{"id":15741,"date":"2025-03-21T16:42:11","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T16:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/?p=15741"},"modified":"2025-10-02T12:42:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-02T12:42:23","slug":"when-ghostwriters-hear-voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifebookmemoirs.com\/en-gb\/when-ghostwriters-hear-voices\/","title":{"rendered":"When Ghostwriters Hear Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Please allow me to introduce myself: I\u2019m Amy Iori, a ghostwriter, and I\u2019m fortunate to have one of the most unique jobs on the planet.<\/p>

Ghostwriters are professional wordsmiths who produce books, articles and speeches on behalf of other people. The twist is that, even though we are the ones doing the writing, we aren\u2019t ever credited as the author \u2013 rather, our clients are.<\/p>

Ghostwriters are often hired by celebrities and corporate executives who want to write a book but don\u2019t have the time or professional writing ability to do so effectively. Our speciality is capturing their unique voices in print so that no one ever guesses it wasn\u2019t actually written by them.<\/p>

Biography vs. autobiography<\/h2>

Capturing a client\u2019s voice is an essential part of ghostwriting, but what does that actually mean? And how do we stay true to someone else’s voice throughout a whole manuscript without losing clarity?<\/p>

To help answer these questions, consider the difference between a biography and an autobiography.<\/p>

In a biography<\/strong>, there\u2019s considerable distance between the writer and the subject. The story I write would consist of facts, along with my own interpretations of those facts. I could write the biography of someone who is still alive \u2026 or someone who lived centuries ago. Either way, I would write from a third-person perspective.<\/p>

Conversely, an autobiography<\/strong> is close and personal and written in the first person. If you\u2019re writing your own autobiography, you\u2019re telling a mostly one-sided story from your own perspective. You might relate your interactions with other people, but the perceptions and interpretations would be your own.<\/p>

But what if you\u2019re writing someone else\u2019s<\/em> autobiography? This is where it can get tricky, because we instinctively add our own spin when retelling a story. Our speech patterns, opinions about the subject matter and natural colloquialisms all influence the anecdotes we hear and the words we write. When uncontrolled, the client\u2019s words become our own on the page and the original voice gets lost. The story begins to sound more like the ghostwriter than the client.<\/p>

Speaking the client’s language<\/h2>

When writing the memoirs of a Second World War fighter pilot recently, I was faced with a lot of aircraft and flying terminology, in addition to some jargon. Take this passage in which the client describes nearly getting shot down in France on the day after D-Day:<\/p>

“I sent 12 birds home for refuelling in case of another mission and kept my flight of four going after the tanks. We knocked out two or three, an APC and a staff car. Hopping over the hedgerow at about 300 miles per hour, at 10:00, I saw a big gun having at us. <\/em>I honked the bird up to maybe 100 feet or so, went directly into him, and got him. He\u2019s out of business completely. Almost simultaneously, he got me. Snap-rolled my Jug right towards the ground like a leaf in a windstorm.\u201d<\/em><\/p>

It would have been easy for me to insert my own language here. ‘Birds’ are aircraft. His ‘Jug’ is a P-47. The ‘big gun having at us’ is the enemy\u2019s tank taking aim, and rather than ‘honking the bird up’, which will be another unfamiliar term for most people, I could have just said that he ‘increased his altitude’.<\/p>

In this case, the voice in the narrative is easily recognisable as that of the storyteller by anyone who knows him. His<\/em> word choices might not have been my <\/em>preferred word choices, but they reflect the way he talks. So, even though I was tempted to adjust the terminology and phrasing, I left it ‘as is’ to maintain authenticity.<\/p>

For another project, the client had both a medical and a military background, and he used language that was formal, proper and heavy on passive voice constructions. As a result, the book took on a more dignified and official tone.<\/p>

Medical terminology aside, I had to avoid simplifying anecdotes in favour of more common verbiage. For example, I might have referred to ‘excessive ethanol consumption’ as simply ‘heavy drinking’. This wasn\u2019t how I would have written it, but, as a ghostwriter, that was the point!<\/p>

Tuning in to their wavelength<\/h2>

In my experience, to be able to appreciate and reproduce a storyteller\u2019s voice, it is essential either to interview and record the storyteller myself or, as with LifeBook Memoirs, to listen carefully to the audio recording of someone else conducting the interview. This helps me tune into the client’s wavelength, to grasp their personality, their quirks and their individual storytelling style.<\/p>

Either way, as I write, I pay close attention to things like:<\/p>