Our publishing partners come to us with a specific audience or demand they have identified, and it's our job to supply content that meets that demand. This calls for a highly skilled creative, recruitment, and management staff that is up to the task.
But with so many options for how content is being created, published, and consumed - in addition to the quickly changing trends of the market - how do we do this? How do we ensure that a team of over four hundred writers and editors, that’s growing every day, is trained as thoroughly as possible to run with anything a client might ask for?
For starters, having a prepared staff means we avoid waiting for a client to ask for something. We watch the market and industry trends to anticipate our clients' needs ahead of time, so our staff is ready before the requests come.
Here are just a few of the things we’re training our creative staff on to anticipate the needs of the market and our clients:
Worldbuilding
Many publishers are no longer creating stories for a single, standalone book. Why create one story for your audience when you can build a whole world that has the potential for multiple series and spin-offs?
For this reason, we’re developing training programs to ensure our writers and editors are highly adept at building believable worlds that readers will love escaping to over and over again.
Beyond worldbuilding skills, this also means they must take the possibilities of story potential into account. They’re learning to create worlds that are big enough for multiple series to be created within, and all of the intricacies that entails - ensuring consistency between different volumes, while also allowing room for continued evolution and growth.
TV & Film Writing
The popularity of serialized fiction has created a demand for stories that mimic television series. Each chapter is an episode with its own story arcs that tie into the overall ongoing arcs and plot. The storytelling tactics of TV and Film as a whole are becoming increasingly popular in written form for novels - both standard and serialized.
By training our writers to understand how to write for film or television, they’re empowered to find new and fresh ways to adapt these techniques to the written word.
Code-switching
Our writers use this technique to help them collaborate with multiple writers - matching each other’s voices to create a congruent story that feels like it’s all in the same voice, from a single writer.
Code-switching abilities also allow for the creation of more believable characters and storytelling. The writers change their tone and style to match the character in first-person narratives - often alternating between multiple characters and points of view throughout a story.
We use code-switching skills when continuing series or creating adaptations so that the books fit seamlessly into the books that came before them. The aim is for the readers to have no idea that the series has been passed between multiple writers in its lifetime.
Another benefit of this skill is that our clients can bring us content that has performed well for them, and our team is able to mimic its voice and most popular elements - maintaining the style while creating a new and original story within it.
Collaborative Writing
Collaborative writing has a multitude of benefits that expands beyond the speed of completion. We find that our writers gain a lot from the collaborative writing process. Working with a partner or team provides an ongoing stream of new ideas and techniques, while also pushing the boundaries of what they can do creatively.
Having an entire team working on a single story means that if one person is sick or has an emergency, the whole story doesn’t come to a screeching halt. When working in a series, either starting a new one or picking up one already in progress, multiple eyes on the work lessens the risk of plot holes or inconsistencies.
In our company, we expect collaboration at every level - which means our project managers are also highly skilled in storytelling, writing, and developmental editing. With so much feedback and opportunity for collaboration, we ensure every story our team creates is the best it can be.
Immersive and Transmedia Storytelling
We recognize the demand for transmedia storytelling and immersive writing experiences and the growing variety of opportunities for how an audience might consume or interact with a single story or world.
This evolving world of storytelling allows for so much experimentation and creativity - using technology and interactive experiences to change how stories are told and enjoyed. We’re always eager to train our staff for any new experience our clients want to create for their readers.
We’re thrilled to be able to provide opportunities for our writers and editors that put them on the forefront of this developing industry, while helping our clients grow at the same time.
Great Storytelling
We believe in the power of great storytelling, so in addition to training our creative staff for what will best serve our clients’ needs - we train our staff in anything that will grow their story crafting and writing skills. Wherever they devote those talents throughout their careers will result in amazing stories to be shared with the world, which is one of our core values at Hotghostwriter and our new Inscrive Scale department.