I recently came across an old article in my Google Drive called “The Best Mattresses for Sex” and, oddly enough, had no memory of writing it. That probably says quite a lot about the early years of my freelance career. That was when I took on a huge amount of work, often across subjects that had very little in common, and some assignments were more bizarre than others.
Over the years, I have written about more subjects than I can probably remember, including sports, gambling, astronomy and space exploration, business, technology, travel, and some fairly niche topics along the way. I have worked on different formats too, including YouTube video scripts and white papers. Although I’ve become more selective about the articles and projects I take on, the work is still a mixed bag. I still enjoy the variety, but there is no ignoring the fact that every subject needs a slightly different approach. So, in this article, I want to cover how I approach different subjects in my work as a freelance writer.
Writing outside my usual subjects
My rule of thumb is that I need enough knowledge to understand what I am writing about before I can confidently say that I can cover it well. I should also understand the subject well enough to judge the sources I am using and notice when a claim doesn’t sound right.
When it comes to sports betting and gambling, I am already very experienced. I know the terminology and understand how betting and casino games work, so I can spend more time on the actual angle of the piece. That knowledge took time to develop, though, with plenty of practice and repetition. There was also a point when I didn’t even know what a moneyline was or what RTP referred to. All that is to say, you have to put in the work to reach the point where those things become second nature.
For other subjects, it really varies, and my personal interests play a part in how much research I need. Subjects like space tend to require more work because scientific claims can lose important details or become inaccurate when they are simplified too far. Business and technology can call for a decent amount of reading too, depending on how technical the subject is and how familiar I already am with it.
Writing outside your usual area of expertise is normal for a freelance copywriter because it’s part of the job. Taking on a subject you barely understand is much harder to justify, though. If something is completely outside my comprehension, I think it is better left alone.
Research before drafting
Before I start drafting, I want to know what the most reliable sources actually say about the topic I’m handling. That means finding the facts that genuinely belong in the article instead of collecting enough material from here and there to fill 1,000 words.
Reliable sources like official websites, research papers, company documents, interviews, published statistics, and direct statements usually give me a firmer base than an article that is already summarising someone else’s work (sometimes poorly).
If a claim looks suspicious or fits the angle a little too conveniently, I usually check it against another source. A statistic can be correct and still give the wrong impression if an important date is missing or the comparison is weak.
Say a survey found that 60% of people preferred one option, but it turns out only 20 people took part. The figure is still correct, but it can sound far more convincing if that detail is left out. So before I build a paragraph around a number, I want to know where it came from and what it actually shows.
Experience has made me better at recognising which details are worth following up on and which ones will only send me down a needless rabbit hole. That alone has saved me a lot of unnecessary reading and quite a few wasted afternoons.
Changing how I write for the subject
Good research can still lead to a badly written article if the writing doesn’t suit the person reading it. A big part of avoiding that is adjusting how much explanation I give depending on the subject and the format I’m working in.
A YouTube script, for instance, has to sound natural when somebody reads it out loud, whereas sports writing can move faster because readers often know the basic terms already. Technical subjects usually need more explanation, especially when leaving something out could make the information harder to understand. With space articles, I spend more time translating complicated science into simpler language without changing the meaning of the original source or, worse still, accidentally inventing a scientific discovery of my own.
Client voice changes the job too because some pieces call for a relaxed first-person style, and others need a more formal voice. I try to sound natural either way without making the writing unnecessarily academic just because I know the subject well, because to me that can start to sound a little pretentious.
Earlier in my career, I was more concerned with getting all the information into the draft. Now, I am much more willing to cut material that does not help the reader, even if I spent time researching it.
I was doing this before AI
I had already been freelancing for years before AI decided to join the writing industry. Back then, research meant searching for sources myself, reading through them properly, comparing what I found, and working out the structure from my own notes. AI has made that process faster in plenty of ways, including helping me organise messy notes and speed up parts of the research.
I still handle most of the final work myself because, among other reasons, AI often seems to have a mind of its own when writing for me, especially when it falls back on predictable wording or patterns I wouldn’t normally use. The final judgment stays with me, as does the proofreading, because I like to go through the finished piece myself and know I’m happy with the final result. Call me a micromanager, but that part I prefer to handle myself.
What years of subject-hopping taught me
Juggling different subjects has made me quicker at working out what I need to learn before I start writing. After many years of doing this, I am better at weeding out weak sources and judging when a subject needs more research before I start the draft.
This job has also turned me into a bit of a sceptic, especially when I see the same fact repeated across dozens of websites but struggle to trace it back to the original source. I have learned not to be impressed by technical wording alone either, because understanding a subject often depends on knowing which information is genuinely worth including and which can be left out.
That forsaken mattress article still makes me laugh, and I think it works as a pretty good reminder of how much my approach has developed since then. I might handle the assignment a little differently now, but writing across so many subjects has taught me where my own knowledge ends and when I need to learn more before I start writing.