When Freelance Pros Are Asked For Advice
Over on our forum, a professional freelance writer is asking for help. She’s been asked to evaluate a paper by a student who is a friend of a relative. The paper apparently is awful, and she wants to tell the truth without devastating the student.
So far the discussion is tending toward telling the student the awful truth, but there are several different approaches. What would you do? How would you do it? And, if youre a brand new writer, what would you want to hear?
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POSTED IN: Ask Anne, the Pro Writer
1 opinion for When Freelance Pros Are Asked For Advice
jcollins
Dec 15, 2006 at 3:01 pm
Where to draw the line, that is the question. I’d first ask myself, “Do I want to get involved with this at all? What is to be gained?” If I still think it’s a good idea to proceed, then I’d:
1) list as many good things as I could about the piece–what the student did RIGHT (e.g., “Your use of present tense was very consistent.”)
2) for every TWO good things I found, I’d offer a brief opinion about ONE thing that was done WRONG, phrasing it in as positive a way as possible (e.g., “You could improve your sentences by starting them with other words besides ‘like.’”)
This approach limits the shock to the student and, most important, limits my time expended. Remember, you’re not going to teach the student how to write in one critique. If he/she learns only one thing, that will suffice.
–”Ming The Merciless”
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