Just Write, It’ll Be Okay! (No, It Won’t – Writers for Hire Need a Brief)
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I think I’m safe enough making a general statement here: most writers would love to be in a position to simply write what they want when they want. Unfortunately, having to earn a living that lifts you above the poverty line often means writers either work a non-writing job or offer their services to write things that under normal circumstances they wouldn’t give two hoots about. Non-writing jobs result in equal parts financial independence and resentment but being a writer for hire can just as often be a minefield. There are lots of reasons for this but there’s one that has stood out for me in several writing requests and that’s being asked to write something but not being provided with a brief.
It won’t come as a shock to anyone with even a small amount of common sense but professional writers aren’t mind readers. We don’t have some sort of sixth sense that allows us to automatically know what needs to be written. So when we’re asked to write something that we aren’t specialists in or aren’t particularly interested in, we need instructions that comprise more than just one sentence.
Anyone with an interest in a positive outcome on both sides of this writing equation will understand. After all, writing is a job like any other. Would we ask a plumber to plumb but not let on which appliance needs attention? Would we ask a doctor to treat us but withhold a description of the symptoms? I suppose we could but it would be just as pointless as asking a writer to write without providing a brief.
On all of the occasions on which I’ve been asked to write something and not provided with a brief, even after requesting one, the results have been just okay. And it’s hardly surprising given how difficult it is to write well when you have no idea if you’re heading in the right writing direction.
But there’s something else that each of these experiences have had in common and that was the almost sociopathic nature of the person requesting the writing. Since I’m not a sociopath, I don’t understand the motivation of deliberately hiring someone in order to see them fail or at least not do the best they can do. But I can see now in retrospect that’s exactly the kind of people they were.
If you’re a writer for hire or thinking about offering your services as one, you should insist on a brief for any piece of writing you are asked to write and these are the things that should be included:
*The intended audience – a writer needs to know whether what they’re writing is for teenagers, CEOs, mothers, current clients, potential clients or even a general audience in order to either tailor a piece of writing or ensure it isn’t tailored in a way that will alienate one or several demographics.
*The purpose – a writer needs to know what the piece of writing is intended to achieve; it might be sales, it might be a demonstration of leadership, it might be a demonstration of knowledge but each will result in a different piece of writing.
*The topic – usually this is a given but it needs to be reasonably specific, reasonably detailed; after all, being asked to write about meat is very different to being asked to write about how to make polish sausages.
*The key points – I’m sure the process for making polish sausages is relatively simple once you know it but unless the writer for hire is also a sausage expert – and this is going to be reasonably unlikely – then the basics will need to be outlined. (At this point, it might sound like the person hiring the writer could have just written the piece themselves but the whole point is that they can’t – or at least that they can’t do it well. They might, however, have the knowledge the writer needs and part of the writing process may be conducting an informal interview in order to get it out of them.)
*The preferred writing style – the intended audience may partially dictate the preferred writing style but sometimes a client wants a corporate or conversational or academic tone that isn’t necessarily associated with the expected readers or the proposed topic, which is why it needs to be explicit.
*The length – not only does the required length of the piece of writing allow you to estimate your investment of time and quote your fee, it also prevents you from wasting your time by writing too much or embarrassing yourself by writing too little.
If any person attempting to hire a writer doesn’t know or refuses to provide the answers to all these questions, then either they aren’t ready to hire a writer or they’re one of those aforementioned sociopaths looking to waste your time and make themselves feel better by making you feel bad. Neither is the kind of client a writer for hire wants or needs.
A long time ago when I worked as an admin assistant for an accounting firm, I remember the partners talking about how they had clients who took up an inordinate amount of time but provided few financial rewards and how they had chosen not to provide accounting services to those clients anymore. I can’t imagine it’s a comfortable conversation for the about-to-be-former clients, being dumped by your accountant, but there’s a lesson to be learned from the choices those accountants made. Regardless of the industry you work in, whether it’s accounting or writing or something else entirely, everyone has the right to choose the clients they work with. And although the financial imperative sometimes makes writers think we have to take on every client who asks for our services, it’s in our best interests to vet them first, especially if it saves us from the heartbreak of working with a sociopath.
