There is such a thing as collaborating with a fellow writer on a story. Royalty sharing for such endeavors can be arranged in the publisher's contract or by a separate contract between the parties doing the work. The share levels are determined by the amount of input of the parties. If it's just an idea, ideas really aren't worth much even when they're yours, so payment for the trigger to your writing would be something of a token or a mention in the book to make the idea birther feel good.

@Lincoln55 -- ROFLMAO spread evenly over your entire comment.

I agree with you gents. And, to date, I haven't found a nice way to tell a wannabe writer they should be on. Have you ever gone down memory lane looking at your writings from decades ago and wondered if you wrote better then, than now?

@westvir -- No. I wrote some awful crap back then. Looking at some of my recent stuff I noticed that I still have the talent to produce crap, so now I feel better.

@evidentialist The second of your replies is the relevant one. The biggest question is where to find someone to work with, which is why I wondered if there was a place set up for this purpose. I don't expect to live long enough to write all the books I've planned, so I'm going to need to collaborate with someone. Creating a detailed plot and setting out what's going to happen in each chapter isn't anything like as hard as the graft of converting that into the actual text of a novel, and the latter's the part that I have trouble with, usually needing to edit everything a hundred times before it feels right. Other writers seem to be able to churn out the required quality straight off, but 90% of them waste this skill on disappointing story ideas that don't deserve to be published. With some of my story ideas, I'm keen to fight my way through the process of writing them without turning to anyone else for such help, but there are others which I know are good, but they would be one-offs which don't need to be written in my own style, and I don't want to spend my entire life typing instead of living.

@David_Cooper -- Understood. Now, as for there being any organized grouping of folks who write for/with others (ghostwriters), there are a few. Here's one for an example: [associationofghostwriters.org]

I do ghostwriting from time to time and have also engaged in the nefarious "novel factory" trade, but I don't advertise the latter. I have not joined any of the ghost organizations because that's not how I want to make a living. I know, I said I do ghostwriting occasionally, but I am really picky and the associations don't like that too much.

What genre(s) are you talking about and how much work has been done on your ideas at this point?

@Lincoln55 -- We need to talk. Not yet, but I'd like to message you sometime soon, if that's okay with you.

@evidentialist That association of ghostwriters appears to work on the basis that you pay a five-figure sum for them to write a book for you, which is fair enough when a celebrity is keen to express their vanity and doesn't have an idea deserving of publication in its own right. Of more use to me would be a way to release a detailed plot for a novel which a ghostwriter could then choose to write based on belief in the project rather than needing to be paid up front. I get the impression that there may be such a system in place for films, but I've no idea how it works, particularly when the simplest description of a story can reveal enough to give people a multitude of ideas as to how to rip off the key idea and implement it first while claiming it as their own.

@David_Cooper -- It's not quite that simple, particularly not for film. The film industry is highly unionized and anyone who is slightly interested in making a living in it is a member of one of the unions governing scales and responsibilities. Most of those who work the ghostwriting scene outside of the organizations operate on share of royalty + an advance to cover basic cost of writing in the first place. This can be a fair chunk up front as well. It is, after all, a business and few are willing to work spec in such a fickle and uncertain field. Perhaps you don't understand what is meant by ghostwriting, so I'll give a brief description.

Someone has an idea for a fiction book. Someone wants to write their memoirs. Someone needs a science paper/essay/thesis/textbook written. The list includes anything that someone wants to have written and they either need it done to achieve a goal (doctorate/maintenance manual/etc.) or sell for profit. In all these cases, the initiator doesn't have the time, or talent, or experience, or whatever to do all the work themselves so they look to hire a writer. The writer who does the work normally gets no recognition for the work. The paycheck is their reward while the one who initiated the work gets the byline, any accolades it generates, radio/TV time, and all the royalties/advance it accrues. Obviously, the ghostwriter is not going to work for pennies.

What you are apparently looking for is someone who is willing to share the royalties on a book they have written based on one of your ideas. This is fraught with myriad problems. First, as I said, ideas are not a problem for the creative writer. The problem is finding the time to write them while keeping Bush's Baked Beans in the cupboard. Second, how on Earth are you going to approach anyone and have them willing to enter into this buddy bond business without giving them one of your ideas up front to show them it's worth making a deal? I mean, writers who lack ideas are usually not the most talented/experienced in the world, so if you find such a person, your idea is going to be at their mercy.

On top of all that, there are hundreds of places where anyone can get ideas free of burden with just a couple of clicks. Your ideas will have to be orders of magnitude better than what is available on the Internet, and if they are, why wouldn't you take the time to learn the craft and write them yourself? You did say that there are a lot of bad ideas out there, so even if your writing was not the greatest, the story can carry the writing if it's all that good.

Well, you've answered my question - paying up front isn't a barrier to offering a share of the royalties too and promoting a ghostwriter to co-writer status, so that may well be the right way to go with this. What I'll do first though is keep working on my own writing abilities to see if I can speed up the editing process to the point where outside help becomes unnecessary. It's horribly slow at the moment, and so is my rate of improvement, but maybe I just need to be patient and keep putting the miles in.

@David_Cooper -- Handier yet would be to find a mentor willing to spend the time. A caveat here; mentors usually appear after they have seen your work and decide you have promise. Example: One of my early mentors contacted me because the acquisitions editor at the magazine showed him one of my efforts and suggested I might be someone to watch. That I haven't exploded on the scene with a dozen bestsellers already is not to say that they were wrong -- they just aren't right quite yet.

Another thing to bear in mind is that when I started there were only a few hundred authors in the industry spread over all the genres. Just doing the work was enough of a deterrent back then. With the advent of word processors and later the Internet and electronic publishing/printing/distribution there are now several hundred thousand in each genre, every one of them thinking they are the greatest author that ever was, and each vying for an infinitely thinner slice of a small pie. Had I been born twenty years earlier, I could have gotten a chunk of the golden age of Science Fiction and escaped the bullshit we now face.

I'm not saying it's too bad and one shouldn't try. I think everyone should have the opportunity to get recognized. To shine. What I am saying is, it is one hell of a lot more difficult today than it was twenty years ago, and several orders of magnitude tougher than it was when I started. I consider that since I've made a fair amount of dinero in this industry, that is the closest thing there is to real evidence for the existence of miracles. I wish you the best, my friend.

Thanks. I've seen a number of good novels that are hardly read by anyone at all, just because it's so easy for them to be lost in the noise, so I know it's tough out there. There's no point in trying to write any book that doesn't absolutely need to be written, which means finding the right ideas to work with is crucial. There are ten thousand writers out there who are better than Shakespeare, and yet they struggle to find readers. The low-hanging fruit has all been picked.