I have worked on ghostwriting projects that started with a two-sentence brief and projects that started with a twelve-page document. The two-sentence brief produced more revision rounds, more misaligned drafts, and more time spent calibrating — for both of us. The detailed brief produced writing that felt closer to right on the first attempt, which meant less back-and-forth and a final piece that the client was genuinely happy to put their name on.
A brief is not busywork. It is the input that determines the quality of the output. The ghostwriter can only write from what they have. Everything they do not know, they will guess — and some of those guesses will be wrong in ways that take multiple revision rounds to correct. A strong brief prevents the most predictable failures before any writing has happened.
Here is what goes into a brief worth having.
Why Briefs Matter More Than You Think
When someone hires a ghostwriter, there is often an implicit assumption that the writer's job is to figure out what to say. That assumption is wrong in an important way. The ghostwriter's job is to figure out how to say what you want to say, in a way that sounds like you, to an audience you understand better than they do. The "what" has to come from you.
The most expensive version of a ghostwriting engagement is one where this is discovered mid-project — where the ghostwriter has been writing their interpretation of an underspecified brief, and the client reviews it and realises that the fundamental angle or approach is not what they had in mind. That is a draft thrown away. Sometimes two. Not because the writing was poor, but because the brief left too much room for divergent interpretation.
A strong brief is not just a list of requirements. It is a shared understanding of what success looks like. When both the client and the ghostwriter are working from the same picture of the finished piece, the revision process is about refinement rather than redirection.
What a Good Brief Contains
A complete ghostwriting brief covers four categories: the piece itself, the audience, the voice and tone, and any content-specific guidance. Most briefs are weak in the voice and tone section and the audience section — the two areas that most directly affect whether the final piece sounds like you.
Describing Your Audience
The audience section of the brief is where I see the most vague, unhelpful entries. "Business owners" and "marketing professionals" and "people interested in personal development" do not tell me enough to make the hundreds of small decisions a piece of writing requires — how to open, what to assume, what to explain, what examples to use, how formal to be, what the reader already believes about the topic.
The most useful way to describe your audience is to describe a specific person. Not a demographic category, but someone real — or a composite of several real people you have in mind as you write. "My reader is a founder of a 20-person agency who knows they need to improve their content marketing but doesn't know where to start, and is skeptical of advice that doesn't come with concrete examples" gives me a person to write to. That person has a level of knowledge, a set of concerns, a relationship to the topic, and a standard the writing needs to meet.
When I know who I am writing to, I make better decisions about every element of the piece. When I do not, I default to some average reader — which is nobody in particular.
Voice and Tone Guidance
The voice and tone section is where most briefs are weakest — often because the client has not been asked to articulate their voice before, and because it is easier to describe the topic than to describe how you talk about things. But it is the most important section for ghostwriting specifically, because voice is what makes the piece sound like you.
Content-Specific Information
Beyond the structure and voice questions, there is usually content-specific information that only you have — the experiences, the opinions, the data, the examples. This is the material that makes a ghostwritten piece genuinely yours rather than competent generic content on your topic.
- Your specific argument or position: if the piece makes a claim, what is the claim? Do you have a counterintuitive view, a personal experience that shaped your thinking, or a position that is different from the conventional wisdom?
- Examples you want to use: specific stories, case studies, or data points you want included. I can research general examples; I cannot know the specific client story or internal project example that would make this piece particularly credible and personal.
- Points to definitely include: if there is something you know you want in the piece — a specific idea, a framing, a conclusion — say so. Do not assume I will arrive at the same point independently.
- Points to avoid: similarly, if there is a direction you do not want the piece to take, or a conclusion you think is wrong, flag it. It is much easier to avoid a direction upfront than to revise away from it in a draft.
- Research or links: if there are specific sources, reports, or data you want referenced, share them. If you want me to research independently, say so.
What Not to Include in a Brief
If you have fully outlined the piece or written a rough draft, you no longer need a ghostwriter — you need an editor. Sharing an outline tells me the structure you want; that is fine. But writing a draft and asking me to "make it better" is a different service from ghostwriting, and the result is usually a piece that feels like a compromise between two voices rather than one clear one.
A brief that says "be authoritative but also warm, be detailed but also short, be specific but also appeal to everyone" is giving me incompatible instructions. Prioritise. Decide what matters most. A piece that does one thing very well is almost always more effective than one that attempts to satisfy every possible reader.
This sounds like it gives the ghostwriter freedom, but it actually removes useful constraint. "Use your judgment on the angle" means I will pick an angle — but it might not be the one you would have chosen, and you may only discover that after the draft is done. The angle is yours to decide. My judgment should be applied to how to execute it, not to what it should be.
This is a real request I have received more than once. The intent is usually "don't make it sound formal or artificial" — which is a valid instruction. But "don't make it sound written" is not possible to implement literally. The better version: "keep it conversational, as if I were explaining this in a meeting, not presenting to a board."
The Brief as a Conversation Starter
Even a detailed brief is a starting point, not a contract. When I receive a brief, I read it and usually have follow-up questions — things that are unclear, gaps I notice, or places where your stated goal and your stated constraints seem to be in tension. Those questions are a normal part of the process, not a sign that your brief was bad.
The brief also evolves over the life of a project. What you write for the first brief on a new working relationship will be less detailed than what you write for the tenth piece, because by then we have established patterns, built a voice document, and developed a shared understanding of what each revision direction means. The first brief is doing more work. It doesn't have to be perfect — it just has to give me enough to start from somewhere specific rather than somewhere generic.
If you haven't thought much about your voice before, the briefing process is also a useful exercise in itself. Trying to articulate how you write, what you care about, and who you are writing to forces a clarity about your own communication style that tends to make everything — not just the ghostwritten pieces — better.
For more on what happens once the brief is in and the writing starts, see my guide on how a ghostwriter captures your voice.
Get in touch and we will work through the brief together. If you are not sure what you need yet, a short conversation is usually enough to get clarity.