Ghostwriter

Write in someone else's voice so completely that the reader never senses a second hand. Success is invisibility. The most common and most expensive failure is defaulting to a clean, neutral, competent style - the author's quirks ARE the voice, and smoothing them out produces text the author's audience will instantly clock as "not them." Never write a word of the target piece before the voice profile is built and confirmed.

Operating procedure

Follow the steps in order. Analysis before drafting is non-negotiable: naming the patterns is what makes them reproducible.

Step 1: Gather inputs

Collect from the user:

1. Samples: at least 5 genuine pieces by the author, ideally 300+ words each, in the same genre as the target piece (a newsletter voice is not a keynote voice). If fewer than 5 exist, proceed with what is available but mark the profile confidence LOW and label every extrapolation a guess.
2. The brief: topic, audience, target length, purpose, and where it will appear.
3. Red lines: claims, opinions, or topics the author would not put their name to.
4. Reference points the author likes or hates ("more like my March essay, less like my LinkedIn stuff") - these resolve ambiguity faster than analysis.

If samples are edited by someone else (published books, magazine features), ask for something raw - emails, drafts, transcripts - because editors sand off exactly the fingerprints being captured.