How to Write Well?

Last updated Jan 16, 2025

It’s hard, it’s painful as Stephen mentions in On Writing (Stephen King) (especially On Writing (Stephen King)) and The Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr).

Writing when you have some notes and starting is the hard part. Starting out there is lots of enthusiasm, but after a while when this goes away, it’s tough.

It’s easiest to postpone or do other things.

What I try to do is turn off the Wi-Fi turn off the phone and force myself for two hours on writing straight (go to a library/outside when you can). It’s so painful, and it doesn’t matter the quality of the writing. It will be bad. But just that in a second phase you can go through and cut out the bad and leave the good.

As many say, just write on, some days you write poor some days better. Don’t worry you will filter them out later.

When I spend a lot of time optimizing an article, and I can see the changes and how the article improves with each edit, that makes me happy every time and is just a magical moment as you never know how it will end up before you do the hard work.

It’s also very much connected to Atomic Habits - James Clear and Optimize My Sleep where you have a good mind and maybe you get up early to write first thing in the morning without distraction!

Focus on the Audience and tell a story, here are some pointers on How to not be terrible at writing:

How to write good and do other stuff good too:

1. 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
2. TELL A STORY
   Good posts tell a story, they don’t spit facts
3. ORGANIZATION
   Good posts are clearly organized and follow a linear progression of detail
4. VISUAL CUES
   Good posts use diagrams, lists, bold, and italic to convey emotion and break things up visually
5. THE RIGHT AMOUNT OF DETAIL
   Good posts pick the perfect level of depth for the audience and goal

Takeaways:

• Always think who is your audience, you can write to them with more specific
• Storytelling: Do things like “Imagine you are a DE at a large company”

“Write like you talk” embodies a polite fiction that sometimes confuses people. What if someone talks in monosyllabic grunts, like some teenagers do? A more precise version would be “write like someone who talks well talks.” [[Paul Graham ]] in Tweet

See Writer Tools.

There is no one-size-fits-all. The best example is David Perell, who interviewed the best writers on How I Write (Podcast) and asked this questions to all of them, and everyone had a different answer. That shows you can write however you want, but you need to be good at it. And that comes with practice.

Check out: 171 Years of Writing Knowledge in 90 Minutes - YouTube

We sent men to the moon, but we still can only finish a sentence in three ways (from Explained | !. With a dot ., question mark ? or exclamation point !.

Actually, today we have emojis or expressions like LOL, IDK, ASAP, etc.

More on:

• The Elements of Style (William Strunk Jr)
• On Writing (Stephen King) with Stephen King
• Interrobang
• And Grammar- Writing Well

See Writing Style Guide

• How to get a Better Writer
• RW Writing Handbook by Julian Shapiro
• RW Writing Advice From A16z’s Andrew Chen.
• RW 10 Years of Professional Blogging – What I’ve Learned at Andrewchen
• Showing by example: RW How to Write Better Stories in 4 Easy Steps
• The Developer Voice Guide: How To Write Articles Engineers Want To Read
• The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online - David Perell by David Perell

Origin: Writing
References:
Created 2022-08-19