Writing is a job. Freelance writers know this all too well. Even then, as with all creative professions, you can’t help but take it a little personally.
Sometimes it’s hard to divorce your personal preferences and natural writing style from the requirements of the job. You begin to resent restrictions upon your creative liberty. You scoff at your editor’s inability to appreciate a good metaphor. You resist, with all your might, using the phrase “pop of color” for the billionth time, only to relent once you’ve missed your deadline and realized there is absolutely no reason why 500 words about this summer’s orange lip trend should cause so much agony.
This is why account managers, editors, and number crunchers exist: they might be the buzzkills of the creative spirit, but they also keep writers from choking on the fumes of their own delusion.
In most cases, the separation between my creative style and the job brief is a no-brainer. I wouldn’t go on inappropriate tangents in a brochure about Japanese printing rollers. Nor would I personify my eyelashes and give them the ability of speech in a blog post for a beauty site, the way I would in my personal blog.
In other cases, the lines are more blurred than Robin Thicke’s latest album. Within these murky waters lies the cover story.
Cover Stories Mean Business, Yo
Thanks to a number of connections, I’ve been hired to write a few cover stories for women’s magazines. The cover story is part of the big sell of the magazine. Though the cover photo and full editorial shoot take center stage, the cover story adds context that the visual spread cannot. Why this girl? Why now? Existing fans of the cover girl in question will buy a copy of the magazine even if the story is written entirely in Klingon (or worse, jejemon). But for those unfamiliar with or generally uninterested in the cover girl…why should they care enough to buy a copy of the magazine? The cover story answers this question — or should.
Seems pretty straightforward so far, so where does the murkiness come in? After all, the cover story seems like the one magazine piece in which you can flex the most creative muscle. You’re granted several pages more than the average feature in which to flesh out your ideas. The story follows a nonfiction narrative structure, where other articles are informational or personal essays. Your subject has lived a life worth, well, covering — surely something in her will spark your imagination and set your pen alight with words, glorious words.
In reality, the cover story is as much a business decision as it is a writing piece. Your job is not to write the story of your dreams — it’s to write the story that fits the magazine’s strategy and checks all the boxes. Flatter your subject. Mention the sponsors, if any. Promote what she’s promoting, if any. Keep to the word count. Don’t piss off advertisers with a major stake in the issue. Be edgy enough to hook the audience, but bland enough to appeal to the widest possible market. Yet, at the same time, it must read like a flight of fantasy: a bit of sugar spun magic, as ephemeral as the cover girl appears in her picture, turning illusions into reality.
Reality Check
Here’s the first lesson I learned as a fledgling writer for hire: you aren’t hired because your words are so special that a baby unicorn dies if they do not grace the publication’s pages. Nor are you hired because your stories move statues to tears. You are hired because you are deemed capable of doing the job they are asking you to do.
This is the reality of a no-name writer. Susan Orlean can refuse to write a cover story on Macaulay Culkin, and instead write a cover story on a regular 10-year old boy for GQ, because she’s Susan Orlean. Her writing is a brand in itself. A cover story on a half-drunk latte written by Susan Orlean would be a coup.
When you’re a well-known writer, or even a personality commissioned to write something, you can afford to inject more of your personal opinions and style in your piece. That’s what they’re paying you for. But when you’re a no-name writer like yours truly, your job is to make your cover girl look good with all the tools at your disposal. It’s the written equivalent of Photoshop, with Blur, Sharpen, and Smudge as your closest companions.
That said, here are the consideration I make before every cover story.
1. Consider the magazine
Is it conservative or adventurous? Is the preferred tone aspirational or intimate? What does the magazine’s ideal woman look like? Act like? You can tell this by studying their past covers (though you should probably read a couple cover stories as well). How do the women pose? How are they styled? They say don’t judge a book blah blah blah, but in this case, judge away. Everyone else does.
The magazines I’ve written for tend to be beautiful yet editorially conservative. Just imagine everything bathed in warm light, glowing amidst soft-focus filters. If an actress stumbles into the shoot drunk then pukes into a bag of makeup brushes, you’ll never hear about it (this never happened). If I end up spending the night at an actor’s house as a result of interviewing him for a story, you won’t hear about that either (this never happened either, and never will. Sadly.)
As you might be able to tell, my natural style is not conservative. Or beautiful. Adapting my writing style to suit the magazine can be a ball-ache at times, but I reconcile this by choosing angles that work with softball questions. More on that later.
2. Consider your subject.
How well known are they? If I say their name, do your eyes light up or do you smile politely and wait for me to explain why you should give a damn? Are they scandal-free or controversy magnets? Prior to the interview, research the hell out of your subjects to the best of your ability. I’ve gotten 1-2 days’ notice prior to interviews, though average is 3-4.
If I don’t have a lot of time, I’ll make a call on what I need to know before the interview and what I can fill in after. Recent news as well as TV appearances, social media mentions, and their own social media accounts are a good way to get a lot of information in a condensed amount of time. I can stream their telenovelas afterwards, ideally with a beer in hand to numb the pain.
Who your cover girl is — and what information you’re able to dig up on her – determines the angle you choose to write about.
3. Consider your angle
In a nutshell, the angle is the focus of your story. It’s the theme that all your other sections work to enforce. When you pitch editors, you don’t pitch a topic, you pitch the angle you’ll use to write about it (but that’s a subject for another article).
The rule I’ve been following is, the more well known the cover girl is, the narrower my focus. Vogue’s cover story word count is around 3000 words, so its writers can afford a little tour of duty, even for the big name actresses it covers. With 1500 words or even 800 words on hand, you really have to pick what you’re going to write about.
Not to mention that in the Philippines, the pool of cover-worthy celebrities is somewhat tiny. I recently wrote about an actress who has been on a cover every month this year. Is anything I write abut her going to be particularly illuminating? No. That’s what can be frustrating about cover stories – no writer wants to feel like they are regurgitating words. But you can strategize to make your story stand out. In this actresses’ case, I attempted to capture a “snapshot” of her by getting her opinion on issues close to her heart. A sliver of time cut deep.
A celebrity who is not as well known, or is up and coming, presents her own challenges. How can you portray them so that people not only know where she comes from, but actually want to know where she’s going next? It helps if your subject is naturally interesting, but this won’t always be the case.
What if I don’t like her, or she has a negative reputation?
Is your name Ronan Farrow and did you recently interview Miley Cyrus for Vogue? No? Then suxxors for you! Some magazines might let you add some grit to your story, especially if it makes the story a stronger sell. Clever writers can build a story on the angle of “hating” a celebrity, as Petra Magno did for Preview’s June issue with Ellen Adarna. But this requires a good relationship with the editor, a magazine willing to take the risk, and confident writing.
Besides, you don’t have to like someone to write a good story. If you had to like everyone you wrote about, you’d have a very long autobiography and very short career. A little tension can make for better writing. When I say can, I mean always.
4. Consider your questions
For my first story, I interviewed the actress while she was getting her makeup done, meaning she had no choice but to sit through my questions. Since then, my interviews have all been cut short due to lack of time. I’ve raced through questions in the back of a moving van, timing them against rush hour traffic while trying not to hurl in her lap. I’ve had 16 questions culled down to 6 when another actress had just 10 minutes to sit for an interview. For a cover story, I find this terrifying. For occasions like this, it helps if you mark your questions by priority before the interview.
I try to mix up easy questions with longer questions, but they all tend to be softballs. Soft focus filter, remember? You also have to adapt on the fly — if she’s unwilling to engage on longer questions, start incorporating simpler questions into the interview. If she picks up on a particular topic and runs with it, run with her — but not so far that you lose track of the interview.
I honestly have no clue whether this is the right way to go about things – as mentioned, I stumbled into writing cover stories by the fortune of association. What these considerations help me with, primarily, is to frame the cover story in the right context: as a story with a specific purpose, not just a puff piece that gets shot out into the ether. And yes, I’m aware that the celebrity cover story is not going to change the world or earn a Pulitzer (lol), but am I getting paid to do either of those things? No. Even Peter Parker had to punch out before he saving New York City.
What It Really Means to be a Writer for Hire
As a writer for hire, you cannot make yourself the star of the piece. I don’t mean “star” as in the subject — obviously, no one is checking for our asses in a cover story. By star, I refer to your writing voice. Everything that makes your stories special, everything you are free to explore on a blank page — on your own time.
As a writer for hire, you cannot deploy an array of linguistic acrobatics just to prove you can. You have to place importance on details you otherwise wouldn’t: her heels when she walked into the studio, the plate of whatever she nibbled, the joke she cracked when she was getting her makeup done. You must talk up her beauty and recount her actions with the glossy sheen of magazine hyperbole. Your language must be simplified; long sentences truncated into easy to consume pieces. You may even have to put your personal feelings about your subject aside. Your voice and your craft must be used solely to make another person the brightest star in the sky.
As a writer for hire, the story you would love to write is not the story that should be written. If you cannot imagine writing anything but your own stories, then don’t be a writer for hire. Simple as that. Nurture your own stories and pour into them all the love and creativity and heart that they deserve. There’s no shame in either option – each carries the boons and banes of having made a choice of what kind of writer you want to be.
As a writer for hire, you have one mission: get the story you were hired for and deliver, no matter what.
