Client Briefs: Speedos or Surf Shorts?

When you take a writing job what kind of briefs do you get from your clients? I believe that there are three main kinds:

The Speedo brief

Like their namesake, Speedo client briefs are skimpy — very short on detail. The client sketches a broad outline of what is needed and expects you to fill in the blanks. The problem with this kind of brief is that what you deliver is unlikely to match what the client needs or expects, especially if it’s the first time you are working with that client. After all, you may be an expert writer, but you’re not a mind reader.

Generally, clients who provide Speedo briefs only fully realize what they want when they don’t get it. That means that as writers, we can spend a lot of time revising work in order to deliver with the requirements of the hidden brief.

One way to avoid Speedo briefs is to have a client questionnaire which your clients fill out and to ask lots of questions to clarify the details before you start work.

The surf shorts brief

At the opposite end of the scale are what I call the surf shorts briefs. This is where the client provides a lot of information — way too much for you to sift through.

Clients who provide this kind of brief may be intensely finicky about every detail and can be difficult to work with, as they may not recognize your expertise as a writer. In these cases the client becomes a micromanager, making the writer into a paid serf who dots Is and crosses Ts.

Again, the client questionnaire can be a key tool in helping to identify what the client thinks is really important. To deal with this kind of brief, sketch out a structure based on what you understand as the main issues to be covered and get the client to approve it before you start work.

The middle ground?

For me the ideal client of brief falls somewhere between the brevity of the Speedo and of the voluminousness of the surf shorts. I know I’m stretching the analogy, but let’s call them boxers. Boxer briefs provide enough coverage of the essentials while still leaving something to the imagination — your imagination. For writers, it can’t get much better than that.

What are your thoughts on how clients can help you to do a better job for them?

(Photo credit: ziggiau)