How to Ghostwrite
Tips for Writers on Writing an Article in Somebody Else's Voice
Ghostwriting, the art of writing anonymously for another person, takes special skills. Follow these guidelines to become a successful ghostwriter.
Many magazines and newspapers, not to mention websites, carry departments, columns, and features that tell the true-life stories, convey the personal observations, or offer the special expertise of non-writers. Many well-known public figures use ghostwriters to help them publish, and ghostwriting is key to the success of many a celebrity autobiography or article.
Writers who have developed a special skill for writing in someone else’s voice are in demand, whether they're writing for magazines, writing for newspapers, or writing for websites. To teach yourself how to ghostwrite successfully, keep the following pointers in mind:
- Know the ground you need to cover. Start out with a clear idea of what the story is going to be about. Prepare interview questions for your subject that map out as meticulously as possible the ground you will need to cover.
- Preinterview if possible. Have a brief preliminary discussion with your subject to review the ground you plan to cover. Based on how the subject reacts and what he or she says, revise your interview questions accordingly.
- Interview profusely. Spend as much time as possible with your subject, gathering as much material as possible in that person’s own words.
- Follow the serendipitous path. Bear in mind that your interview may lead you in unexpected directions. Depending on where it goes, you may need to steer your subject gently back to the topic—or cut loose from your plan and follow an unexpected path that seems promising.
- Steep yourself in the person’s voice. Listen to your tape-recording of the interview and reread your transcript of it to give yourself a good feeling for the subject’s speech patterns and other aspects of the way he or she talks. Your goal will be to hear this person’s voice in your head as you write.
- Write from your transcripts. Use your transcript as a starting point for the writing.
- Don’t be a slave to your transcripts. Do not slavishly follow the transcript, however. Depart from it as the needs of good writing and storytelling require you to add words the subject didn’t actually speak, always striving to choose words that are the sort your subject might say.
- Dig up additional information. In order to tell a story completely, you may find yourself needing to do research your subject hasn’t done. Always strive to fill in the blanks, while staying true to your subject’s point of view.
- Treat your subject respectfully. Clean up your subject’s grammar. Do not ape dialect or turns of phrase particular to your subject that turn your ghost-written piece into parody.
Follow these tips, and you, too, could become a successful ghostwriter! (For more great writing tips, see "How to Interview: Tips for Writers," "How to Write a How-to Article," and "How to Write Reviews.")
