Most briefs list a keyword, a word count and a few headings, which is exactly the information a writer can satisfy while still producing something interchangeable with every competitor. The failure is not writer skill, it is that the brief contains no information the writer could not have guessed. A brief works when it carries facts, constraints and a point of view that only your organisation has. Anything a competent freelancer could invent from the SERP alone is not worth briefing.
brief-that-survives-a-writer.md
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name: brief-that-survives-a-writer
description: Use when you are commissioning a page and cannot personally rewrite it if the draft comes back generic.
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# Write a Brief That Survives a Writer
Most briefs list a keyword, a word count and a few headings, which is exactly the information a writer can satisfy while still producing something interchangeable with every competitor. The failure is not writer skill, it is that the brief contains no information the writer could not have guessed. A brief works when it carries facts, constraints and a point of view that only your organisation has. Anything a competent freelancer could invent from the SERP alone is not worth briefing.
## What you need first
- the top 10 results for the target query, read not skimmed
- at least one internal source of proprietary fact - support tickets, sales calls, product data
- the specific decision the reader is trying to make
- existing pages on your site covering adjacent ground
## Method
1. Name the reader's decision in one sentence, not their "intent". "Choosing between a fixed and variable rate" briefs better than "informational intent".
2. Read the ranking pages and write down the three claims they all repeat. Mark these as required-but-not-differentiating, so the writer covers them briefly instead of spending the article there.
3. Supply three facts nobody else on page one has - a number from your own data, a quote from a named practitioner, a screenshot of the actual process. Without this the draft has no reason to outrank anything.
4. Specify the format the SERP already rewards - if eight of ten results are step lists, a discursive essay will not win no matter how good it is. Note this explicitly so the writer does not fight it.
5. Set exclusions as hard rules: no definitions of terms the reader obviously knows, no history section, no "in today's fast-paced world" opening. Writers pad because briefs are silent on padding.
6. List the internal pages that must be linked from this draft and the anchor text you want, so linking is a writing task rather than an editing task done later or never.
## What this produces
A one-page brief containing proprietary facts, format constraints and named exclusions that a writer can execute without a second conversation.
## Where this goes wrong
- Briefing a word count instead of a scope - writers hit the number with filler, and the number is not a ranking factor
- Listing secondary keywords as a checklist, which produces paragraphs written to house a phrase rather than to answer anything
- Skipping the proprietary facts because gathering them is slow, which guarantees a draft that is merely adequate
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From the QuQi skill library - https://www.quqi.io/skills/brief-that-survives-a-writer
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A one-page brief containing proprietary facts, format constraints and named exclusions that a writer can execute without a second conversation.