5 Techniques Ghostwriters Use to Capture a Client’s Voice

Listen like a therapist, research like a tabloid investigator, and imagine like a novelist

The last shades of a perfect Oregon coast summer sunset still hovered near the horizon. I was sitting on the deck of a beach house with my laptop open, enjoying the cool ocean breeze with my headphones on as I listened for the third time to a client’s speech at a local bar association meeting, when I was pulled out of the flow.

My phone buzzed. It was a text from a different client. I read the note and smiled like a maniac. The client was responding to the latest newsletter I had written for him with the best compliment of my writing career, “Wow! You sound more like me than I do. lol.”

If we’ve learned anything over the past three years of AI-hype, it’s that people want to hear from people, not robots. I’ve been a working writer for more than fourteen years, and my favorite gigs have always been ghostwriting jobs.

Ghostwriting is more challenging and rewarding than other types of copywriting and content writing. Since I’ve returned to full-time freelance writing over the past few weeks, the demand for ghostwriting has skyrocketed.

Busy executives, founders, and professionals want help sounding more like themselves and less like AI versions of themselves.

The real trick that sets excellent ghostwriters apart from robots and newbies has little to do with writing skills. The trick is to learn how to listen like a therapist, research like a tabloid investigator, and imagine like a novelist.

Ghostwriters need to possess their clients to create compelling books, newsletters, and articles that capture the client’s vision, in the client’s voice.

Here are five techniques that help the best ghostwriters capture a client’s voice.

Face-to-Face Interviews

The most persuasive writing feels conversational. If you want to sound like someone else, it helps if you’ve had at least one conversation with them. In her book, Write for Money & Power, Amy Suto notes that memoir ghostwriters need to ask deeper questions than even a therapist would dare pose.

The length, number, and depth of face-to-face interviews will vary depending on the project. If I’m writing an article, usually one Zoom interview is fine when combined with other research. When I’m ghosting a book, especially a memoir, I conduct multiple interviews over Zoom, and if possible, in person.

Interviewing is its own skill. I first honed my interview skills as a practicing attorney, but talking with ghostwriting clients over the past fourteen years has sharpened my interrogation skills.

When I conduct ghostwriting interviews, I’m not just looking for facts. I’m also looking for themes. What kind of stories does the client tell? What kinds of metaphors do they share? What keeps coming up repeatedly?

These small details are what allow a client to see themselves in a finished piece. Ghostwriting is a partnership.

Internet Stalking

One of the main reasons clients are looking for a ghostwriter is that they are incredibly busy. They don’t have time to sit down for an Oprah-style interview three hours every day.

But, since we live in the internet age, everyone has a digital footprint.

The best ghostwriters are also internet sleuths. They deep dive into a client’s social media profiles. They find the Facebook posts about chilling at the lake house or the LinkedIn posts from ten years ago with a great story.

I love to use things like the speech a client posted last year on YouTube, and promptly forgot about, the way a gourmet chef uses obscure spices to season a dish. Internet sleuthing helps make an article or chapter pop.

Email Prompts & Voice Memos

Another wonderful way to get more of a sense of someone’s voice is to have them leave you voice memos.

I love to send one question via email and have the client send me a voice memo back at their convenience. Sometimes, speaking into a phone produces more candid and less rigid answers than you will get in writing or during an interview.

Voice memos are also easier for a busy executive to deal with than responding via email.

Text messages also work great to get a sense of what a client sounds like when they’re relaxed and not performing. This is vital when writing more personal pieces like newsletters and books.

Imagination & Empathy

When you’re ghostwriting, you are still creating something new. You are not just taking dictation. You are shaping the material a client has given you into something compelling with a mission. Your work needs to accomplish something. 

You have to use your sense of who the client is to shape the work. Empathy and imagination are what’s required at this stage.

Ghostwriting isn’t that different from writing for a fictional character. For the work to be believable, you need a mental model of the person.

Every great ghostwriter I know is obsessed with reading. They love story. Novels, poetry, memoirs, and narrative non-fiction help sharpen the empathy and imagination you need to effectively bring to life the voice of another human being.

Feedback & Practice

Even experienced ghostwriters don’t always stick the landing on the first attempt. The best way to ensure you fully capture someone’s voice is to get feedback and adjust your work accordingly.

Ghostwriting is often tricky because the client wants to sound authentic, but they also want the written word to be fluid. Clients want to sound like the best versions of themselves. As a writer, you need to make adjustments based on client feedback.

Again, ghostwriting really is a writing partnership. It often takes some practice for partnerships to find a smooth rhythm. But once you do, there’s nothing as fun as working with a client who loves your work, and clients love seeing their voice in books, articles, and newsletters that were mostly written without them having to tap out the sentences and paragraphs.

Ghostwriting is flourishing because it’s more art than science. It ultimately does what AI cannot: it facilitates human interaction.

Jason McBride is a freelance ghostwriter and poet-cartoonist. Schedule a free discovery call or send a message through the website.

This post was simultaneously published on Medium