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How to not be terrible at writing
by Justin Gage
Writing should be fun and feel natural. Yes!:
Like code, writing should feel like a sort of flow – but it takes time to get there
Writing is very mood dependent; if you’re not feeling it, forcing it probably won’t help (but if you only wait for the perfect moment, it won’t get written)
# How to write well and do other stuff good too
- INTENTIONALITY ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE AND GOAL
- Good posts are created for specific people and aim to get them to think or feel a specific thing
- TELL A STORY
- Good posts tell a story, they don’t spit facts
- ORGANIZATION
- Good posts are clearly organized and follow a linear progression of detail
- VISUAL CUES
- Good posts use diagrams, lists, bold, and italic to convey emotion and break things up visually
- THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF DETAIL
-
- Good posts pick the perfect level of depth for the audience and goal
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# Be intentional about your audience and goal
- A piece of content can only be effective for ONE audience – you can’t speak to multiple people at once
- E.g. CFO vs. VP of Product
- E.g. Data Scientist vs. Marketer
- E.g.
- Audience: Data Science teams considering whether PyMC3 fits their use case
- Thoughts and feelings: I now understand PyMC3’s strengths and weaknesses and can talk more intelligently about whether it makes sense for this project
- AT THE TOP OF EVERY POST:
- Who is the audience?
- What do I want them to think or feel after reading this?
# Organization: structure and assumptions
- Ordering and organization are implied but legible
- All pedagogy assumes expertise
- Build an outline in advance
- Create clear section headers – more important than you think
# And for heaven’s sake, write! write! write!
- Be bad, it’s OK
- The only way to get better at writing is to write (shocker)
- Write
- Write some more
- Then also write more after that
- write
Origin:
How to not be terrible at writing - Google Präsentationen and the youtube video
How to not be a terrible writer
References:
Created 2022-10-21