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Cruz Santana
The hardest part of ghostwriting other people’s stories is capturing their voices so that it isn’t you talking, it’s them...
Roshni Parab
Are you ready for the longest chapter in the entire book? Why am I even asking? Of course, you are! You’re about to pick my brain a little (there’s a lot in there) and get all the shortcuts I never got. It’s easily the most valuable chapter in the book.
You’ve got the signed agreement in your hand, and you’re ready to rock ‘n’ roll. You’re stoked to get started on your first project and can’t wait to get paid. It’s possible to earn big money in ghosting. In my case, I can easily earn $2,000 from one small project. In other niches it might take you a few clients to earn four figures, but it’s still completely achievable.
To have staying power, you have to be good at your job. Most who attempt ghosting don’t last more than a few weeks. Your first gig will expose you to the cold. You’ll be on your own, writing something that someone else is counting on to generate income. It’s a lot to have on your shoulders. And you want to do right by your clients. Most of your business comes from referrals.
Here, you’ll read all about organizational techniques, payment structures, capturing the author’s voice, interview techniques, how to handle changes your client requests, and a ton more. I want you to knock ’em dead and book up months of your schedule. Here’s how you do it.
(Note in this chapter that I mostly talk about book ghosting, as this is the type of ghostwriting I do. But just about all of what I say applies to other types of ghostwriting, too.)
IN THE CASES OF MEMOIRS and novels, your clients will have started on the project and usually have an outline you can work with. If they don’t, creating one is your first step. How you’ll proceed is completely up to your client. Remember that the book you’re going to work on for the next few months doesn’t belong to you.
To do this job well, you’ll have to have a collaborative spirit, management skills, and the ability to capture your client’s voice. That last one is the reason they’re coming to you and not paying their kids a ten-spot to do it for them. And remember, successful ghosts keep their egos in check. This job isn’t about you. Set aside your ideas about how to approach the book if your client disagrees with you.
You’ll have to keep your client on schedule, conduct interviews, and perform lots of research in addition to writing the book itself. And when it comes to actual writing, you must know how to structure and organize material. That’s why you start by getting the outline approved as soon as possible.
In most cases, especially if we’re starting from scratch, I’ve found that the client prefers as much face time with me as possible as we talk out their story and get it on tape. It seems like once the story is out of their head, so to speak, they’re fine with chatting online and corresponding via email.
IT’S A GHOSTWRITER’S most daunting and valuable task. The ability to become a literary chameleon is what separates the great ghosts from everyone else.
A person’s writing voice is their writing personality. It’s a unique, authentic, and consistent writing style. Mine, for example, is somewhat informative, a tad sarcastic, and free of fluff. The dozens of authors I’ve worked with have heavily shaped it. It’s a difficult thing to describe—the oomph with which you deliver, whether you lean on crutch words, etcetera. It’s often confused with tone—a writer’s attitude in a piece.
Essentially, great ghostwriters are amazing mimics. If you’re like me, and have been doing goofy voices from TV all your life, it’ll come naturally to you. But just because it comes naturally to me doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate how difficult it can be for others to master the skill. The better you are at it, the more money people will pay to have you write on their behalf.
There’s no formula to it. You simply have to have a great ear. If you weren’t born with it, you’ll have to study your client’s personality and idioms. Seek out little details, phrases, and pacing—what other people ignore.
I’m making a big ol’ deal about it specifically because it’s the top concern of clients (well, second only to money). They genuinely worry that folks who know them best will be able to tell they didn’t write the work—and rightfully so. A huge chunk of your job is to calm their fears that readers will see through it all. But most people aren’t that observant. They generally aren’t good readers, and it doesn’t take much—just a few well-placed phrases and idioms—to get them to buy the illusion of authorship.
I morph my writing style to fit the author’s personality. I get into the author’s head starting with the first interview, and then I reside there for some time.
Mastering this will not happen overnight. Try any of the following methods out now. Use them with friends or family right away to get that ear working.
Need an incentive? Here ya go: You’ll have fewer requests for changes (which you don’t get paid to make) if you can get it down.
YOU CANNOT SUCCESSFULLY ghostwrite for someone without talking to them. And if it’s in person, all the better.
But you must prepare for it. Have your questions ready and be familiar enough with them to feel comfortable chasing a few rabbit tails during the interview and still come back around to your main questions.
I love interviews. They’re time consuming, sure, but I get more from them than from phone calls or even video chats. They create moments of genuine authenticity that translate well into the book. Record them, with permission.
I use a good old-fashioned digital recorder both in person and with a phone interview (on speaker). I paid $100 for mine nine years ago, and it still works as great as the first time I used it. If you’re looking for a smarter way to record, try the free version of Uber Conference.
Following the interview, play it back and transcribe it. It’s laboriously tedious, but well worth the effort. Having the transcript with you always delivers priceless oopsies (stories, jokes, and moments of irony) you can use to authentically build your client’s voice in your head.
I DON’T ALWAYS HAVE the opportunity to do this, so I get excited when a client is cool with me shadowing them for a day or two. Shadowing gives you a window into how they truly communicate, their delivery and personality. Look for unguarded moments. When you speak or write anything, you’re careful to only reveal your “public” persona. Day-to-day interactions reveal so much more about a person.
IF YOUR CLIENT HAS any video available of him speaking publicly, use it. Take note of often-used phrases, how and where they place their words, and their delivery. It can also be audio like radio interviews, corporate meetings, or any other situation in which they’ve been recorded. Use it all.
WHEN I TAKE ON A BRAND new client, I ask them to send me anything and everything they’ve published—literally anything. One guy sent me the love letters he’d written to his wife while they were attending separate colleges. Sure, some were graphic, but they truly helped. I had another client give me access to his email account.
If your author has a blog, go to it and bookmark it in a new folder named for your client. Use it and take detailed notes and jot down good stories and examples to rework and adapt into appropriate spots in the book. Or if they’ve already worked with another writer who has established a voice for your client, use that too.
FROM THE GET-GO, I set the expectation that I must receive brutally honest feedback for each chapter I submit to my client for review. It’s in my contracts, and I enforce it wholeheartedly. As amazing as I might be (tooting my own horn here), I’m hardly ethereal. Your client is an invaluable tool for building voice in a book.
Along with the first drafts of each chapter, I send detailed instructions asking that they be keenly aware and mindful of the voice. I ask that they mark up anything with “TK” that doesn’t sound at all like them or offer alternative phrasings, words, and anything else. The book must reflect the client’s personality, and they’re involved in the process every step of the way.
“TK,” is a publishing term that means “to come.” It’s a short code that can save you a bunch of time. When I have a question in the text—if I need more information or clarification from the client—I’ll put a “TK” in there. It’s a way to draw attention to a relevant part or section. I’ll also ask clients to do the same if there’s something they want me to double check. When I get the file back from the client, I use the Find function to search for all instances of “TK” to locate all issues at one time.
That said, I don’t take in every single one of their changes. Be selective and choosy of things like grammar and dialectic writing.
HUMAN BEINGS ARE QUITE narcissistic. Most of us love the sight of our own faces in the mirror. And we love the sound of our own voice. It’s the same with clients. Use that to your advantage and mimic your client’s speaking voice out loud.
For example, think about the robustness that comes with a good baritone, like James Earl Jones’s or Morgan Freeman’s. Most of us can hear Morgan Freeman’s voice on command. You might be able to generate him narrating this sentence, right now. No, I’m not joking. Try it. Think about the many movies he’s appeared in. Can’t do it? Do a quick YouTube search for clips if you need to.
But that’s the sort of thing I do. I adopt the client’s voice and use it as my personal narrator. Still sound weird? Pretend the client’s voice is that of the character in the manuscript. Your client can be the story’s narrator—and he kind of is, right?
Here’s another weird method that I’ve heard helps: Replay the audio from your conversations during long car rides or when you’re out for a run. The trick is to listen to it passively but repeatedly.
Practice is how you improve at anything. It’s how you got to be a fantastic writer on the precipice of becoming a terrific ghostwriter. The key to mastering mimicry is to listen with a sensitive ear and attentive mind to your author. Note the words and phrases your client uses most frequently. Does he speak in short, abrupt sentences? Or is he a long-winded, more complex kind of guy? Does she pepper her speech with industry jargon?
CHECK OUT THESE THREE examples of different writing voices in literature and see if you can pick out the words, phrases, and styling that make each piece unique. Under each passage, I’ll point out differences in each.
Passage 1:
“All my life I’ve wanted to go to Earth. Not to live, of course—just to see it. As everybody knows, Terra is a wonderful place to visit but not to live. Not truly suited to human habitation.
“Personally, I’m not convinced that the human race originated on Earth. I mean to say, how much reliance should you place on the evidence of a few pounds of old bones plus the opinions of anthropologists who usually contradict each other anyhow when what you are being asked to swallow so obviously flies in the face of all common sense?”
How long is that last sentence? It uses only one comma. See how it makes you read it straight through without breathing? It subtly conveys the speech patterns of an adolescent girl. The passage is from a book called Podkayne Of Mars by Robert A Heinlein, published in 1979.
Passage 2:
“You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,’ but that ain’t no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied, one time or another, without it was Aunty Polly—Tom’s Aunt Polly, she is—and Mary, and the Widow Douglas, is all told about in that book—which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.”
Oh, the stomping of rules! The grammar is atrocious and the constant interruptions and repeats. It’s from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by the great Mark Twain. But he chose the wording to help readers hear the boy’s accent and picture him speaking, as if we’re in the room with him.
Passage 3:
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
“Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety eight million miles in an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
“The planet has—or rather had—a problem. Which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.”
My fellow nerds will recognize this one right away. It’s from my favorite book, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Notice how quickly we are taken from the vastness of the entire universe and zoom right in to Earth and digital watches. Adams had a unique way of looking at life and comparing it to the bigger picture without our mind’s eye ever leaving the small stuff. It was all equally absurd to him, and he took pleasure in sharing that absurdity with us nerds who love his book.
Did you see the differences? Good. Recognizing subtleties in writing voices requires practice. Start by paying attention to people and their mannerisms. Above all, listen. Train your ear to recognize pauses, idioms, crutch words, and clever uses of metaphors and analogies.
Pro Tip: Submit each chapter upon completion for review and approval. Use your word processor to track your client’s changes in the document. Use this as a reference to come back to when you need it.
IT’S NOT ENOUGH TO know how to use a client’s voice. You also have to know when to switch between your own voice and theirs. Never, ever think you can create some sort of hybrid of your writing voice and theirs. It’s not natural, and anyone who reads it will know something’s up.
Switching between your voice and theirs allows you to segue from one thought to another or (in fiction) from an A-plot to a B-plot without leaving the reader feeling like they’re dangling in mid-air.
Use your client’s voice for main ideas, signature words or phrases, and data points. Use your own to outline and organize the work, transition, and when a clear breakdown of very technical information is necessary.
YOUR SUBJECT DETERMINES the argument in the piece. No matter what your personal take is on the material, bear in mind that it’s going to be published under your client’s byline. Your opinion is moot.
Thesis aside, steer clear of adding and subtracting ideas. If your client brings up an argument, follow it. It’s important enough to them to be mentioned, so it should be featured in the finished product. Conversely, if an argument doesn’t come up, leave it out—no matter how much you think it would deliver a point home or clarify the argument.
EMERIL LAGASSE HAS his “BAM!” Homer Simpson says “D-oh!” Sheldon Cooper loves a good “Bazinga!”
You’d never catch me saying any of these in my day-to-day life. But if I were to write a memoir for any of these three, I’d absolutely include it in their book at key points. Readers who are familiar with the author will find the piece genuine.
The only time I would strike or edit a favorite phrase is if it has unintentional grammatical boo-boos. All others make it in.
BUSINESS ARTICLES, white papers, and case studies all contain data. They have to adequately present and support an argument.
Stats aren’t perfect. Sometimes your subject will offer up data in support of their points. I try to remember that I’m interviewing an expert in the field and there’s a reason why the subject used this specific piece of data. It’s not up to me to judge whether it’s up to par. But I always ask about the source of the data.
If something feels genuinely off to me, I’ll spend a few minutes looking for backup sources to verify the facts. I’ll only raise concerns to my client if I find real proof of an inaccuracy. Even still, I’ll leave whether or not to publish the data up to the client.
YOUR SUBJECT’S IDEAS from your initial interview should make up the meat and bones of the piece. The writer is responsible for organizing those thoughts in a logical progression. Move your client’s anecdotes from the middle of the interview to the opening if they deliver a healthy punch of energy to the reader.
RARELY DO FOLKS SPEAK in clear segues from one point to another. We jump around, back and forth, often interrupting ourselves and pivoting in different directions. It’s up to us writers to put in nice transitions at opportune places.
Mimicking the segues of others often results in a garbled piece because we each have such a different way of making arguments flow.
AS A GHOST, YOU’LL often serve as a proxy for the audience. If your subject is fully embroiled in his area of expertise, breaking down arguments for laypeople might not come easily for him. If you think one of his points could use some clarification, ask him to expand on it.
If you’re still having a hard time getting an adequate explanation, provide succinct supporting information in no more than a few sentences.
MASTERING YOUR CLIENT’S voice isn’t the only talent a successful ghostwriter needs. As a professional writer, you’re probably already quite skilled in putting together a plan for a project and keeping it on a schedule. It’s no different with ghostwriting or even with ghostwriting larger projects like manuscripts.
Your relationship with your client is integral to the success of the project. Keep them involved in the project by asking them to approve chapters as you write them. Honor requests for minor changes and move on. Handle requests for larger, more substantial changes by scheduling a phone conference to discuss them. During the call, talk about what’s not working for them, and discuss ways to improve it.
Once all the chapters are completed and approved, create a “master” file, e.g. in Google Drive, that contains your final draft. Ask your client for a final review. Once that’s approved, you’ll collect your final payment and be done.
When I first started, I’d schedule larger projects out so I’d always have income. Another way to do it is to turn over smaller gigs one after another. Whichever you choose, work with something tangible, a scheduling app or notebook if you’re a dinosaur like me, to keep an actual schedule of what you’re doing for the month, week, or day.
LAST OF ALL, LET’S talk about the money. How do you land your first $2,000 gig as a ghostwriter?
Clients prefer to pay a flat fee for the project, which is why I suggest you add your rates to your website. If you’ve already set your fee structure (per word) to include a range, great. You’ll be doing something similar for ghostwriting.
Chron, a news site, suggests a new ghost makes somewhere between $7,000 and $9,000 for both fiction and nonfiction books 200 to 300 pages long. That’s between eight and 10 cents per word, which is about average. Ghosts with a few books under their belt can make $10,000 to $15,000 per gig.
Now, listen here: You will not make that much money when you’re starting out! Sorry to burst your bubble, but anyone who tells you they made that much on their first few projects is full of crap. I made $600 on my first gig. If I estimated a per-word translation of that figure, it’d probably be less than four cents per word. But hey, I loved it, and it turned into so much more for me.
My current fee in 2017 for ghostwriting books ranges between 35 and 65 cents per word. If it’s an indie project with a skinny budget but the subject matter is impactful, I’d take the lower end if there wasn’t any traveling or heavy researching to be done on my part. I made 50 cents per word on my last project and (luckily for me) there was very little research to do.
Your ghostwriting minimum should be near to your current minimum for traditional freelance writing. Yes, ghostwriting is hard. It takes guts. And if you have guts, give yourself a raise. Significantly up your maximum and aim for earning close to the middle of that range.
Pro Tip: Professional ghostwriters also offer book proposal writing services. It’s a way to make easy money helping authors get their books published. How much? I’ve personally seen the average go from $5,000 and $10,000. The more successful you are at this, the more you can ask.
I DON’T START ON LARGE projects without receiving 50 percent of the payment first. As soon as they sign the agreement, I’ll send back an executed copy and their first invoice for half of the project.
Their second bill comes at the halfway point. For example, if I’m working on a manuscript of 40,000 words for a total of $12,000, and the client has already paid the first half of that, and we’re quickly arriving at the 20,000-word mark, I’ll send out an invoice for $3,000. Once we’ve completed the work, and it’s been approved, I’ll issue the final bill for $3,000.
Some writers like to break these up by the month or week. I like my method because it allows me to schedule out my finances with some predictability.
Diversifying your freelance writing business is important for long-term staying power. Find out why in the next (and last) chapter.