Category: Writing Systems

Practical frameworks and processes for writers who want to work with more clarity, consistency, and less resistance.

What a Good Brief Actually Contains

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A writing brief is a direct instruction to a writer. Its job is to give the writer everything they need to produce the right piece — the right subject, the right angle, the right audience, the right length, the right register — without giving them so much that the instruction becomes noise.

This sounds simple. In practice, most briefs fail at one end or the other. They are either too thin — a title, a word count, and a vague gesture towards the topic — or too long, padded with boilerplate that says nothing specific about this piece. The writer is left either guessing or sifting.

The brief that actually helps is something else: a document that is short enough to read in two minutes and specific enough to answer every practical question before the writing begins.

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What I Do Before I Write a Word

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Before you write a word, there is a set of decisions that will determine whether the writing goes well or poorly. Not the writing itself — the thinking that precedes it. Most writers skip this stage, or compress it into a few minutes of vague intention, and then wonder why the draft stalls, repeats itself, or arrives somewhere other than where it was supposed to go.

This framework applies to purposeful writing — pieces with a defined brief, audience, and destination. Exploratory writing is a different practice, and a different conversation.

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The Editing Passes I Use Before a Draft Is Done

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Editing a draft is not a single act. Most writers who struggle with revision treat it as one — they read through what they have written, change things as they notice them, and declare the piece done when they run out of things to change. The result is a draft that is tidier than it was, but not necessarily better.

The problem is that different editing tasks require different kinds of attention. Structural problems are invisible when you are looking for word-level errors. Tonal inconsistencies are hard to hear when you are checking facts. Trying to do everything in a single pass means doing nothing particularly well.

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