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Ghosting On the Job; How to Capture Someone Else’s Style in Writing

Written by: Melinda Copp

Article Overview: When you take a job at a company, whether you’re hired as a writer or not, being asked to write a memo or some other kind of document for someone that you work with is pretty common. Perhaps the person who's asked you to do the writing is busy or perhaps you know a bit more about the subject than they do—either way, ghostwriting requires being able to capture the “author’s” personal style on the page.

Ghosting On the Job; How to Capture Someone Else’s Style in Writing

When you take a job at a company, whether you’re hired as a writer or not, being asked to write a memo or some other kind of document for someone that you work with is pretty common. Perhaps the person who's asked you to do the writing is busy or perhaps you know a bit more about the subject than they do—either way, ghostwriting requires being able to capture the “author’s” personal style on the page.

Writing in someone else’s voice can seem tricky, but really it just takes practice and a little analysis.

Analyze the Author’s Style
One of the first steps you will need to take involves understanding the intended reader and the details that need to be included—that’s a must with any writing project. Then you need to analyze the author’s style and then try to adopt it, which you can often pick up just by listening to the person talk or reading a few other pieces they’ve written.

To familiarize yourself with the author’s voice, consider the following questions:
o Does the author that you are trying to emulate use a casual, friendly tone, or is the person’s tone more formal? Also consider what’s appropriate for the material.
o How does the author usually open conversations? With a reference or salutation to the readers or some kind of other statement?
o Does the author use contractions or spell words out in full?
o Do they prefer long or short paragraphs and sentences? And do they have any favorite words or phrases that they use all the time?
o How do they usually close conversations and/or written materials?

The person’s personality that you are writing for usually comes out more in the beginning of the work than at the end, so you should try and match their opening and closing line as much as possible. This means, if possible, you should take a look at several examples of their previous work and be sure that the ones that you look at were written by the person you’re trying to copy and not another ghostwriter. However, if you can only find examples that were written by other ghostwriters, you can use those as well to learn what you can.

Be Prepared to Make Revisions, and Don’t Take Them Personally
An important part of ghosting is learning not to be upset about changes made to your copy. No matter how well you think you’ve imitated another person’s style, there will always be places where the original author is sure that they’ve got a better way to say the same thing. This can easily be taken personally, but it shouldn’t. After all, you’re trying to capture the other person’s voice—rather than be upset, you should look at changes as a good way to learn more about what is expected of you.

Plus, most original authors feel that by making some changes to the work, they have the right to retain ownership. Still, this doesn't mean that you should take your ghostwriting duties lightly. Doing a shoddy or quick job will only make you look unprofessional and careless.

Ghosting in Your Future
Whether or not you anticipated ghostwriting as one of your job duties, writing is one of those tasks that can easily get passed along. And really, it means that the author trusts you enough to communicate his or her thoughts well in words. When you use these tips for ghosting on the job, you can ensure your author’s message comes across seamlessly.

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Article Tags: contractions, first steps, ghostwriter, ghostwriting, job, open conversations, personal style, personality, phrases, salutation, sentences, short paragraphs, writing project



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