Writing & MediaFree
Ghostwriting Style Guide From Client Samples
Paste the client's emails, talks or interview transcripts. Get a voice guide with their phrases, rhythms, stories and limits, quoted from their own words.
River's ghostwriting style guide creator reads a client's real words and turns them into a voice guide you can write from. Paste interview transcripts, emails, posts, talks or anything else they wrote or said. River documents how they sound: the words and phrases they reach for, the ones they never use, sentence length and rhythm, how they open and land a point, the stories they return to, their opinions, humour and formality. Every observation is backed by a quote from the samples.
Most style guide templates ask you to fill in adjectives such as conversational, confident or warm, which two writers will read in two different ways. That is how a book ends up sounding like the ghostwriter by chapter six. This guide is built from evidence. It shows the client's actual patterns with examples, lists the words that would sound wrong in their mouth, and includes a short passage rewritten from generic prose into their voice, so anyone on your team can hear the difference.
It is for ghostwriters starting a book or content program, agencies that put more than one writer on a client, and editors taking over someone else's project. Build it after the first interviews and update it as you learn more about them. Once drafting starts, the client voice match analyzer checks chapters against the same samples, and the onboarding questionnaire is a good way to gather samples in the first place.
How to capture a voice that is not yours
Voice lives in small, countable habits. How long are the client's sentences when they explain something, and how short when they make a point? Do they open with a story, a number or an opinion? Do they say "folks" or "people", "we" or "I"? Which words do they repeat, and which polished words would they never use? Collecting these from transcripts gives you a checklist to test a paragraph against, which is far more reliable than a feeling that the draft sounds roughly right.
Spoken samples matter more than written ones for most clients. People write stiffly and speak naturally, so their emails often sound less like them than a recorded conversation does. The best source is the client explaining something they care about to someone they trust. Transcripts also show what they believe, which is part of voice too: the opinions they hold firmly, the jokes they make, and the topics where they hedge. A guide that misses those produces sentences in the right rhythm saying the wrong things.
Keep the guide short enough to use. A few pages, with the most distinctive patterns first, will be read before every writing session; a long one will not. Pair each rule with a real quote and say what the voice is not, as Mailchimp's public voice guide does with lines like "weird but not inappropriate." Treat it as a living document. Add new phrases after each interview and record the edits the client makes to drafts, because those edits are the clearest evidence of how they really sound.
How it works
Paste client samples
Transcripts, emails, posts, talks or slides, pasted or attached, as many as you have.
Add the project
Optionally say what you are writing, so the guide focuses on the right register.
Get the voice guide
A document of patterns, rules and examples, every one backed by the client's own words.
Update as you go
Paste new transcripts or the client's edits in chat and River adds what they reveal.
What you get
- Signature words and phrases, each with a quote showing how the client actually uses them
- Words and constructions to avoid, the ones that would sound wrong coming from this client
- Sentence length, rhythm and structure, described with examples you can test a draft against
- Recurring stories, examples, opinions and humour, plus topics where the client hedges or stays quiet
- A before-and-after passage rewritten from generic prose into the client's own voice
- Gaps where the samples are thin, with questions to ask in the next interview
Common questions
How much material does River need to build a voice guide?
More is better, but a few thousand words of the client speaking naturally is a workable start, such as one or two interview transcripts. Written samples help, though they are often stiffer than speech. River flags patterns that rest on only one or two examples, so you know what to confirm. If the samples are thin, plan more recorded interviews in your ghostwriting proposal.
Should I show the style guide to the client?
Often, yes, especially at the start of a book. Clients enjoy seeing their own habits described, and their reaction is useful: they may reject a phrase as something they would never write, or add favourites you missed. Remove any internal notes first. River writes the guide in neutral, respectful language that is safe to share.
Can several writers use the same guide?
That is one of its main purposes. An agency with two writers on one executive, or an editor stepping in mid-project, needs a shared reference that does not depend on one person's ear. Quotes and before-and-after examples make the rules concrete enough for a new writer to apply on their first day.
Does it work for a company's brand voice too?
Yes, though it is built for a person's voice. Paste an executive's talks and posts and you get their personal voice; paste a company's best existing copy and you get a brand voice guide with the same evidence-based structure. Mixing the two in one guide tends to blur both, so keep them separate.
What if the client's written and spoken voices differ?
That is common, and the guide notes both. For a book, most clients want to sound like themselves at their best in conversation, slightly tidied, rather than like their formal emails. River marks which patterns come from speech and which from writing, so you can choose deliberately and confirm the choice with the client.
Built by
Chandler Supple
Co-founder & CEO, River
Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.
Ghostwriting Style Guide From Client Samples
Describe what you need, add any files you have, and your workspace opens with the work already underway.