ethics or 1st draft ghostwriters?

Randall_Oelerich

Randall_Oelerich

Veteran
Somewhat related to a recent thread here by another member (wanting writing credit, etc), I am curious what you all think of the ethics of hiring a ghostwriter for a first draft? Specifically I am referring to a writer (not the ghostwriter) who writes a 20-30 page detailed treatment story outline, fully structured, with character bios and enneagrams, sequences, logline, beats, narrative single spaced story, and THEN hands that over to have someone ghostwrite a first 'vomit' draft' all with OTN dialogue; that the writer then takes control of for rewrites, dialogue (converting OTN to subtext, etc). Because I read in The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, where some pros (who write hit scripts) say they do this routinely to save time in the development process. Not saying I would do or not do this myself, but I had never heard of pros doing this until reading that recently in the 101 Habits book. Curious on your thoughts on this.
 
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I call them lazy hacks...and I don't really see how this would save that much time to make it worthwhile, but then I'm a pretty fast writer. If you're going into the detail needed to write a 30 page treatment it seems like pounding out a first draft wouldn't take too long. Sounds like you're referring to the way Ron Bass works, and while I really like Rain Man (which he wrote solo), the rest of his factory output doesn't impress me.
 
I am kind of thinking along the same lines. With a 20-30 page detailed treatment, it seems like I would prefer to just pull that into the screenwriting software and expand it into scenes, write OTN dialogue (strategic for the first draft) which would be easy. Seems like a lot of work to have to go over someone else's first draft wording and change it to what I want.

Batutta said:
I call them lazy hacks...and I don't really see how this would save that much time to make it worthwhile, but then I'm a pretty fast writer. If you're going into the detail needed to write a 30 page treatment it seems like pounding out a first draft wouldn't take too long. Sounds like you're referring to the way Ron Bass works, and while I really like Rain Man (which he wrote solo), the rest of his factory output doesn't impress me.
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Randall_Oelerich said:
I am kind of thinking along the same lines. With a 20-30 page detailed treatment, it seems like I would prefer to just pull that into the screenwriting software and expand it into scenes, write OTN dialogue (strategic for the first draft) which would be easy. Seems like a lot of work to have to go over someone else's first draft wording and change it to what I want.
Click to expand...

Probably these really successful screenwriters get a lot of offers they don't want to turn down, so they take them all on for the dollars and spread the work out to get them done.
 
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