Every once in a while we get a few orders from agency clients. These agencies serve as intermediaries, taking a cut for finding clients and then sending them our way with prefilled forms that include instructions on what the client wants. It’s a great win-win, as we get to flex our brains by writing about myriad topics which we otherwise might not have encountered, the agency gets its share of the revenue, and the client gets top-notch content. But there’s one issue I keep bumping into that’s resulted in my being one the phone with the agency a few times: a demand to stick within a single narrative voice throughout an entire document that’s going to be used for marketing purposes.

For those of you unfamiliar with narrative voice, it’s essentially the name given to the way the point of view is written. Most commonly, this refers to first-person (I scream), second-person (you scream) and third-person (we all scream when forced to adhere to misguided requirements). The typical school of thought is that a writer should stick with one voice (especially when writing a narrative in a book), and that’s great, because if done improperly, mixing voices can lead to some awkward reads. The problem is in trying to enforce that as a be-all, end-all rule, especially in the world of marketing.

Marketing, blogging and writing for websites is a different animal from your standard storytelling. While clarity is always a priority, knowing how to creatively break rules is just as important — just ask Stephen Fry.

The kind of writing we do isn’t about sticking to certain rules, it’s about crafting effective language that makes use of all the tools in the bag to get our client’s target market to pay attention to the intended message.

This is not to say sticking within one narrative voice is bad form. I see it akin to grammar, and the whole point of grammar is to have a unified set of rules for written communication. These rules basically ensure that you don’t have to break out your “Marek’s Version of the English Language Vol. A” each time you want to read something I’ve written. There have been times when I’ve read text messages or Facebook posts that looked like they were written in code, only to find it was a failed attempt at English. Not fun.

However, to demand that an entire blog be written in third-person, or that an eBook be restricted to just first-person is plain nonsense. Mixture of narrative voice can have a powerful impact on how well a client’s blog connects to the reader, so switching it up to use “you” in a sentence full of he, she and it will make it resonate closer to home. Let me try that again. Mixture of narrative voice can have a powerful impact on how well your blog connects to your readers. Did you see that? Did the world end?

So the next time you’re ready to place an order with a writing service, keep this in mind. Placing restrictions on the writing style, especially restrictions that won’t produce any clear benefit, is unnecessary and counterproductive. Trust your writing team to get the job done by telling them the emotions you want evoked and the ultimate message to get across. You’ll be surprised at just how good the content can get.