Contrary to what many believe, being a writer is actually a profession that pays well and is also one that can make for a good career. In fact, it is also a highly rewarding profession personally as the fact that being a writer involves playing with words to create something that didn’t exist before gives a person an unparalleled sense of satisfaction. Personally, I have been writing for as long as I can remember and I have been writing professionally for a decade now. Having written hundreds of thousands of words, I can say with conviction about how satisfied one feels after taking up writing as a profession.

As far as misconceptions about writing as a profession are concerned, I believe the world can be divided into two categories - the ones who think ‘writing’ is all about penning novels and stories and the ones who think ‘writing’ is just ‘content writing’. In the decade of writing professionally, I have taken up jobs and projects as varied as words itself.

With that, here’s a list of career paths you can take if you wish to take up writing as a profession.

Script writing aka screenwriting

Script writing or screenwriting as it is called, involves writing script/screenplay for videos, films, ad-films and more. Considering how most of the content online now-a-days is video based, there is a growing demand for good screenwriters; especially considering how most viewers are also choosing to opt for web-series and other online forms of entertainment. While this is not the easiest form of writing owing to the high level of creativity and imagination that it needs, it can be highly lucrative and rewarding.

Copywriting/Content Writing

Copywriting is one of the easiest ways of getting into writing as a profession as almost every business needs promotional content to be written. With growing social media usage, the demand for good copywriters is growing at a geometric rate. If you’re good at playing with words to come up with catchy statements, then this is the profession for you. Content writing is similar to copywriting but content writing specifically involves writing engaging content on websites to ensure the target audience likes coming back to the website as opposed to copywriting, whose purpose is to attract potential audience.

Technical Writing

Technical writing involves writing about a particular subject/topic requiring direction or explanation for an end user. This includes writing manuals, instruction booklets, summaries, reports and more. The key to technical writing is to interpret the information from the readers’ perspective and write it in a manner that enables the reader to easily understand what is being spoken about. 

Editing

While this profession usually requires one to have worked as a writer for a considerable amount of time, being an editor or a subeditor at a media house is a lucrative profession. Editing requires a high level of language expertise and it also requires knowledge of the target audience as editors usually are the ones who edit the writer’s content to ensure it stays in tune with the target audience. 

Reporting

Being a reporter at a media house is one of the most challenging jobs that a writer can take up but it can also be a highly rewarding one as reporters are the ones who bring truth out in addition to telling stories of individuals and activities that aren’t told. If one works as a reporter at a media house, he/she will get to try different forms of writing and learn nuances of storytelling, enabling them to take up any other form of writing.

If you want to kickstart your career in writing, apply for our Campus Reporter program.