Written by Mariela Azcuy
Published August 22, 2024

Early in my career, the quote was always my favorite part of a press release. It allowed me to put myself in someone else’s head, consider the main message, and how that specific executive would deliver that message. It also gave me the freedom to be more creative and conversational. 

I guess that was my first taste of executive ghostwriting, too.

When I had the opportunity to start writing scripts and keynotes for magazine publishers and editors-in-chief, the ghostwriting bug fully took over. It took what I loved about quotes and made it immersive.

✅ You could tell stories

✅ You could bring in pop culture references

✅ You could develop a POV over time

✅ You could have fun (if the moment was right)

✅ And it was more of a challenge because you were thinking outside of yourself

Good ghostwriting requires all the elements of good writing – knowing your audience, being engaging and clear, and showing some personality, to name a few. The extra layer of difficulty? Doing it all as if you were someone else. (Cue the sci-fi score).

You’re serving the end reader and also have an ultimate judge in the person you’re ghostwriting for. Their main question will always be: Does this sound like I wrote this?

You want that answer to be yes, or at least have a path to get to that yes. I hope this article helps.

Top Skills of an Expert Ghostwriter

All great ghostwriters are great writers. But the reverse isn’t true. Not all great writers are great ghostwriters.

That’s because of that extra layer of writing on behalf of someone else. So, I won’t spend time here on what makes a great writer, but I will focus on the top skills specific to expert ghostwriters.

Think about it as bringing “characters” to life. I borrowed that idea from the B2B Writing Institute’s Sarah Greesonbach because it was too good not to. “Good ghostwriters often have a theater minor or a past life on the stage. It’s all about character work.”

Expert ghostwriters know how to listen.

Just like there are no real off-the-record conversations with journalists, a ghostwriter is “always on” when around the person they write for. And I don’t mean in an invade-your-privacy or disingenuous kind of way. I mean in an “I want to understand what you stand for, what novel ideas you have, and how you express yourself” way. 

Great ghostwriters listen for:

• Key phrases to incorporate in writing – We work with someone who loves “LFG” as a rallying cry. It’s a fun one to incorporate. Another loves to say “nothing short of,” and we have to stop ourselves from overusing it. The point is to note these phrases and pepper them in.

• Language pacing – One of our clients likes to pause and address people by name when he responds to questions. And, while you don’t often get the opportunity to do that directly in articles, you can incorporate techniques that give a feel for pauses, like using one-line paragraphs to make a point.

Business Book Ghostwriter Dr. Marcia Layton Turner offered other examples of pacing: “One client frequently asked rhetorical questions and then answered them, so I built that type of structure into the book. Some clients speak using long and winding sentences, while others are clipped and to the point. I try and write the same way, to match their style and preferences.”

• Beliefs worth revisiting – One CEO mentioned wanting to inspire employees to achieve their “Career Defining Moments,” and that’s all we needed to know we’d be leaning into that topic.

• Stories – You’d be amazed at how many stories you can pick up if you train your ears to hear them. The person will rarely drop the whole story, but here’s where you can ask follow-up questions or take notes to flesh it out later when the timing is better.

• Overall tone – Do they lean more positive or controversial? Do they like to challenge prevailing notions? Is humility an important value for them? We always capture tone in our Content Mission Statement at the beginning of an engagement.

How to practice listening: Dr. Emily Anhalt has a great X thread on how to get better at listening that’s worth sharing. One worth calling out here listening quietly: “It can really throw off a speaker's flow when they're interrupted (even with affirmations). Show you're present with the expressions on your face instead of words.”

For the Interested’s Josh Spector calls a version of great listening “the ability to pay attention.” One way he recommends practicing this is by getting serious about single-tasking. “Read a book, watch a movie, or find some other thing to do for an extensive amount of time without allowing yourself to do anything else during that time.”

At the risk of adding something to that single tasking, I'd also jot down any words or phrases that stand out to you as something you’d want to revisit. 

Expert ghostwriters are interested and able to connect those interesting dots.

Interested and curious are synonymous here. The person you’re writing for shares a key belief and you are driven to know more. It becomes an itch you can’t scratch until you do know more or make a plan to do so.

Beam Content’s Brooklin Nash agrees. “You can get great insights from the CEO or whoever you're writing for (‘straight from the horse's mouth’), but if you don't use your own knowledge to add connective tissue, things will start to sound a bit like a ghostwriter writing something for the expert…Spend a lot of time on research.”

Ghostwriters are also personally interested in a wide range of topics and consume information across mediums – a newsletter about art history, the latest watercooler streaming show, the new Kacey Musgraves album, and ESPN. 

I’m not saying you need to follow all or any of these – ESPN is not my thing.

The point is ghostwriters tend to have many interests and then turn to those when it’s time to write or prepare for writing. They also take note of their client’s interests – for one we tune into historical storytelling, for another we bring in a freelance sports expert to keep us honest. 

And there lies the challenge.

Great ghostwriters must find ways to curate and catalog interests or else risk being overwhelmed and missing perfect opportunities to connect the dots.

How to practice connecting the dots: Connecting the dots is all about tools and processes. Outside of Google Docs, here are some that make a ghostwriter’s life easier:

• Otter.ai – You want to record every conversation. Its search function is rock solid and we also love that you can share clips of conversations for collaboration purposes. After all, content and PR should always work together to achieve awareness, authority, and activation goals. 

Another tip: for recurring meetings, give your recording a specific name to remind you of the main point of that date’s discussion.

• A productivity tool like Notion or Evernote – Entrepreneur Sari Azout is also building Sublime App as a “second brain” to collect and connect anything interesting you come across. No matter the tool, make folders for the people you write for and also for big crossover themes like “Entrepreneurship,” “Equity,” or “Marketing and Advertising.” I also have one for “Quotes I Love” that I turn to often.

Warning: Catalog ideas/information as you read them. Don’t wait. Ninety-nine percent of the time it will not happen later. In the meantime, you’ll lose the content that sparked your interest and your thought for how you may be able to apply it in the future.

• Your favorite AI-writing tool – We love ChatGPT because it’s better at learning your preferences over time, Perplexity for when we need sourcing, and Notebook LLM because it helps you work with your own materials versus what’s on the web. We don’t use these to write for us end-to-end and we do check all sources. You have to. It’s a wild world out there.

AI is a helpful tool when channeled correctly. We’re mainly using these tools in executive ghostwriting right now to: brainstorm everything from trending topics to ask clients about or what the best outro could be for a piece; source real-life examples for subjects we’re not experts in; or answer questions as we write. (Can you believe there’s no standard word for the person being ghostwritten for? We need to change this!)

• The Telescope/Microscope method – Carver Ashton Mathai detailed this method here; it’s a nifty process for connecting the dots. Take the seeds of an idea and see what happens when you zoom in or out. You’ll find lots of different opportunities to make connections.

We use this process when we build thought leadership strategies for clients. 

For example, we move from Anchor Topics (telescope), to Subtopics, to Angles (microscope). You could also take that flow in the other direction and telescope out to “Change” to connect the dots on a macro level. (A quick Evernote search shows me I have 174 notes that mention that topic.)

Expert ghostwriters are thought partners.

Interest and expertise are not synonymous in this article. It is impossible to be an expert in everything; if you pretend you are, the real experts will notice.  

A ghostwriter’s job is to be an expert in communications, not coding for example (save for those specific niches of coding/technical ghostwriters). The person you’re writing for must bring their leading thoughts to the table – or be able to articulate them when you prod – and help you fill in the blanks as needed.

Thought partners:

• Understand the brand and/or executive's goals and set up processes to meet them. Writing cannot happen in a vacuum.

• Have a rebellious streak when it comes to “corporate messaging.” If it smells like jargon to an outsider, they will want to break it down into its most salient parts. Colleen Schwartz, head of Communications at Snappy, puts it like this: “Internal jargon will never land externally...and corporate speak rarely lands anywhere!”

• Give subject matter experts the space and place to think and share. We typically accomplish this through monthly Executive Interviews and ongoing Slack conversions.

• Come prepared to meetings with the right questions and thought starters, but aren’t afraid to go where the conversations leads.

• Ask challenging clarifying questions if something feels too surface level. Thought leadership consultant Lee Price describes this as “having the patience to keep following up on an idea if it’s not clear the first time.”

• Help prepare ideas for public consumption, in whatever form or channel the moment calls for.

Nobody needs a transcriber. We have AI for that now. 

Getting Started with a New Executive

Jenna Silver, SVP of Industry Marketing at TelevisaUnivision, says: “The real magic happens when you can write for the same person consistently and over an extended period, truly allowing you to gain their trust and build their voice.”

Very true. But what if you’re about to partner with someone for the first time? All great partnerships have to start somewhere, right?

In this case, it’s all about immersing yourself in anything you can get your hands on before you actually kick off the work. Videos and podcasts are great because they give you all sorts of visual and audio cues that help you understand “the character” apart from just written ideas and information.

Take all you can get your hands on during this “hunting and gathering” phase and start a guide for each person you will write for as you research them. Experts I spoke with have different names for this tool – Tone and Manner Guide, Voice Guide, and more – but it all boils down to cataloging your observations as you absorb materials and adding helpful preferences over time.

John Pennypacker, VP of Sales and Marketing at Deep Cognition, says this “ensures consistency across all ghostwritten pieces.”

I also loved the idea of adding a “This Not That” section to these guides. Takeda’s Head of Global Leadership and Employee Communications Lisa Bagley builds hers mostly from edits to a piece.

Words can be subjective, and if you don’t write these down you’ll find yourself leaning toward your preferences instead of those of the person you’re writing for.

Nail the Editing in the Ghostwriting Process

I’m not sure what’s harder – editing something you’re writing for yourself (our proximity to the content makes it tricky!) or for someone else (there’s a whole other person in the mix!).

Phase one of editing for someone else starts like any other editing. You – or your chosen second eye – check the facts and for any grammar/typos, make sure the flow is right, and remove or improve anything that isn’t clear or doesn’t serve the goal of the piece.

But then, editing for a ghostwritten piece takes a turn. Do two things before you deliver a draft to the person who’ll be the credited author:

1. Leave very specific comments on where you need their input. Content Marketing Specialist Tom Bradbury says this “helps to focus attention on things that matter. You can also do this to point out any extra details you managed to research. For example, a comment saying ‘Heard you make a similar point on X podcast, super relevant here!’”

   This is one of my favorite parts of editing because – if you’re specific enough – you get the kind of color that really helps a piece shine. Here’s where we ask things like, “Can you share an anecdote about a time you changed an objecting customer’s mind?” or “What did your kids say when you told them you were moving to another country?”

   We also use comments to point out things we aren’t sure we got right. It’s usually easier to give someone something to react to than ask them to stare at a gaping hole. So, we take the leap and fill in the hole, even if we’re not sure we filled it with the right thing. And then we leave a comment.

   It shows proactivity even if you didn’t get it quite right initially. (I recently removed a Fleetwood Mac reference in a contributed article because my client isn’t a fan. But she appreciated the leap, and it gave her a very clear idea of the type of analogy we were going for. She offered a better one!) 

2. Stop at every phrase that makes you question if it sounds like them. If you’re stuck on it, find an alternative that gets you unstuck. You will almost always improve something that feels “off” in this last pass. Ask yourself, “Does this sound like them?” before they have to.

   I love it when a client approves a ghostwritten piece without any changes. But I also consider it a win if we were able to get it 95% there. That extra five percent could be the difference between good and great. It also means we probably learned something new about the client that we can put to use in the future, and ongoing dialog is a sign of a healthy partnership.

Most People Need Ghostwriters to Build Thought Leadership.

I’ve also always been drawn to ghostwriting because it’s critical to building thought leadership. Communicating ideas is way more fun than talking up a new product feature, IMHO. But executives need to share ideas consistently over time and how many can commit to that when they have companies to run? This is where expert ghostwriters come in.

If your competition has a bigger share of voice partly because they have a bigger voice, it’s time to hire a ghostwriter (and a PR agency while you’re at it).