Writing Fiction & Writing Copy

In the advertising world, the stereotype about copywriters is that they’re failed writers. I don’t know if this is true. The copywriters I’ve met are certainly not failures by any means, and I personally never wanted to write novels. Obviously, you have to have an interest and a passion for writing if you want to be a copywriter, but there are some big differences between the techniques for copywriting and writing fiction.

When you write creatively you usually do it for yourself. You might think about your audience to make sure your writing is clear, but you don’t worry about your word choice as much. When you’re writing copy for an ad, you represent a client, a product. And you can’t write for yourself if you want to be successful. You can write for your client if you want to please them, but in the end, it’s more important to write for your audience. I’ve started noticing when something could have a different meaning to another person. We all associate words with different images. Images from our memories, books we’ve read, movies we’ve seen, things we’ve written ourselves, so word choice is much more critical when you’re writing for an ad than when you’re writing a poem. For instance, “scat” definitely does not conjure up the same things for me as it does for say . . . Dale and Tony.

This week brought about some helpful lessons in (cheesy as it sounds) believing in yourself. Excuse me while I vomit. First of all, when you give something to someone, you should always be prepared to say something about it, even if it’s basically repeating what’s in front of them. Otherwise it’s like letting a PowerPoint speak for itself. Awkward. I’m months into this internship, and I still struggle with putting myself out there. The people at this agency are probably some of the most accepting, supporting people in the business, and yet it’s still hard to put my ideas out there for them to judge. Heidi and Veronique gave me a great pep talk on taking risks. The people that take risks and put both bad and good ideas on the table are the ones who are respected in this industry. Everyone has been in my place. The place where everyone you work with has more experience than you, but the more experience you get putting yourself out there, the easier it will get.