Ghostwriting by Deletion
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- —
Ghostwriting by Deletion treats the client as the source of the ideas and the writer as the person who extracts, clarifies, and scales them. Rather than attempting to invent the client’s worldview, the ghostwriter focuses each conversation on one piece and one message. The call is recorded and transcribed, creating raw material in the client’s own language. The writer then removes tangents, repetition, and irrelevant material before reorganizing what remains into a clear artifact. This distinction between ghostwriting and ghost thinking helps preserve the client’s voice while reducing the amount of original invention required from the writer.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Choose one deliverable
Limit the assignment to one tweet, thread, article, newsletter, or similarly concrete piece.
Pro tip Tell the client that the larger mission can reveal itself through repeated work.
Watch out Trying to solve the client’s entire positioning strategy in one call creates confusion.
- 2
Ask what they want to say
Use a focused conversation to elicit the client’s ideas, examples, language, and intended message.
Pro tip Keep returning the conversation to the one point the piece must communicate.
Watch out Do not assume the client is asking you to think on their behalf.
- 3
Record and transcribe
Capture the conversation and convert it into a transcript that can serve as the written source material.
Pro tip A transcript preserves phrases that naturally sound like the client.
Watch out Relying on memory can strip out the client’s distinctive wording.
- 4
Delete the noise
Remove tangents, fluff, repetition, and anything that does not support the central point.
Pro tip Think of the first editorial pass as subtraction rather than composition.
Watch out Do not polish every sentence before the irrelevant material has been removed.
- 5
Reorganize the client’s words
Arrange the remaining material into a logical structure suited to the intended platform and format.
Pro tip Retain the client’s vocabulary wherever it communicates the idea clearly.
Watch out Overwriting the material in your own style can make the result feel inauthentic.
In the wild
Cole described recording client calls, sending them for transcription, and treating the resulting transcript as raw material. Instead of recreating the discussion, he removed tangents and fluff and reorganized the client’s words around the single intended point.
→ The process became the foundation of his paid ghostwriting work.
Cole suggested that a writer could review a creator’s existing videos and extract threads, articles, LinkedIn posts, and other written assets from ideas the creator had already developed.
→ The creator gains written distribution without repeating the original thinking, while the writer offers a low-barrier service.
Common mistakes
Confusing ghostwriting with ghost thinking
Many clients already have ideas and need help clarifying and distributing them rather than replacing their thinking.
Starting with the entire life mission
An overly broad strategic conversation delays the concrete work that would reveal the direction.
Replacing the client’s voice
Writing from scratch in the ghostwriter’s style can produce work the client does not want to publish under their name.
From the transcript
“you can't steer a stationary ship”
“the the end will reveal itself for now let's just focus on what is the one thing you want to write”
“I'm not writing I'm I'm deleting”
From the episode
5 Ways To Make $1 Million As A Writer - Nicolas Cole
Nicolas Cole