You are the author, but you are not the story

You’re an invisible guide, not a wisecracking narrator

I dated a photographer once. When we were together, her camera proved the record of everything we did. She shot candid portraits with the skill of a marksman and everyone loved seeing themselves in her photos. And yet, she was never in any of the shots. This is the curse of the camera operator.

It’s no different for writers. Unless you’re writing a bushy memoir (and even then), you are not the story, you are merely its author. A great story is like a river and it must flow unimpeded by the boulders of ego, and untainted by the brine of narcissism.

Get yourself outta there.

Though you may labor for days over a line of dialogue in a script, or a tagline in an advert, or a label in a user experience, normies reading your work will never notice the effort, nor should they. Next time a friend asks you if you read “such and such” article, see if they remember the author’s name. They won’t. A writer is mostly a vessel and seldom the star.

So why should anyone choose this thankless path? Because you care about telling great stories. 

In UX writing your duty is to guide users through an experience. You create signposts to wend folks through confusion. You educate when things are tricky. You offer encouragement when things get tough. Yes, in a sense, you’re “talking to” the user, but really you’re writing a story where they are the protagonist; critically, the user shouldn’t notice “you” at all. You may write the story, but the story isn’t you. You live outside the frame.

Yesyesyes, you do control the frame. The writer can choose which concepts to focus on and which are thrust into background. You influence the order and arrangement of ideas. You choose what to leave out. It’s Important Work.

Sad Clippy by V. Sri

But everything you write is a suggestion. You merely guide the user; they do whatever they want. The user has their own life, their own goal, their own view of reality that you don’t have access to. You will never know what the user truly wants, and no, your UX research team doesn’t know either.

Dieter Rams said the best design “is as little design as possible.” The goal of content design is to help the user do whatever they need to live out their story, nothing more. Your goal is not to gain their approval. It’s not to appear clever. And it’s certainly not to be noticed as “good writing.”

The reason people hated Microsoft’s Clippy isn’t because it tried to help, it’s because it brought too much attention upon itself.

Focus your user experience on the user. Center them in the story, and leave your agenda out of it.

Your peers might occasionally notice your craft, but done right, a user will never notice your work at all. The curse of the camera operator is that of the writer too.