That headline was written by a human. You can tell because it’s a complaint disguised as a selling point. Government campaigns, consumer brand content, social copy, scripts, taglines, and the kind of long brief with eleven stakeholders that most writers quietly dread. Let’s Talk.
Based in Singapore/Bangkok. Available everywhere.
I spent a year in journalism asking uncomfortable questions, then another 10 in corporate communications learning how to soften them. Now I write copy, which is basically both jobs at once, with better coffee.
I started Narrative Dept because I’ll genuinely read anything. Annual reports. Data protection guidelines. Campaign briefs for skincare launches. Semiconductor supply chain narratives. The 60-page technical deck and the 15-word Instagram caption both deserve to be good. I treat them the same way.
I write dry. I write clean. And I try hard not to use em dashes, even though they were a personality trait before A.I. copyrighted them. If your content needs to be accurate, readable, and occasionally interesting to people who didn’t ask to read it, that’s the brief I’m built for.
Words don’t just communicate. They decide whether anyone keeps reading.
More than a decade writing for organisations that had a lot to say and not always the clearest way to say it. Government agencies navigating public trust. Financial institutions trying to sound human. Consumer brands that needed to be genuinely funny, not just funny-adjacent. Tech companies explaining things most people didn’t know they needed to understand yet.
The sector doesn’t matter as much as people think. The brief does. The audience does. And the writer who can hold both at once and still produce something worth reading, that’s the job.
I work across B2B and consumer, government and brand, long-form and fifteen words. The range is the point.
Your brand has a voice. It just might not know what it sounds like yet. I build the tone, the rules, and the examples that make sure your whole team sounds like one very good writer rather than six people who’ve never met.
The tagline. The headline. Round eight. The version that’s suspiciously close to round one.
I write all of it across OOH, digital, social, in-app, email, and print without complaining about any of it. Somehow it always ends up good.
Making things that matter feel like they matter. To people who are also thinking about dinner. I’ve done this long enough to know exactly how much warmth a statutory board or government brief can handle. The answer is more than you’d think.
Nobody has ever said “I can’t wait to read this insurance copy.” That is literally the brief. I take compliance-checked, lawyer-approved content and turn it into something a human being can read without losing the will to manage their finances.
If it needs to be funny, it should be actually funny. Not brand funny. I’ve written a telco rep so committed to helping he called a customer the second she landed in Bangkok. Characters feel real enough that you forget someone paid for it.
You have 1.5 seconds before they scroll to something more interesting. Statistically, it’s a dog video. I write for that reality. Every word is doing something or it’s gone. Every platform, every market, every brief that starts with “we want something that feels organic.”
Freelance doesn’t mean whoever shouts loudest gets served first. I treat every client like a retainer because the quality of the work is what gets me called back, and getting called back is everything to me. You’ll always know where your project stands and it will always get the attention it deserves.
Journalist. Corporate communications manager. PR agency writer. Consumer. Human with eyes and a functioning opinion. I’ve sat on every side of the table this industry has and I bring all of it to the brief. That’s not a CV flex, it’s just genuinely useful when you need someone who understands why the client wants one thing, the agency wants another, and the audience wants something neither of them considered.
I get it right early, yes. But more importantly, I don’t dramatically sigh when round six arrives. I understand that approvals are the reality of certain businesses and that some sign-offs require three people who’ve never met agreeing on a comma. The back and forth is part of the job. What bothers me more is bad copy that sailed through because everyone was too tired to do another round.
I respect the SOPs. I work within them. But if you want an honest opinion on why something is taking twice as long as it should, or where the brief could be sharper, or why round six happened at all, I’ll tell you. Transparently, constructively, and only because making your business work better makes mine work better too.
Most of it is under NDA, some of it is living on billboards, and a few pieces are government documents that somebody actually read.
Here’s what I can show you.
Most of my work lives behind NDAs.
If you want to see something specific, just ask. I’ll share what I can.
Whether you have a brief ready or just a vague sense that your copy could be better, get in touch. I’m good at figuring out what’s needed.
tish@narrativedept.com
Singapore/Bangkok | Available for remote projects
