Whether you earned your degree in creative writing, attended residencies and workshops, got your works published, or have a career in copywriting, you know you’ve successfully reached what the world calls a “writer”. It’s a core part of who you are, and you worked damn hard to be good at it.

Now imagine you get a job at a gaming studio as their lead writer. You’ll be working on a Cyberpunk game, and you’re the one in charge of creating the story. Sounds like a dream, right?

Ahead of your first day, the studio emails you a list of what they expect you to be responsible for.

Your eyelids spring wide. That’s a lot, you think. And even though you’re a writer, a good one, you can’t help but feel intimidated looking at the list:

1. Create interesting and complex characters
2. Create an original a map of locations that fit into a Cyberpunk world
3. Create branching storylines for every character, illustrating how their relationships change throughout
4. Create descriptions of everything in the entire game, including the UI
5. Create dialogue for every character
6. Create an entirely original Cyberpunk world, including its intricate history and probable future
7. Create factions and groups with different political, economic, and social nuances/purposes
8. Work closely with developers to come up with reasons why certain mechanics and UI exist
9. Work closely with game designers to create exciting and dangerous quests that affect the main character’s leveling arc
10. Work closely with artists to implement consistent narrative-based visual effects and styles
11. Create marketing texts
12. Create website copy
13. Create discord and blog posts
14. Create the studio’s language style guide for future writers who join the team

Most writers would tear their hair out trying to accomplish all these tasks to an expert degree, because many of them require the skillset of a narrative designer. Test yourself really quick: can you pinpoint which ones?

… If you chose 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, you’re right on the money. 

When it comes to creative projects, the term “writer” seems to always equal “every task involved with the story” — but many of us aren’t quite prepared for that.

Knowing the difference between the narrative designer and writer skillsets could help you better understand your own creativity. (Read to the end for a fun quiz!)

Let’s start with describing what a Narrative Designer does. Imagine a house: narrative design is the house’s construction and layout. Where the bathroom is, how big the living room is, if there’s central air or floor heating, if the windows are circular or square, if it’s mid-century or Victorian, if there’s mold, golden faucets, or a haunted basement — all of this affects how someone will experience the house.

Let’s say this house appears in the Cyberpunk game mentioned before. The narrative designer wants to create a room that feels oppressive and scary. The art director suggests lining the walls with maggoty portraits, but the narrative designer knows that paintings have long since been replaced by AI holograms. The lead game designer might say that there needs to be a combat encounter in the room, so the narrative designer needs to figure out how to make it happen without break the narrative flow (maybe there’s a fight involving a sentient AI hologram who wants a real body). A writer might ask if another character, a love interest, could play a part in what happens in the room, and the narrative designer needs to evaluate whether introducing that character’s branching storyline here would work or not.

Narrative designers are able to keep the big picture in mind. This creates narrative continuity and flow. They’ve honed their organizational skills, critical thinking skills, and the ability to invent unique worlds and story ideas that fit into the scope of any project — whether it’s a game, a novel, or a film. Narrative designers have learned how to see the forest for the trees.

Now let’s talk a bit about the writer’s role in this hypothetical Cyberpunk game. When the narrative designer has finished setting up the room, a writer will be able to describe with immersive and evocative words what the characters are experiencing in it. (“Damn it,” Mary grunts as she enters a graffitied room pulsating with blue light — the product of an AI system, still active, and possibly hostile. She lifts her laser rifle. “Couldn’t just send a drone, could they?”) A writer’s skillset brings the narrative design to life with inner thoughts, dialogue, and descriptions. A narrative designer decides what, and a writer decides how.

On the surface, the two skillsets seem deceptively similar, which is why they’re often melded into one job on creative projects: the “writer”. 

“Narrative designers construct and decorate the house; writers create the moment-to-moment story of the characters living inside it.”

Narrative design doesn’t just exist in the gaming industry. It’s not just a job title, but a set of specific skills that are needed to make any creative project work well.

In filmmaking, people tend to think the director is the one who creates the overall vision of the project, but they’re in charge of just one piece of the puzzle — the way in which a viewer is presented a story. It’s the narrative design that everything is informed by: editing, set design, costumes, writing, lighting, and so on. A screenwriter and director may work together to create the narrative, and a lot of times it works out because one or the other has developed some skills in narrative design. More often than not, however, movies end up being jumbled, boring, or immersion-breaking.

An infamous example is the hit TV show Game of Thrones. Everything about the world, setting, and narrative had already been created by George R.R. Martin. The writers and directors of GoT had it much easier: they could let their creative muscles flex inside an already intricately-built world. They had a narrative map to follow. But as soon as they reached the edges of the map and into uncharted narrative territory, what did they deliver? The wandering, illogical final seasons that disappointed millions.

George R.R. Martin is an example of a writer whose skills lean more towards narrative design. In my opinion, his writing isn’t on the level of Hemmingway’s or Atwood’s — and that’s ok! Fantasy books like Game of Thrones are often the biggest victims of this phenomenon simply because it takes incredible narrative acumen to build a believable and interesting world from scratch. And if you’ve spent all your time developing your narrative skills, your writing isn’t going to be quite up to par. Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code and Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park are two examples of narratively brilliant books with fairly bland, matter-of-fact writing. Just imagine if they’d leveled up their writing skillset to the same degree. Jurassic Park in the style of Margaret Atwood, anyone?

Table-top roleplaying is another type of creative project that experiences these pitfalls. Table-top roleplaying games (TTRPGs for short) are extremely narrative-based. Not only do you have to build believable and interesting worlds, but you have to balance them with the game itself — a set of complex rules. Players dive into a world first-hand, exploring things according to their will and often testing the boundaries of what’s possible, so near-perfect narrative design is essential to maintaining immersion. Most TTRPGs are created by Game Masters (those who guide the players through the game), which means the worldbuilding is amazing, but the writing in their guidebooks often leaves something to be desired.

From a more personal perspective, I want to talk about myself as a writer. I’ve been working on a historical novel for the last 10 years. It’s been through multiple iterations — growing denser and more complicated every year — and now it’s in a place that finally feels right.

The reason it’s taking me so long to finish is because I had mainly leveled up my writing skillset, not my narrative design skillset. I had no idea these two skillsets even existed. I thought I had to do everything myself at every step of the process. I was expected by my professors, mentors, and fellow writers to know plot, environmental storytelling, pace, structure, and worldbuilding, as if writing a story innately teaches you these skills.

“In a way, my professors and mentors left out the most important information I needed to be truly successful: that writing stories requires two separate skillsets.”

With a lot of failures and constant self-critique, I picked up enough narrative design skills to get by. I was able to publish a couple of short stories and a dozen poems, but when it came to writing a novel I felt truly deserved to be published… It was a whole different *ahem* story.

It was when I met my now-partner Tom that I realized how insufficient my writing lessons had been. I’d not been told about narrative design at all. I hadn’t learned that there’s a whole spectrum of creative skills, and knowing where you fall on that spectrum could help make your projects more successful. If I’d known at the start of my career that plotting and storyboarding were my weaknesses and that I needed to practice and study those separately from just sitting at my computer and writing whatever I felt like, maybe I’d have published a novel by now.

Let’s use a short story I wrote last year as an example of this. It was October, and I was in the mood to write something spooky involving cats. That’s all I’d figured out. After a few brainstorming sessions with Tom, I had the entire story from beginning to end laid out before me in juicy, exciting beats. I knew exactly what worldbuilding elements to add and which to leave out. I knew the twists. I knew what I wanted my readers to feel while reading. Everything was there, and if a scene felt a bit off, I’d just ask Tom how to fix it, and he’d offer solutions I never would have thought of, because I didn’t have the same skillset.

I wrote a 6,000-word story in three weeks with this “cheat code” of narrative design help. A few weeks after that, I got it published.

Tom’s narrative design advice made me realize that I wasn’t the problem. My unfinished or unsatisfactory projects weren’t because of my lack of talent at writing, but because there was an extra step of the creative process that had been missing. A vital step.

On the spectrum of narrative design and writing, I definitely lean heavily towards the writing end. That’s where my skillset lies, and that’s what I feel more comfortable with. That doesn’t mean that I can’t do both. Let me repeat: You can be both a writer and narrative designer, you just need to recognize which skillset you’re more of an expert in and ask for help if you need it.

Some creative projects, for instance, may require a writing level that’s not super high. Video games like Path of Exile 2 require much heavier narrative design skill, and if the characters in the world are written just “okay”, no one really cares. The world is what players expect to be high quality. On the other hand, if you’re working on a character-driven film, a lower level of narrative design skill might be absolutely fine. It’s the characters’ intense dialogue that matters most (such as the film Marriage Story.)

The most important thing I want you to take away is this: it’s ok to be a great writer and crappy narrative designer, or vice versa. It doesn’t mean you’re a failure, or that you should just stick to one or the other. You just need to understand what kind of skillset you’re better at. I think a lot of writers, especially novelists, don’t realize that they’re not struggling because they suck, they’re struggling because they’re expected to be experts in two separate skillsets. A lot of narrative designers struggle with feelings of inadequacy because they’re so often expected to be amazing writers too, and so they don’t try to publish their work, or hesitate to ever call themselves a writer.

I hope I’ve illustrated the differences of each skillset enough, but if you’d like more in-depth explanations, check out the Game Developers Conference’s playlist of writing and narrative talks. These are real creatives offering insights into how they do what they do, and how they approach storytelling.

Now for the fun part — a quiz to help you find out which side of the creative spectrum you naturally lean towards. Are you more of a narrative designer or a writer? After you read your results, think about developing your skills in the opposite area, or maybe just date someone with those skills (lol kinda). Enjoy!

*Quiz*

Which of these books inspires your creativity the most?
a) The Lord of the Rings trilogy
b) The Old Man and the Sea
c) A Handmaid’s Tale

What do you imagine first when you have a new story idea?
a) The setting
b) The characters
c) A specific scene

What do you struggle with the most when creating stories?
a) I have tons of amazing story ideas that I can’t seem to express in words
b) I start writing easily, but partway through I lose steam and feel lost in the plot
c) I can outline and write down stories just fine, but it never quite feels good enough

Would you rather…?
a) Invent the traditions and ambitions of an ancient cult of necromancers
b) Write the dialogue and thoughts of two characters investigating a murder scene
c) Describe the general vibe of a mysterious bar where time seems to vanish

How do you write dialogue?
a) I think about what information needs to be expressed and have a character express it
b) I imagine a character’s feelings and personality and their dialogue comes out intuitively
c) I think about why a character is speaking, how they’re speaking, and to whom

What descriptive style seems most like yours?
a) The old run-down tavern had been a staple of Auld Bodeville’s underground scene for years, drawing all kinds of petty thieves, gamblers, and black market dealers looking to make an extra buck.
b) Spiderwebs dangled from the chandelier, whose sputtering light illuminated the knife-notched tables just enough to make out the faces of playing cards flashing from hand to hand.
c) Night descends. Two wasted tavern-goers tumble out from the double doors, laughing and gossiping. Something in the air stirs and they stiffen — the sheriff’s ghost is watching.

Your favorite video game is . . .
a) Civilization VI
b) The Sims
c) The Last of Us

Would you ever write fan fiction (or have you already)?
a) No
b) Yes
c) I like doing my own thing

What’s your pet peeve when watching movies?
a) Continuity errors
b) When two characters seem to deliberately misunderstand each other
c) When the music doesn’t match the mood of the scene

*Results*

Mostly A’s: you’re a natural narrative designer. You love coming up with worlds and figuring out their rules and origins. History and mythology serve as inspiration to you. You’ve got notebooks full of hand-drawn maps, fantasy locations, and lists of cataclysmic events. New civilizations, races, religions, and factions come to you in dreams. You enjoy video games like Civilization VI and books by Brandon Sanderson, Terry Pratchett, and of course, the LOTR trilogy. You might be a table-top roleplaying Game Master or play D&D regularly. You’re inundated by hundreds of story ideas all the time, but when it comes to writing them down, you feel strangely intimidated and self-conscious. Don’t worry — you just need to give your writing skillset a bit more TLC. It may not come as naturally to you, but you can still get to a point where you write amazing stories, novels, films, games, or whatever your heart desires. So start practicing!

Mostly B’s: you’re as writerly as they come. You can’t see a beautiful view without wanting to describe it in equally beautiful sentences. You love observing people and learning what makes them tick. Your computer is packed with writing projects, from poems to 200-page fan fics. You tend to focus on the little things: coffee ring stains, an untended garden, the suave lilt of an eyebrow in response to a flirtation. Narrative design is daunting because your brain soaks in a tub of details rather than archetypes. You prefer diary-like stories to third-person epics, and remembering big historical events is nearly impossible. You get lost when writing because you see your story as a living, quivering field that extends in infinite ways. If you want a smoother writing process and more grounded writing, you just need to work out your narrative-design muscles. You got this!

Mostly C’s: Surprise! You’re a magical compound of both writer and narrative designer! Whether intentional or not, you’ve honed both skillsets along your journey and view storytelling as a balance between details and overarching structure. When you write, you choose specific scenes that act as beats; within those scenes, you know which details to emphasize. You see the story unfolding in your mind like a film and can effortlessly describe it in words. You don’t usually get carried away with poetic descriptions or unending, dramatic dialogue. You know how to rein yourself in. Screenwriting might be a super-skill of yours. You love mysteries and solving puzzles, and The Haunting of Hill House is probably one of your favorite shows. You’re just so cool. Seriously. Can I have some of your talent, please?

Let me know your results in the comments, and keep on writing! ❤