Method Acting on the Page: Channeling Voice & Emotion in a Ghostwritten Book | Robert Plank Show

Richard Lowe (The Writing King) returns to the Robert Plank Show for a conversation about the actual craft of capturing a person on the page. He explains why he thinks of ghostwriting as method acting, how he decides what emotion each chapter should leave a reader with, what separates a good book from a bland one, and why the collaborative interview process produces a book in the author’s true voice. Along the way he tells the stories that anchor his work: the grandfather whose war he uncovered at 17, the woman whose 2,000 pages of handwritten dreams became a novel, and the early client whose book helped raise $30 million.

The Robert Plank Show is hosted by Robert Plank, a former programmer and longtime online entrepreneur who interviews people from many walks of life.

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written 113+ books under his own name and ghostwritten 54+ more for clients.

Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

Robert Plank: We’re here with returned guest Richard Lowe, who helps businesses and individuals craft books that highlight their expertise, establish credibility, and share compelling narratives. Richard has authored and published 113+ books, including Kindle bestsellers, ghostwritten 54+ more, and written hundreds of articles. Richard, what’s your current focus and passion?

The Three Silos: Leaders, Coaches, and Memoirs

Richard: My focus is ghostwriting books for people. I talk to C-levels, directors, and VPs who want to show themselves as leaders, that’s one thrust. The second is coaches who want to brand their coaching business. The third is people who want to write a memoir, and those turn out to be really fun, because I get to meet people with interesting, quirky experiences.

Robert: It sounds spooky, it’s not even Halloween, but what’s a ghostwriter?

What a Ghostwriter Actually Is

Richard: I’m almost literally a ghost, I’m behind the scenes. The reader generally doesn’t know there’s a ghostwriter. My name’s not on the cover, sometimes it’s in the acknowledgments, very rarely I get to use them as a testimonial. What I do is channel their energy, their emotions, their life into written words. I write it as if I were them. There’s a little acting in it. Method acting would be the right term.

Robert: That’s reassuring, because the fear is, well, the ghostwriter won’t sound like me. So there are different flavors of ghostwriting?

Book in a Box vs the Collaborative Method

Richard: Two basic processes. One is the book written for you, the “book in a box” format, no relation to any company by that name, just the method I’m describing. You come, the book’s done. Useful if you want a book really quickly and you’re not picky about whether it’s your authentic voice. There’s a set price, a marketing package, publishing. But look at the contract: say it’s $20,000 or $30,000 for a book, with all those things included. How much is actually for the ghostwriter? Maybe $5,000, and you’re not getting a good one. They parcel it out to various people, and you wind up with different voices.

The method I use is much more collaborative. I start with a series of interviews that, for a longer book, can last a month at an hour a day, going through your life, your point of view, who your audience is, why they want the book, who you are, what your goals are. My goal is to create your book the way you want it, that meets your goals and is ideal for your audience, not my book.

The Socratic Method and Why Questions Matter

Richard: It’s about 50 questions, and I use the Socratic method, asking a lot and listening a lot. When I’m done, I know who your market is, who you are, why you’re writing the book, and what the outline looks like. Questions set the content on fire, one planned question leads to an on-the-spot question that leads to another, and that’s where the unexpected magic comes from.

Robert: What makes a good book versus a bad one? What gets you angry about a bad book?

What Makes a Good Book

Richard: A good book has a solid start that grabs the reader by the throat and pulls them in. They have to read it now. That’s the hook. The first paragraph, the first page, the introduction, the book jacket, the cover, these are vital, because they carry the reader into the book. Then you carry them through with ups and downs, fiction and nonfiction alike, and you want them to feel emotion as they read. A bad book is boring and bland, or not well researched, or, the big sin now, you can tell it’s written partially or wholly by AI. There’s no emotion in AI.

The Emotion at the End of Every Chapter

Richard: One of the things I do for each chapter is ask: what emotion do you want this person to feel at the end of it? If it’s a political book starting a cause, maybe you want them angry at the end. If it’s about a technology, maybe contented that they’re on the right path. When people talk, their intonation goes up and down, the boring ones talk flat like robots, and the exciting ones have voices that rise and fall. That’s exactly what you want from a book, that emotional connection. Because I work collaboratively, I’m looking for the heart of the book, your heart, your soul, your spirit, and putting it in. People don’t care about the bits and bytes. They want the stories: how did this guy become a billionaire, who did he meet on the way, who were the enemies.

Robert: I’ve never heard it put this way, asking what you want them to feel at the end of each chapter. We’ve all tried to have ChatGPT give us emotion, and it really tries to imitate, but it doesn’t make the mark.

Why AI-Written Books Fall Flat

Richard: AI will crank out the boring books, all information, no emotion, because AI isn’t a person. If someone’s excited about their blockchain project, I want to capture that technical passion, make it understandable without a specialized degree, and tell the stories behind it. The facts and figures don’t stick. We won’t remember what’s on page 54 or what bullet point five was. We’ll remember the emotions and the stories. That’s what makes the lasting impact.

Robert: What’s the timeline once someone says, let me give this a shot?

The Process and the Math

Richard: First we meet and negotiate an agreement. Then, depending on the length, a week to a month of interviews. Once we’ve reached a “done,” meaning I’ve gone through all the questions and know what I need, we go month to month. I write the outline, send it, you approve it, I write a rough draft, you say you missed the mark here, we get on Zoom and talk it over, and we go back and forth until the chapter is a good solid first draft. Then the next, and the next.

I generally write 500 words a day per book per weekday. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s 2,500 a week and 10,000 a month, so a 60,000-word book is about six months, plus a month of analysis, call it eight months with holidays and vacations built in. A 100,000-word book runs about a year, a 20 to 30,000-word book closer to a month or two. And I’m writing four to six books at a time, because it’s only 500 words a day each. I write 500 words, go do something not related to the computer, come back and write more. Now, sometimes a client interviews once and says, fine, go, and I write the whole book from that one hour because all they wanted was a good book, not to pour their heart into it. I can do that too, but it’s not the preferred method.

Robert: Do you have a cool story about someone you’ve ghostwritten for?

The Grandfather: A First Project at 17

Richard: Several. My very first ghostwriting project, I was only 17 and not a writer yet. I wanted to know my grandfather, who was unapproachable, so I asked questions and wrote from his journals and interviews. It was never published, but I found out he was a war hero, and it opened my eyes to the power of writing about a life that, without the story, nobody would have known or cared about. That’s the heart of the craft. Then I had to make a living, so I set writing aside, apart from technical manuals, until I left Trader Joe’s about 13 years ago.

Doris and the 2,000 Pages of Dreams

Richard: One client handed me boxes of handwritten notes, over 2,000 pages, things she’d written down as soon as she woke up. They were her dreams. She said, turn all of this into a novel. She didn’t just want a book, she wanted the emotions she was feeling, with a story wrapped around them, and she wasn’t sure what the story was. So I worked with her to weave a novel called Gators in the Soup, magical gators wandering a magical place called Florida, full of creatures and adventures. When I gave her the book, she said, this is the same experience I’d when I held my daughter in my hands for the first time. Tears came to my eyes. They still do.

The $30 Million Book

Richard: One of my very first professionally ghostwritten books, eight to ten years ago, was for a foreign client who didn’t speak English well. He took the book and used it to get the attention of his CEO, who wound up writing the foreword. He got a promotion from it, got onto technical boards, got the book into libraries, and raised $30 million in venture capital because he used it as his credibility. My name isn’t on that book, nobody will ever know I was part of it, but I know, and I helped him achieve his dream. That’s my real purpose, more than the money: helping people change their lives, because that’s what a book will do.

Why Write a Book at All

Richard: The question people ask is, why should I write a book, what will it do for me? A book has the potential to change your life. Instead of buying that car or that fancy gadget, get a book created, or if you can’t afford it, start doing it yourself. Then base all your marketing around it: blogs, articles, scripts for podcasts. I’ve had clients land TED talks and get on the speaking circuit, and a keynote is $5,000 to $10,000 a speech, do five or six a year and that’s real money. Every coach should write a book, because it differentiates you from everybody else. Why wouldn’t you?

Robert: Before I let you go, a fun or helpful lesson that’s served you in life or business?

Just Do It

Richard: If you’ve got a big dream or a goal, you can sit on it thinking I’ll do it tomorrow, I’ll wait till I have the money, I’ll wait till the time is right. I could come up with a million excuses. Put them aside and just go do it. I wasn’t even a writer when I left Trader Joe’s, and I became a pretty good one making a pretty good living, because I decided I was going to. There are always ups and downs, you brush yourself off, learn what you can, and move on. We’re not here forever. Make sure you’ve got enough buffer to back up and start again if you have to, but sometimes it’s best to jump into the deep end and just do it. That’s what I did, and it worked out really well.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Quotable moments

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a ghostwriter capture someone else’s voice?

Richard treats it as a kind of method acting. Through about a month of Socratic-method interviews, he learns the person’s life, point of view, audience, and goals, then writes as if he were them, channeling their energy and emotion onto the page. The collaborative back-and-forth on each chapter is what ensures the finished book sounds like the author, not the ghostwriter.

What makes a good book versus a bad one?

A good book opens with a hook that grabs the reader on the first page, then carries them through deliberate emotional ups and downs. Richard designs each chapter around the specific emotion he wants the reader to feel at its end. A bad book is bland and flat, poorly researched, or obviously AI-written, full of information but empty of the emotion and stories that make a reader care and remember.

What’s the difference between “book in a box” and a collaborative ghostwriter?

A book-in-a-box service delivers a finished book fast at a set price with publishing and marketing bundled in, but the writing is often parceled out to whoever’s cheapest, so the voice drifts and only a fraction of the fee reaches the actual writer. A collaborative ghostwriter starts with deep interviews and works chapter by chapter with the author, producing a book in the author’s authentic voice that meets their specific goals.

How long does a ghostwritten book take?

Richard writes about 500 words a day per book, roughly 10,000 words a month. A 60,000-word book runs about eight months including the interview phase and a buffer for holidays; a 100,000-word book about a year; a 20 to 30,000-word book a month or two. Because the daily quota per book is modest, he writes four to six books at once.