How Stage Acting Prepared Me for Ghostwriting Work
Source: ChatGPT
I write a lot. It’s what I do more than anything and has occupied me for much of my working life. In recent years, however, very little of that writing has been under my own name. In fact, much of my output in recent times I’m not even allowed to link to on my website, and where I’m not so restricted I still have to caveat the links as “ghostwritten” because the official “author” is someone other than me.
Many writers, especially younger ones, find ghostwriting to be ego-obliterating. I’m not entirely immune to this. One of the reasons why I blog is so that I have something out there that is mine and mine alone, and I would never want to be exclusively a ghostwriter—I still have too much of an ego for that.
But I’ve never not enjoyed the challenge of ghostwriting. I’ve particularly enjoyed it when it’s for someone that I’ve written for on an ongoing basis, like a CEO or other senior figure, and I’ve really had the opportunity to get to know the “author”. Currently I have the pleasure of ghostwriting for a CEO who will remain nameless and have enjoyed getting to know her personal communication style, which I took to quickly.
So how did I become a natural ghostwriter? I think it has something to do with my background as a stage actor.
My Theatrical Backstory
I majored in history as an undergrad and then went on to pursue a master’s degree in the same subject, a path I credit for my overall writing skills. But throughout both my undergraduate and graduate years as well as through much of my twenties I was equally preoccupied by theatre.
As an undergrad, I was a member of a French-language drama troupe associated with Campus Saint-Jean, the University of Alberta’s French-language campus. The highlight of my time with this troupe was when we took first prize in the Festival universitaire de Picardie (Festupic) in the town of Compiègne (about 90 km northeast of Paris) for a performance of Eugène Ionesco’s absurdist classic La cantatrice chauve (The Bald Soprano).
As a grad student, I was heavily involved in both improv and traditional theatre, playing roles like Eugene Marchbanks in G.B. Shaw’s Candida and Junior in Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s Escape from Happiness. I was also active on stage during my years in Japan, both during my time as a research scholar (when I had my Japanese-language stage debut) and as an English teacher, when I was involved in the Tsukuba International Drama Festival as both a performer and a playwright.
I don’t know why I stopped acting. I guess I got busy with other stuff. Part of me still craves being on stage, which is probably why I took to spoken-word poetry in my late-thirties before COVID killed our local scene here in Edmonton. One of these days I’m sure I’ll venture back on stage.
Why This Matters to my Work Now
My acting training, particularly in my early years at Campus Saint-Jean, was rooted in so-called “method acting,” wherein the focus is on emotional authenticity and deep character immersion. This method encourages actors to connect with their characters on a personal level and to use their own personal experiences and emotions to inform their performances.
Famously, method actors will remain in character even when off stage or off camera, fully embodying the character throughout the duration of their engagement with it. Well-known exemplars of this method include Marlon Brando, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Heath Ledger—actors renowned for their extreme discipline and dedication to completely embodying their roles.
While I scarcely put myself anywhere near these titans of stage and screen, I remember spending a great deal of time exploring the psyche of the characters I portrayed, coming up with complex backstories, neuroses, and other motivations that informed my performance. I even remember my regular mode of speech being influenced by characters I was playing, particularly in French, in which my accent and idioms remained in flux for a number of years until it eventually gelled into what I speak now.
Fast forwarding to my present role as a ghostwriter, while it’s not as deep a process as method acting, I do have a process in which I “get into character” for a particular piece of writing. Sometimes that “character” is a specific person for whom I’m writing. At other times it’s a brand voice more generally, but for me the process is much the same.
How do I do this? I generally follow these seven steps:
1) Have at least one proper one-on-one conversation with the person and observe the way they speak.
2) Read as much of their writing (or at least writing attributed to them) as I can. Ideally, this includes email and other examples of personal writing as opposed to more “corporate” content.
3) Have a go at writing something short and totally unrelated to the topic in my character’s voice. This can be anything: an email explaining a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, a complaint to a plumbing contractor, or a short movie review.
4) For feedback, plug this piece of writing into ChatGPT together with something actually written by the person and ask it how I did. Hopefully it can tell me where I hit the mark, tone-wise, and where I was off-base.
5) Go for a solo coffee break, during which I imagine I’m the person I’m writing as and brainstorm bits of content that feel right.
6) Write the content.
7) Run it past the AI, checking it for consistency with the brand and character voice I’ve isolated. Massage the text accordingly.
OK, so it’s not quite the same as method acting, but there are elements of it in the process. I find myself caring about the minutiae of the person I’m writing for. It matters to me, for example, that the person was a competitive figure skater in their youth, that they play the guitar in their time off, or that they’re proud of their Croatian heritage. Even though none of these things might factor into a specific piece of writing, all these details go into the full picture of the person I attempt to synthesize as a ghostwriter.
It seems to work. That and it’s fun to do it this way.
Building Personas in Comms Work
This whole world of character building that I was immersed in my younger years also has a role to play in my work as a communications strategist, specifically when it comes to building personas for communications plans.
For those unacquainted with the concept, personas are composite characters based on certain demographic traits associated with a target audience. Personas typically will have a name, an age, a gender, an occupation, a certain family structure, preferred communications tools, possibly hobbies and interests, and likely certain vested interests, aspirations, or pet peeves. Stock photos of people are often used as well to put a face to the name and biographical details.
What does this accomplish? If I can put myself into the shoes of, say, Susan, age 42, who lives in Grande Prairie, works as an accountant, has two kids aged 12 and 10, has elderly parents living in a remote rural area, is politically preoccupied with issues around rural health care, and is active on Reddit and Instagram, it really drives the key message crafting process. That and it just makes the whole communications planning process feel more real and like it matters.
That and character building is simply fun to do. Fun and engaging and something that takes me back to my roots.
My Message to Potential Ghostwriting Clients
Hopefully nothing I’ve written here comes across as, well, creepy. I certainly don’t need to know everything about your personal life, and I’m certainly not going about my life in character as you, unlike, say, Heath Ledger, who spent the entirety of the filming of Black Knight as the Joker. But I do want to get to know something about you that can inform my writing. As for what that is, that’s entirely your call. You’re the “author” after all; I’m just the conduit.
For me, this method acting-adjacent process is part of the fun of what I do—getting to know somebody, absorbing their mode of speech and topics of interest, and inhabiting that mode for as long as it takes to write something good. If this sounds like a good approach to you, you can reach me through my website or on LinkedIn. I’d love to live your world—at least for a bit!
