DETAILED OCCUPATION DATA
27-3043 Writers and Authors
Occupational Description:
Originate and prepare written material, such as scripts, stories, advertisements, and other material. Excludes "News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists" (27-3023), "Public Relations Specialists" (27-3031), and "Technical Writers" (27-3042).| Percentiles | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Geography | Employment | Emp SE* | Mean | Mean SE* | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
| Minnesota | 860 | 94 | $31.62/hr | $0.85/hr | $16.56/hr | $23.33/hr | $30.19/hr | $39.43/hr | $47.89/hr |
| U S | 45,860 | 917 | $35.88/hr | $0.50/hr | $16.35/hr | $22.65/hr | $30.70/hr | $42.31/hr | $59.48/hr |
| *SE = Standard error, a measure of the statistical reliability of the estimate. | |||||||||
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Tasks for Writers and Authors
- Writes words to fit musical compositions, including lyrics for operas, musical plays, and choral works.
- Writes narrative, dramatic, lyric, or other types of poetry for publication.
- Chooses subject matter and suitable form to express personal feeling and experience or ideas or to narrate story or event.
- Adapts text to accommodate musical requirements of composer and singer.
- Writes fiction or nonfiction prose work, such as short story, novel, biography, article, descriptive or critical analysis, or essay.
- Develops factors, such as theme, plot, characterization, psychological analysis, historical environment, action, and dialogue, to create material.
- Reviews, submits for approval, and revises written material to meet personal standards and satisfy needs of client, publisher, director, or producer.
- Confers with client, publisher, or producer to discuss development changes or revisions.
- Collaborates with other writers on specific projects.
- Conducts research to obtain factual information and authentic detail, utilizing sources such as newspaper accounts, diaries, and interviews.
- Selects subject or theme for writing project based on personal interest and writing specialty, or assignment from publisher, client, producer, or director.
- Organizes material for project, plans arrangement or outline, and writes synopsis.
- Writes play or script for moving pictures or television, based on original ideas or adapted from fictional, historical, or narrative sources.
- Writes humorous material for publication or performance, such as comedy routines, gags, comedy shows, or scripts for entertainers.
- Writes captions to describe music and background noises.
- Discusses captions with directors or producers of movie and television productions.
- Oversees encoding of captions to master tape of television production.
- Watches production and reviews captions simultaneously to determine which caption phrases require editing.
- Enters commands to synchronize captions with dialogue and place on the screen.
- Operates computerized captioning system for movies or television productions for hearing-impaired and foreign language speaking viewers.
- Edits translations for correctness of grammar, punctuation, and clarity of expression.
- Translates foreign language dialogue into English language captions or English dialogue into foreign language captions.
- Writes advertising copy for use by publication or broadcast media and revises copy according to supervisor's instructions.
- Reviews advertising trends, consumer surveys, and other data regarding marketing of goods and services to formulate approach.
- Writes articles, bulletins, sales letters, speeches, and other related informative and promotional material.
- Prepares advertising copy, using computer.
- Obtains additional background and current development information through research and interview.
- Consults with sales media and marketing representatives to obtain information on product or service and discuss style and length of advertising copy.
