Freelance copywriting subsidises my masochistic obsession with screenwriting. For a long while I’ve justified it by focusing on how writing copy benefits my screenwriting craft.

Copy and screen writing are similar in that you’re always presented with too much information and it’s your job to find the spine of the thing. In both forms you need to whittle infinite possibilities down to a sharp point. But I recently realised another similarity between copy and screen writing that I think is pretty interesting - it’s got to do with tone and character.

The other day I was writing some copy for the Mitre 10 hardware and the biggest challenge was getting the tone right. How does Mitre 10 speak? How does Mitre 10 behave when engaging with the world? This stuff has to be clear because a brand is more than a business, it’s something people have a relationship with, and like our human friends and colleagues, a brand should have a way of speaking and acting that is consistent and identifiable. Your mum acts differently from day to day, but underneath there are fundamentals to her character that remain fairly constant. Same goes for a brand.

In the advertising world the character of a brand is kept on track through the “style guide” — a document that outlines key words, colours, fonts and designs that should remain consistent. It’s not too dissimilar to a script outline.

One of the quickest ways to fuck up an early screenplay draft is to go charging in before you’ve got your characters figured out. So a thoughtful writer will create an outline (and perhaps character breakdowns) that establishes who their characters are before they start making them interact with an imagined world.

Creating brands is like creating characters.

So while I’d rather be writing for the screen everyday, I can see how writing copy can inform and hone my screenwriting skills. So if you’re a writer wrestling with the perennial dilemma of whether you should take a job at the periphery of the film industry as a way in, or take something outside the industry but vaguely writing-related, then I’d consider the merits of the latter. At least that’s how I’m justifying the precious hours I have to burn in order to afford to sit down and write for the screen.