Writer or Author

Writers plan and write literary or other written work for publication or performance. Writers may create original pieces of written work that can take the form of poetry, novels, short stories, biographies, plays, or film, radio and television scripts. They may also write for multimedia distribution, such as CD-ROMs and the Internet.

Writers choose themes or subjects for written work, conduct research into the subject, assemble background material and obtain other necessary data. They plan and organise material and write the work. They revise or edit the work, ensuring coherence of style, proper development of theme, plot and characterisation, and correct referencing. They need to set out their original manuscripts so that they are clear and legible, that is, either typed or word-processed, before submitting their work to a publisher.

Writers often work collaboratively with visual or performance artists and other specialists such as scriptwriters, software developers, graphic designers and illustrators, to create multimedia works.

Writers may specialise in:

fiction writing

general interest non-fiction

journalism

children’s books

educational textbook writing

historical writing and transferring oral histories into written form

speech writing

corporate or training videos

technical writing

documentation preparation

freelance editorial services

helping others to prepare their manuscripts for publication

scriptwriting or playwriting

documentary writing

humour or comedy writing

copywriting

editing text into accessible ‘plain English’ form

in writing texts for musical works.

Work may be commissioned by: a book or magazine publisher, a theatre, film or television production company, or radio or television station or network. Alternatively, work may be sold by the writers themselves or by their literary agents.

In the business environment, writers can work as communication specialists. They may design training seminars or packages, facilitate in-workplace discussions, identify problems in documentation and conduct communication audits.

Those interested in writing should consider related occupations until they are able to establish themselves as writers. These may include journalism, editing, teaching and advertising. New technologies have increased the expectation that writers will have multimedia skills and will work on personal computers, submitting their work on disk

Employment

Writers are usually self-employed or work under contract. Business writers may be employed by government departments and private businesses. Technical writers are usually employed under contract to publishers.