This is a pretty niche topic, but I hope some of you will find it useful nevertheless. Today we’re talking about writing work instructions, that is, step-by-step explanations of how to operate, assemble, repair, or maintain something. I’ll be speaking from my own experience as someone in charge of writing instructional documents and curriculums. I’ve mostly written for other high school students, but all the advice I’ll give applies regardless of the demographics of your target audience. The following advice will probably be most useful to those just getting started, but I hope what I’ve learned will resonate with anyone who's had to see work instructions written.
Go Into Detail
This is probably the most obvious piece of advice but it’ll never stop being important. You have to make sure you have all your bases covered when it comes to clarity. Always ask yourself if you could be more specific. This is especially important when it comes to hardware or software. Don’t be vague about names or about how exactly the reader is supposed to go about their task.
Keep in mind that while you may be very familiar with some or all of what you’re writing about, not everyone will be. Think hard about what you consider to be common knowledge. Something that’d helped me a lot is to write as if you’re writing for young children. Assume your audience knows nothing. This will help ensure that your instructions are accessible to just about anyone.
One of the best ways to ensure your instructions are functional is to take someone who’s never done the task before and have them complete it using only your instructions. Have them indicate where they were confused or where they think others might be. Some may have an easier time than others, so get feedback from a range of people to increase your chances of success.
Consider all possible scenarios
Along the same lines, you have to make sure some unforeseen issue or hiccup won’t completely invalidate your instructions. I typically write about machines, and with machines there's a lot that can go wrong. Same for anything electronic. Do your research and don’t shy away from potential pitfalls. Embrace them. Talk to people who’ve been at it for longer than you have. Ask them what’s gone wrong in the past and how they fixed it. This is especially important if you yourself are new to the procedure, even if you think you understand what’s going on. Lots can go wrong, so talk to people. When it comes to software, if there’s no one to talk to, make sure you either know everything there is to know or get in touch with someone who does. Once you have an understanding of potential errors, either ensure that someone following your instructions can’t possibly run into them or include conditional information for those scenarios.
Even with lots of detail, it can be easy to look at a set of instructions conveying an ideal series of events, run through it once on your own, and think you’re good to go. I’ve made this mistake in the past, and it isn’t worth it. You need to talk both to those who have experience—to make sure you’re not missing anything—and to those who have none, to make sure everything’s making sense.
That said, keep it concise
If you’ve written much fiction or certain non-technical nonfiction, you may be inclined to include emotional beats or jokes to keep the instructions exciting. And I won’t deny that experience writing fiction prose can help you come across more persuasively. However, you’ll typically want to keep the jokes to a minimum. The last thing you want to do is confuse your reader. Once you have all your bases covered, you’re good. In and out. You want to relate to your reader on a comprehension level, but you usually don’t need to tell a story. If you’ve done your research and talked to the right people, the instructions should speak for themselves. Making it too personal can make you sound clumsy. (Of course, different topics and kinds of instructions call for different strokes. Instructions written as prose paragraphs will allow for more narrative flow than a checklist, for instance.)
You also don’t need to consider absurd scenarios. While you should think about what may go wrong and what to warn your reader about, there’s no need to account for once-in-a-lifetime errors. If there are so many legitimate ugly scenarios that they’ve taken over your instructions, it’s probably best to re-evaluate whether what you’re teaching is worth teaching. Or is the problem that you haven’t been specific enough?
The whole purpose of work instructions stems from the fact that you won’t always be there to guide newcomers through a given task. You’re doing a great thing in setting the stage for future generations to flourish. What you’re writing will (hopefully) outlast you, or at least your time in whatever position you hold. So try and do it right. And keep up the great work.