I was in the car on the way to work this evening and I was talking to my partner about the writing I was doing and out of the blue she said "Why don't you get a ghost writer?" I explained that I didn't want one as I wanted to d othe writing myself and even if I did want one I would be able to afford one\be able to get one. So with a perfetly straight face she says "I know a ghost writer that'll do it all for free... Wikipedia" Made me laugh big time. So meet my new ghost writer, wikipedia. Thought I'd share.
Problem with using wikipedia as a ghost writer is that the material is owned by Wikimedia under Creative Commons, and you would still need to reference the site for anything that you use, otherwise you are infringing on their copyright.
no think it is a joke They have done a good job of ghost writing my historical bits of my story for me
I'm with Mia on this one. I'm completely lost on this thread. In plain English, what are you all talking about?
I think the OP is saying that an author doesn't need to rely on someone with more knowledge or research skills to ghost-write their books for them anymore, because potentially, all the information you need can be found on wikipedia.
That is what I got out of it too. I used wikipedia and the BBC website to form my historical characters.
Not that I'm an expert or anything, but as a joke that would have held up more if the first line or so had explained the nature of the problems you'd been having and set up the fact that the reason a ghost writer was needed was factual knowledge more than just, like... laziness or lack of skill, which seems to be why, 99%, I hear about ghost writers being employed... ... though, no offence, people shouldn't be writing stuff they don't want to research themselves.
*wonders if she accidentally posted this in the humour review forum* Exactly! I found it funny that my partner thought that this was the way to go and thought I'd share, that's all. Don't read more into it. Sometimes a tree is just a tree.
I know many on this site feel otherwise but often a quick peak at wikkipedia is all the research needed. Thanks to wikkipedia I was able to tailor my time travel round Lewis Carroll's life and add nice little touches about his stammer, his visit to Russia, his various illnesses and his gloves. Didn't need anymore than that. Wikkipedia built many of my historical caricatures for me.
Don't worry, DisFanJen, I laughed! And absolutely, Wikipedia is a godsend. When researching anything medical, complicated or otherwise scientific I tend to go there first and check out loads of other places too, to see if they match up, but just with general research I use it all the time. If it turns out to be as factually dodgy as its reputation says it is, I have 'artistic license' as an excuse, haha... Life as a writer now must be so, so much easier than when novelists had to rely on contacting experts, or dusty libraries... :/
Haha, yes! Gone are the days of long Victorian sagas, huge lengths of dialogue... now we crave pace and action in every scene... ahh, makes you glad SOME things have changed, but at the same time sad they have!!
LOL dunno my books have a lot of dialogue But whilst I love some agree some things are better I had an English teacher once who I later worked with at a museum - remember getting name of a butterfly wrong despite having clear memory of exactly when and where I learned it - she said my biology teacher probably lied and made up the name
