“Can you send me samples of your writing?”

I’ve been writing books for decades and have learned that when people ask for samples, they’re really asking whether I can capture their voice on paper.?

I have interviewed hundreds of people from various walks of life and they all sound different. It’s more complicated than that, for everyone has three different voices: how you actually sound, how you think you sound, and how you want to sound, ideally.?

Part of my job as a ghostwriter is to find the fourth voice: your Book Voice. This is the voice that will resonate with your readers, imparting trust and authority, sincerity and honesty. Why? Because the Book Voice is specifically designed to speak to your readers, at their level and in a manner they respect and trust.?

Your Book Voice may or may not be how you actually sound, think you sound, or want to sound. But it’s always the best voice to use.?

To help you understand my approach to finding your unique Book Voice, let’s look at samples of different types of voices, as well as the process I use to find the Book Voice for each author.?

Using the Actual Voice?

Here’s the opening paragraph from a legacy memoir called Into the Light, which I ghostwrote for a construction worker who, despite having dropped out of college in his first semester, went on to create a high-tech company with products sold in over 150 countries:

“This is the story of my life, more or less. Now, I could have had someone clean this up for me. You know, make the grammar perfect. And take out the parts where I repeat myself—or where I curse—and all that. But why? What you’re reading here is the real me. Just pretend you’re sitting with me in my backyard, on my patio by the small pond, pool, and barbecue area. And I’m rambling on.”?

In this case, we used his Actual Voice, exactly as he spoke.?

This author’s Actual Voice was the perfect Book Voice for his memoir, which was intended to be read by his family and descendants, who would want to know exactly how he spoke.?

To capture his Actual Voice, I conducted extra interviews, which I recorded and transcribed, using the transcripts to “cut and paste” his story together.?

I only wrote small portions of the book from scratch, having learned his voice by listening carefully during our interviews and studying the transcripts.?

Using a Variation of the Actual Voice

This selection comes from Make Your Best Life by Bruce Krysiak, who held high-level positions at 7-Eleven, Toys”R”Us, and other major corporations:?

“By the time my 47th birthday rolled around, I had already led a rewarding and often tumultuous life. My work history included a few dozen jobs, ranging from produce clerk to chairman of the board. I’d created companies from scratch and attempted to redefine an entire industry as head of marketing for the 7-Eleven chain of 7,000 stores. I had traveled around the world as head of an international consulting firm and worked with the national leaders of Russia to improve its food distribution system at a time when the Soviet Union was in the midst of collapse.”?

Notice the pattern of declarative sentences of intermediate-to-long length, each presenting a complete thread of his story: “...I had already…,” “My work history included…,” “I’d created companies…,” “I had traveled…”??

We chose this approach to reflect his presentational style, whether in the boardroom or in person.?

This Book Voice did not reflect how he always spoke. Rather, it was his voice at its strongest, most direct, and focused.?

Using an Imagined Voice?

This excerpt is from Daughter of Apartheid, by Lindi Tardiff.?

“I grew up in Soweto—that’s what everyone called the South Western Townships—an enormous, disjointed series of shanty towns just outside of Johannesburg to the south. Imagine thousands and thousands of tiny houses—some no more than shacks, really—jammed one against the other with jerry-rigged electrical and power supplies. Imagine streets often paved with dirt and now and then coated with waste that oozed up from broken sewer pipes. No malls, no parks, no beauty parlors, no coffee shops, and no friendly cops on the beat to protect you—for protecting us was the lowest priority, and residents knew better than to even call for help. This was the Soweto I knew as a girl and a teen in the 1980s up to 1991.”?

Our goal was to invite readers into a specific time and place. The author, a very successful attorney when I worked with her on her book, did not speak like this. However, we felt this was the ideal Book Voice, for it would bring the readers into apartheid-era Soweto. They would see it as she saw it and, more importantly, would experience it as she felt it. We wanted to emphasize, without explicitly stating, that while she was acutely aware of the horrors of apartheid and suffered grievously from it, she did not respond with anger or despair. Instead, she treated it matter-of-factly, clinging to family, hope, and faith as she pushed ahead.?

Pure Book Voice?

Finally, here is the voice used in a soon-to-be-published book I worked on for a university professor of diplomacy and international relations. The book was aimed at scholars and policymakers:?

“The broader ethics-government-nature framework, drawing heavily upon James Turner Johnson’s recovery of the ‘just war’ tradition within an expanded context, offers a richer, more diverse perspective, encompassing Catholic and Protestant approaches to war, pacifism, and alternative viewpoints on force, diplomacy, justice, recompense, and peace. Such an expansive view is essential for understanding the nuclear landscape navigated by Cold War presidents.”

This Book Voice is appropriate for the targeted readership: scholarly, with lengthy, more complex sentences and an assumption that readers are familiar with weighty concepts such as ‘just war’ theory, as well as James Turner Johnson’s writings on the matter.?

Final Note?

Superficially, all four selections are alike in that they use a clear, focused, educated voice. But when you look under the hood, you see that they are different, even if only subtly so in some cases. The difference is always intentional and always driven by the quest for the Book Voice, the voice that speaks to the readership in the language and on the level that keeps them reading, while driving home the point.??

Click here to find your Book Voice or discuss having your story/idea turned into a book.