The Lucille E. Hein Papers document over three decades of her career as a freelance non-fiction writer. The files document Hein's creative process, from the initial proposal through the finished product, as well as her professional relationship with her employers. Although her experiences were probably representative of freelance writers generally, Hein is unusual, for few women at the time had successful freelance careers in non-fiction.

Lucille Hein's files have been organized alphabetically by employer. For her books, the arrangement is by publisher; for magazines and professional writings, the arrangement is either by magazine or professional organization.

For the larger projects, the files are divided into: correspondence; the proposal and/or outline; the first draft, if it differed substantially from the finished book; the printed copy of the book or, if that was unavailable, the final draft; and promotional material, newspaper or magazine reviews, and letters received by Hein about the book. For the smaller projects, including magazine articles and professional writing assignments, only the correspondence and the printed article or the final draft, if the article was unavailable, have been retained.

The correspondence with publishers or magazines is generally routine, covering such topics as story ideas, editorial suggestions on drafts, and payment schedules. One strength of the collection is the unusually complete documentation Hein kept about the time she spent on a particular assignment. Most of the correspondence is with publishers or magazines that had accepted her work, although on occasion there is correspondence with organizations from whom she had received rejections. Some research correspondence is also included.

There are few concrete outlines or specific proposals in the collection; instead many of Hein's proposals were presented in letter form and were developed over the course of several exchanges. Few book drafts have been retained in the collection because in most cases, the printed book was markedly similar to the first draft. Final drafts have been retained, however, in those cases where printed copies were not included in the collection or (in the case of some articles) when the story never appeared in print. With the exception of a few books that Hein edited, almost all of the printed books are in the collection.

The promotional material here is not extensive. Hein's books were sometimes reviewed by local papers, both in Wisconsin and on Manhattan Island, but these reviews were generally short. In some cases, Hein received letters commenting on the book from friends and acquaintances and these too are included in the collection.

Hein's books and articles focus mainly on religion, family life, education, nature, the arts, and literature, and she wrote mainly for and about children and families. There is also a distinctly religious (and specifically Lutheran) bent to almost all of Hein's writing, and many of the magazines to which she contributed were religious publications. Frequent subjects were topics such as Lutheran colleges, the military chaplaincy, the American Bible Society, and religion at the New York World's Fair. She also wrote several articles based on interviews with author Lois Lenski and musician Roger Williams. There are also some articles regarding Madison, Wisconsin topics, including articles on Dr. Charles A. Puls, the pastor of Luther Memorial Church in the 1940s and 1950s, and on the Trinity Lutheran Church library. Surprisingly, although she worked exclusively for the Camp Fire Girls for several years, there is comparatively little here about her association with that organization.