those named authors who need a ghostwriter, but would rather use their book as a writing/learning experience. For them, we provide chapter-by-chapter coaching, to help them see how to improve their book whenever another chapter is written. My agreement on this with one client is representative of this service.
She told me what she needed, and we struck a deal for a chapter-by-chapter coaching program. Each week (or at regular intervals but never less than at least once every month), we would get together to review three chapters.
The first was the rewrite of a chapter after my extensive editing-with-notes. She’d present it to me then we’d discuss her changes and how she’d improved on her writing. We would basically agree that each of her revisions were either effective or needed more work. The farther into the book we went, the fewer “do it agains” came up, which was a core intention of the coaching agreement. By the end of the book, she was not only making far fewer errors, but when she did, her corrections were spot-on.
The second was my presentation of edits for the next chapter, pointing out the issues (developmental) or wording (copy editing) and the whys and wherefores. For example, she had a habit of referring to people as “that” instead of “who.” This challenge finally resolved by the end of the book, but until then, she kept at this common mistake. Inanimate objects, generally including plants, are “that,” while people (or beloved pets, or basically any non-human animal) as “who.” Once we finished that, s
he’d then give me a new third chapter for my editing review. We’d discuss this in general (I hadn’t read it yet, which limited discussion) along with the timetable for our next meeting.
The key element of these meetings – always at Starbucks so I could enjoy a croissant and a bottle of sparkling water while we talked – was a one-on-one, hands-on tutoring session – tutor being another term for coaching. in these meetings I would focus on writing issues and possible solutions – sometimes several different solutions – so she could review and implement them In more than a few cases, a “current” editing change might be applied retroactively to a previous, already edited chapter, and these increasingly came from her as she considered the underlying reason for those edits.
This can be a great process for novice writers who want to become good writers, and good writers who want to excel in their current and future writing.