How to co-write with experts

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Co-writing content is always a challenge. You have double the goals, vision, and feelings. (Let’s be honest, most of us get attached to our writing.)

Writing with a subject matter expert (SME) can be even more difficult. You’re likely working on content that’s highly technical. You can’t be the ultimate authority, nor do you necessarily have even a basic grasp of the concept.

The typical way to write with an expert is to spend an hour taking notes while they explain the details, and then bang your head against the wall for two days trying to translate your notes into something resembling your version of English. Then, you send it to them for approval, and after another two days of haggling over revisions, no one’s happy but your content is published.

If that doesn’t sound like your idea of the perfect work week, here’s another way to approach the problem!

Book an entire day with your SME, and actually do some co-writing!

To prepare:

  1. When you book the time, define your expectations and goals for the day.
  2. Reassure your expert that they don’t have to be a writer! You’re not expecting them to break out their best Hemingway impression.

On the day:

  1. Get coffee; you’ll need it!
  2. Do a structured brain dump. Start to cluster ideas as you discuss the high-level concept.
  3. Clarify key terms and industry-specific definitions. For example, “juice” might refer to signals for an SEO, and not be a weird segue to a discussion about the kid-friendly drink. And if you’re “in the doghouse”, you might not be in someone’s bad books. If the expert is in the oil industry, you might actually be in a building on a rig.
  4. Define the flow of the content. Where are those ideas all going to fit? If you’re struggling to get on the same page here, try white-boarding it.
  5. Write everything down! One of you should always be taking long form notes. They don’t need to be perfect, and you can always scrap some of the content later. The point is to get sentences on paper.
  6. Be encouraging and give positive feedback. (Obviously.)

After you have a draft together, you really have one job: be open to feedback. There are generally two reasons to be writing with an SME. Either they have crucial information that needs to be imparted to a less technical audience, or the audience is also specialized and interested in an SME’s point of view. If you’re co-writing for the latter reason, you should be prepared for the possibility that your expert has a deeper understanding of how the audience will consume the material.

Send the draft your co-writer with the understanding that they might have a stronger connection to the audience than you. If they make revisions, try to edit only for clarity. Obviously, you should correct any major departures from your brand tone of voice, but try not to over-edit. You’ll have a better relationship with your SME if you trust them, and act as their partner.

A few months ago, I co-wrote a piece for Green Brick Labs with one of the developers: Adventures in Asynchronous PhP. It took us a few hours to brain dump all the information that should be included and plan a structure for the post. It also took that long for me to get even a basic grasp of the concepts. Things went a little awry when I took the project away to solo-write. He told me that I was oversimplifying the material. Because we were writing for developers, my style wasn’t going to fit. What can I say, asynchronous paradigms just aren’t my cup of tea! The dev ended up putting pen to paper, using our structure and my sentences as a base. The result is truly co-written, and took less than a day!

I definitely haven’t been able to perfect the process, but over time, I’ve found this to be the path of least resistance and best results. Do you have a better way of approaching the problem? Let me know!