Ghost Writing
Ghost writing doesn’t have to be scary. Give voice to the spirit of the bylined author.
It’s almost Halloween, which seems like a good time to talk about ghost writing.
If you are a business writer, you’ll probably be asked to produce all kinds of material that will appear under someone else’s byline.
The first few times, you might feel slighted, wondering: “Why can’t I sign my own name to this, and get some recognition?” (Caution: That may sound fine in your head, but please don’t say it out loud.)
Instead, be proud that everyone believes the article was written by the hotshot whose name is at the top of the page. Kudos to you for being an awesome ghost writer. This piece might not go in your portfolio, but your client or your employer will love you for it, and you’ll get more work. Some of it could be fun: speechwriting, video scripts, blog posts, and newsletters are all opportunities to stretch yourself as a writer. In fact, it could be a benefit to hide behind someone else’s name while you experiment with new mediums and styles.
Trick? Or treat?
The trick — and the treat — is to set your own ego aside and try to represent the bylined author as well and as accurately as possible, while maintaining all the other professional, polished qualities that make you such a stellar writer. So trot out your best grammar, express clear messages that are consistent with your employer’s or client’s brand, and make that bylined author sound brilliant. That’s the treat.
When my previous employer’s web site was in its early stages, we decided to start a blog that would showcase the knowledge and wisdom of our subject matter experts (SMEs.) The problem was that none of them had the time or inclination to write a regular blog post, and some of them turned out to be mediocre writers, at best.
The only way to publish on schedule was to have the marcom writers deliver drafts to the SMEs for review. It was much easier and quicker for them to edit our drafts than to write their own blog posts from scratch, so this was a big time saver for them. They got to focus on their product development work with fewer distractions. Sweet!
Embodying a Stranger’s Voice
The tricky part was to give each SME a distinctive voice, so they wouldn’t all sound like me or my fellow writers. I drew up some rules, and shared them on a spreadsheet. Each SME had one or two assigned topics, or “beats” and a few style guidelines.
For example, our product marketing director was British, so we did not use any contractions in her material, and we used only standard grammar —although we did deploy American spelling. One of the product managers had a more informal communication style, so his posts had more contractions and, now and then, we’d throw in a sentence fragment or a parenthetical remark. We writers turned our mimicry into a game, in a way, and it worked out reasonably well.
In fact, that early success did lead to a lot more ghost writing assignments for me. Be careful what you wish for.
Eventually, my research and attentiveness to style and substance led to recognition as a subject matter expert. I got my own byline, as well as a weekly radio segment. I even was tapped to represent the company as a speaker at industry events. I developed my own slides and my own script, based on my own ideas. I built my knowledge base, I got really good at PowerPoint, and I learned how to make graphs that can be seen and understood by the people sitting in the back of the room. That last part is way harder than it looks.
Luckily, I enjoy public speaking, which seems to be an unusual character trait. I got to travel to a lot of places in the U.S., I met lots of interesting people, made good connections, and brought back sales leads for my company.
I owe it all to ghost writing.
