writing

Matt Stone and Trey Parker want each episode of South Park to have a sense of cause and effect, tension and rising action. To do that, they’ve studied the science of effective storytelling.

What can writers learn from Warren Buffett's annual letter to shareholders?

including a look at the typical price range, why it's a good idea to offer promotional pricing to early subscribers, and how to handle monthly vs. annual pricing.

When words bring you closer to the prisoner in his cell, to the patient dying on his bed alone, to the starving child, then it's a prayer." Elie Wiesel speaks of the power of prayer and forgiveness in the wake of profound suffering.

What skill do hunter-gatherers value most? Research on the Agta hunterer-gather tribe reveals that it wasn't hunting or gathering.

I went from being a bad writer to a good writer after taking a one-day course in “business writing.” I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I’ll tell you the main tricks here so you don’t have to waste a...

Learn how to write well. Topics include figuring out what to write about, how to write an introduction, the writing process, writing style, and copyediting.

Learn how to write an introduction paragraph. This guide explains the writing process for introductions, as well as the process for deciding what to write about.

The case for consistent writing is less about self-improvement, and more about economics. Here's why.

How to think about writing, promotion, and community

The secret tips, tricks, and habits of those who make a great living writing.

If you want to improve your writing, match your punctuation to the mood. Punctuation is to writing as music is to movies. In The Joker, the renowned composer Hildur Guðnadóttir used the cello in the opening scenes to create empathy with the protagonist. But then, as The Joker’s dark side and inner turmoil was revealed,

The top tips, strategies and channels that'll help you get more subscribers this year!

How to tune up your description, welcome email, and promotion. There’s one thing everyone who writes a newsletter has in common: They want more people to read it. To help you grow your newsletter I’ve put together a five-day plan you can follow to “tune up” the way you position and promote it in order...

You have five seconds to get people’s attention. Books, blogs, emails, reports, it doesn’t matter – if you don’t sell them in five seconds you’ve exhausted most of their patience. Good ideas are easy to write, bad ideas are hard. Difficulty is a quality signal, and writer’s block usually indicates more about your ideas than your writing. Impatience has increased with social media. Someone reading a book 20 years ago had few other distractions. Today a phone offers infinite, nonstop competition for your dopamine. Writers of everything from emails to books have to accept that reality. Whoever...

People don’t write because it “takes too long.” Typing and editing is too much work, so they don’t put their best ideas on paper. This strategy saves time in the short term, but over the long term, it hurts them. Writing can save you time. Publishing ideas on paper is how you create intellectual capital

For the aspiring and the professional alike

The right words will shape the entire experience.

There are two kinds of people: Those who think they can write, and those who think they can’t. And, very often, both are wrong. The truth is, most of us fall somewhere in the middle. We are all capable of producing good writing. Or, at least, better writing.

I've published my newsletter for three years. Here are 7 important things I've learned that will help yours.

“There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.”

Dr. Jordan Peterson’s essay writing guide will help you build informed, coherent & sophisticated sets of ideas.

Learn how to write a good first draft. This guide explains the process for generating writing ideas, exploring their potential, and practicing the writing process.

Learn how to practice writing and rewriting. Aim for quality of input over of quantity of output. And find authors whose work you enjoy, then reverse engineer what makes them great.

Learning to write is learning to think, because writing is thinking. They are two peas in a powerful pod. This article goes over my writing process, focused on minimizing the activation energy to get started.