BACKGROUND
This project was for a client in the independent food media space. The goal was to give incoming freelance writers a practical guide to the publication's voice that would reduce the revision cycles caused by writers defaulting to their own register rather than the publication's.
I built the guide around the specific pitfalls that appear most consistently in first drafts from writers new to the publication, including the adjective problem, positive-only reviewing, and the PR register that writers who do brand work often struggle to shake. Rather than listing rules, the guide works through five calibrated writing exercises and a self-edit checklist designed to be completed before submission, with a worked annotated example showing exactly what the voice looks like sentence by sentence and why each decision was made.
The result was a guide that respected the incoming writer's ability while giving them the specific direction needed to write for this publication rather than any publication, including a voice identification exercise with a correct answer and a full rationale for why each of the wrong options failed.
