I don’t want to be a copywriter.

Who would? It’s a terrible title. Uninspiring and, I’ve come to believe, limiting.

Copywriter: A writer of copy. It just sounds mechanical and formulaic. How can you be original when you’re writing copy? Copywriter: “Just add words.” I’ve actually been told to do this by a client. Not only is it terrible marketing, it’s demoralizing, too.

Certainly there’s something better…

The Heights of Design

I’ve been studying graphic designers for a month now. At the top of their form, designers are a fascinating lot. Very creative, astute businesspeople. Driven iconoclasts. Independent, confident and social artists. At its best and fullest, design isn’t about filling space on a page, it’s about creating an experience, shaping culture and making life more interesting.

Design stretches from the graphic design in advertising into product design, architecture, interior design, interactive and experience design, brand identity and art. At these higher levels, designers are capable of great, meaningful and lasting work. And it’s interesting that the higher you climb up the design tree, the more important the idea. Put another way, the difference between a master designer and a novice designer is more about vision and taste than technical skill.

Which makes me wonder…

Do writers have equivalent aspirations?

I hadn’t thought about it in these terms before.

A copywriter can become a Creative Director and advance up the corporate ladder, even venturing into brand identity and product design. Talented copywriters are often great strategists; in fact, some of my best work as a “copywriter” has been in brand identity and marketing strategy.

Writers can also pursue art — writing plays or poems or novels. Writers can be entertainers, be it as screenwriters or satirists or storytellers in a variety of media. Another option is education: journalists, pundits, scholars or explainers. These are the obvious career paths.

Maybe there are others.

Designers manipulate our senses. Mostly sight, but also sound, smell, touch and taste. Writers manipulate story. Whether real or fictional, writers organize people and events to create compelling narratives. This could be Moby Dick or the copy in the mailer for a special weight loss shake. Moby Dick certainly requires greater skill, but the fundamental action is the same: Coming up with a story and writing it down. However, perhaps it’s time for writers to liberate themselves from the written word and apply their skills to real people and real events.

I’m a Story Designer.

I can write your story, but how I sequence the words is only one part of my talent. The other part, the greater part, is how I shape your story. How I take the random and overwhelming jumble that is real life and whittle it down into a taut narrative that not only makes sense but produces meaning and emotion, even change.

I do this in my fiction and screenwriting. But I also do it in my “copywriting”. I help clients shape their stories, but with marketing strategy and brand identity, even product design and experience design, the storytelling comes to life. Instead of writing with words, I’m writing with real people and real events. This can create meaning and emotion for both the employees and their customers as well as change in the bottom line.

Of course, we don’t have to stop at the corporate level. A writer’s story skills can benefit humanity, too. We can create meaning and emotion and change at the community level, even globally. This is what tribe-building is all about. Tribes are more than just groups of people with similar interests sharing links and chatting about select topics. Tribes are about narrative, movement, change, growth and meaning. It’s story design writ large.

Maybe our identity as writers is distracting us from telling greater stories?

I’m not sure, but I do know this: Don’t get too hung up on the words. The higher you go as a writer, the more important the story and the less important the words. After all, the greatest stories we tell — our marriages, our children, our careers — don’t really have words at all.