Cal Newport's Top Tips To Writing Better Articles

00:00:00.000 | All right, what do we have next, Jesse?

00:00:03.000 | All right, next question is from Max.

00:00:05.000 | He's a 40-year-old marketer from London, and he says,

00:00:09.000 | "I've been asked to start writing regular articles for my company.

00:00:12.000 | I'm struggling with this assignment.

00:00:14.000 | I cannot find my voice.

00:00:16.000 | When I write, I come across as very rigid and contrived.

00:00:20.000 | How do you write your articles?"

00:00:22.000 | That's a good question.

00:00:24.000 | How do you actually craft an article?

00:00:28.000 | Well, it seems like it's an easy thing.

00:00:32.000 | They're not that long. It's not a book.

00:00:35.000 | But more than a few people, like you, Max,

00:00:37.000 | have faced the reality when it comes time to write

00:00:40.000 | what needs to be a smart, good article,

00:00:42.000 | in this case, representing your company,

00:00:44.000 | that it's hard to do. You don't know where to start.

00:00:46.000 | So, you know, I have some tips to share.

00:00:48.000 | Let me just start with the preface of

00:00:51.000 | I have been writing professionally for over two decades.

00:00:56.000 | And it's all I do. All I do is write.

00:00:58.000 | I write every single day.

00:01:00.000 | I showed you on the show last week,

00:01:02.000 | my keyboard is completely worn away after just a couple years of use

00:01:04.000 | because of how much I write.

00:01:06.000 | I write academic articles.

00:01:08.000 | I write public consumption magazine articles.

00:01:10.000 | I write books. I write essays every week for my own newsletter.

00:01:13.000 | And so I've been working at this for a really long time.

00:01:16.000 | So I only say that just as a preface.

00:01:18.000 | Don't, let's say, read one of my recent articles and say,

00:01:22.000 | "Why doesn't my stuff just sound like this? What's wrong?"

00:01:25.000 | There's 20 years of work that goes behind that.

00:01:29.000 | So it's a process. You get better and better with work.

00:01:31.000 | So I'm going to start there so that you're not,

00:01:34.000 | and forget, okay, maybe don't use me as an example.

00:01:36.000 | I don't want you reading, you know, John McPhee

00:01:39.000 | and saying, "Why don't I sound like that?"

00:01:41.000 | He spent a lifetime honing that ability.

00:01:43.000 | I do have some specific advice that I wrote down a few things here

00:01:46.000 | about article writing.

00:01:49.000 | One, spend more time thinking through your idea,

00:01:53.000 | your thesis before you write.

00:01:55.000 | Preferably do this on foot.

00:01:58.000 | I think interesting articles, good writers,

00:02:00.000 | spend a lot more time thinking about the point they want to make

00:02:03.000 | and the pieces that go into that point.

00:02:05.000 | They spend a lot more time thinking about that

00:02:07.000 | than you might realize.

00:02:08.000 | I think amateur writers get started too quickly.

00:02:11.000 | And especially for an idea article,

00:02:13.000 | you're not going to figure it out on the page.

00:02:15.000 | There might be passages you figure out on the page.

00:02:17.000 | Like, let me just go for this and then see if it's working or not.

00:02:20.000 | But you're not going to figure out, here is my big point or the thesis

00:02:23.000 | and the four things to support it.

00:02:24.000 | That has to be done on foot,

00:02:26.000 | and it can take a long time to get there.

00:02:28.000 | You could try and not like what you have,

00:02:30.000 | and you have to keep thinking before you start writing.

00:02:32.000 | All right, number two, for this style of article,

00:02:35.000 | you'll be writing, and I can see from your elaboration,

00:02:38.000 | it's like a philosophical angle on ideas

00:02:43.000 | related to the products your company builds.

00:02:46.000 | So for that type of philosophical idea type article,

00:02:49.000 | start with a standard structure at first.

00:02:51.000 | I think that's a good way to enter into professional article writing.

00:02:56.000 | So one of the standard structures is going to be,

00:02:59.000 | you open on a illustrative example that leads to the nut graph.

00:03:04.000 | This is where you're actually explaining,

00:03:06.000 | here is the idea I'm going to try to convince you of in this piece.

00:03:09.000 | And now you suddenly understand

00:03:11.000 | what that example that you just read was about.

00:03:13.000 | So you create a little bit of narrative tension,

00:03:15.000 | which you relieve partially with the revelation of your thesis.

00:03:18.000 | Then you go into elaboration.

00:03:20.000 | All right, let me work through this connection idea.

00:03:22.000 | Let me support it, give you the necessary caveats.

00:03:25.000 | Now they have a complete understanding of the idea.

00:03:27.000 | The narrative tension has been fully released.

00:03:29.000 | And then your conclusion should pull back,

00:03:33.000 | have a callback to what you opened with.

00:03:36.000 | And then there's a sense of completion.

00:03:38.000 | So like that standard idea writing 101,

00:03:40.000 | you build up narrative tension,

00:03:42.000 | and then the release of the tension pulls the reader

00:03:44.000 | through the article towards the end.

00:03:46.000 | And the callback gives them this sort of satisfying sense of completion

00:03:49.000 | to the whole story they just went through.

00:03:52.000 | Similar things happen if you study Aristotle's poetics and storytelling.

00:03:58.000 | Similar types of structures, and it goes back a long way.

00:04:02.000 | Three, show, don't, tell.

00:04:05.000 | One of the big differentiators in these type of articles

00:04:07.000 | between amateur and professional writing

00:04:09.000 | is the professional writing is a lot denser,

00:04:12.000 | by which I mean it's points are established with quotes,

00:04:17.000 | citations of specific examples.

00:04:19.000 | So it's denser.

00:04:20.000 | There's a density of citation.

00:04:22.000 | I don't mean formal, you know,

00:04:23.000 | you're doing some sort of AP style citation,

00:04:25.000 | but it's you're showing, don't tell him.

00:04:27.000 | Such and such said this, such and such example went for 14 years.

00:04:31.000 | This car in 1950, I had on average this miles per gallon.

00:04:35.000 | And now by 1990, it was this many miles per hour.

00:04:38.000 | Show, don't tell.

00:04:39.000 | Related, this is a piece of advice number four,

00:04:42.000 | be wary of the conversational voice.

00:04:45.000 | All right.

00:04:46.000 | It's a real temptation, I think,

00:04:48.000 | when people are new to this type of article writing

00:04:50.000 | to ask rhetorical questions and have more colloquial asides of,

00:04:53.000 | you would think this is the case, but it's not really.

00:04:56.000 | What would you do if you were suddenly faced with $10 million?

00:05:00.000 | Maybe not what you would think if you blah, blah, blah.

00:05:02.000 | The conversational tone reads amateur.

00:05:05.000 | It that's more that's more acceptable, I think,

00:05:09.000 | in a sort of personalized blogging world.

00:05:11.000 | But you want to avoid the conversational tone.

00:05:14.000 | So the colloquial idiomatic expressions really avoid rhetorical questions,

00:05:18.000 | except for maybe occasionally.

00:05:20.000 | And this is my bugaboo.

00:05:21.000 | I think rhetorical questions and idea writing is, you know,

00:05:25.000 | it's my version of using cliches.

00:05:27.000 | It's I think it's weak writing.

00:05:29.000 | Don't ask rhetorical question.

00:05:30.000 | Show, don't tell.

00:05:31.000 | Show, don't tell.

00:05:32.000 | Move it forward.

00:05:33.000 | And then finally, don't write for the sake of writing.

00:05:36.000 | It really comes through an article writing as well as book chapter writing.

00:05:40.000 | You see this a lot when people are writing books that maybe they're not writers.

00:05:43.000 | It's based on their expertise.

00:05:44.000 | Is you're like, man, I know that you know how many words this chapter needs to be.

00:05:49.000 | And you are trying to get to that word count.

00:05:52.000 | That comes through really clearly.

00:05:54.000 | That's what I call writing for the sake of writing.

00:05:56.000 | Like there's no real reason for the last two paragraphs to be here,

00:05:59.000 | other than you're trying to get to 2000 words.

00:06:01.000 | Professional writers look to pull the rip cord on whatever passage,

00:06:06.000 | idea or paragraph they're working on as soon as possible.

00:06:10.000 | The sooner I can get out of this, the more comfortable I am with this.

00:06:13.000 | So go back and read, you know, some New Yorker articles and you'll see this.

00:06:17.000 | They're out of each argument as quickly as they can.

00:06:22.000 | Like what's the essence of what I'm trying to say here?

00:06:25.000 | You know, we cite this, it's different than this.

00:06:27.000 | We also see it here, rip cord, I'm out.

00:06:29.000 | Next thing.

00:06:30.000 | You don't see this dragging out of like, you know, and maybe this and maybe that.

00:06:34.000 | And let me rhetorical question here.

00:06:36.000 | And and let's go back and summarize.

00:06:39.000 | And so when you're writing, record, I actually in the slow productivity book I'm writing now,

00:06:44.000 | my the voice I'm using that book is is.

00:06:49.000 | It's I don't know the right way to describe it, but I'm really trying to non over elaborate things,

00:06:55.000 | I guess it's a little bit more enigmatic, but a little bit more declarative because it's it's supposed to have a sense of some timeless wisdom.

00:07:03.000 | I literally on multiple occasions when I'm editing something have written rip cord, rip cord, rip cord.

00:07:09.000 | As a reminder to myself, I get out, get out, get the point, get out, get the point, get out.

00:07:13.000 | The reader is smart to fill in the details.

00:07:15.000 | Don't over explain. All right.

00:07:17.000 | So those are my tips.

00:07:18.000 | I guess I gave one, two, three, four, five ideas here for making those articles really look a lot better.

00:07:26.000 | And then my or just to reiterate my my original point, also, you will get better with time.

00:07:32.000 | So don't compare yourself to your very favorite writers and say, why am I not there yet?

00:07:36.000 | You want to be better than you were with the last article you wrote.

00:07:38.000 | And so hopefully these tips will help.

00:07:40.000 | So with the example, then the not what what's the not again?

00:07:43.000 | So that's where you actually lay out like what the big idea is going to be in the article.

00:07:46.000 | OK, right. So so like imagine something I was right.

00:07:51.000 | Let me let me draw a quick example from writing I've been doing this week.

00:07:54.000 | So, you know, I opened a section of a chapter.

00:07:57.000 | I'm talking about Georgia O'Keeffe and I was talking about how busy her early career is.

00:08:03.000 | I think I talked about this on the show last week.

00:08:05.000 | This is the example, though, I'm telling the story about Georgia O'Keeffe and how.

00:08:09.000 | How many different jobs she had all over the country and she and in the summer, she would come back east and go west.

00:08:15.000 | And it's just this really busy life. And she really was trying to study painting and but would have to take these long breaks.

00:08:21.000 | And she needed to really uncover potential is going to need something more that that more came when she started getting involved with Alfre Stieglitz and their family on this land by Lake George.

00:08:30.000 | And and she started going up there with him and became unlocked the most prolific period of her career.

00:08:37.000 | So kind of hearing the story like this is interesting. The nut there is then pointing out.

00:08:46.000 | So this particular section seasonality. This is what Georgia O'Keeffe was demonstrating.

00:08:52.000 | Seasonality, different times of the year, you're working on different things with different intensities is something that we we've sort of lost track of.

00:09:00.000 | But it's actually really key to the human experience and something that we should try to get back.

00:09:04.000 | There we go. So you have this opening story like what's this? Why this is interesting. What's it all about?

00:09:08.000 | That nut graph explains it. But you still have narrative tension because you want to say, well, why is that true?

00:09:14.000 | You know, why is seasonality important? Can we really get it back? What happened to it?

00:09:17.000 | Now you want to have that be resolved. That's the rest of that chapter then resolves those questions.

00:09:22.000 | So that's an example there. Got it. The alternative would be you could just come right in and say seasonality is very important.

00:09:29.000 | Here's the definition of seasonality. I will now give five reasons why. And that's fine.

00:09:35.000 | But this is the difference between having narrative tension and not. Yeah. It's textbook versus like.

00:09:41.000 | [MUSIC]

Cal Newport's Top Tips To Writing Better Articles

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