A new ghostwriting test: the tonal appetizers menu

I’m in the trail stages of a serious nonfiction ghostwriting project right now. It’s a great project; I really want to do it.

The author has asked for the impossible. He wants writing that’s captivating and compelling, but the source material, while excellent, isn’t very sexy.

I could keep trying to rewrite things until something hits the spot. But rewriting a whole chapter multiple times is an awful lot of work when I don’t really know where the dart is supposed to land.

The tonal appetizers menu

There are a dozen ways to make text more compelling. They include dramatizing case study stories, finding clever tones of phrase, and challenging the reader with counterintuitive ways of writing. (Just to be clear, they do not include using repeated exclamation points — that’s pretty clearly not the right answer for this project.)

So I decided to create a tonal appetizers menu.

I put together 9 alternative chapter titles and subtitles, all representing different approaches. The chapter subtitles give me the flexibility to try even more approaches. Some are clearly not right, but I’d rather not judge; I want the client and his trusted reviewers to choose.

I also put together 6 one-paragraph chapter openers. Each is compelling, but they’re all unique.

Now I’ve asked the client and his reviewers to comment on their favorites, one from column A and one from column B. I’ll get a lot of information from their feedback and interactions to all the possible alternatives.

And there’s a subtle message here, too. It’s that I’m in command of a whole lot of ways to use prose to accomplish the goal, so I’m a good choice for this challenging project.

And I only had to write 812 words to create this little menu of appetizers — about 18% of the words that will be in the whole chapter once it’s complete.

I’ll take the next steps with confidence

Once I have the feedback, I’ll know what direction to take the whole chapter, and the whole book.

When you’re starting on a long voyage, it helps to determine the right direction to take your first steps.