YOUTUBE vtIzMaLkCaM "The Craft of Writing Effectively" given at University of Chicago in 2014.
Step 1: use your writing to help you think.
Step 2: you think writing is communicating your ideas to your readers. It is not! Nobody cares what ideas you have. use your writing to change your readers ideas. Change the way they see the world. This goes for your expert readers too. They don’t care too. If it doesn’t change their world view, it’s not valuable. If it’s not valuable, the rest is useless.
Order of importance
1. Valuable
2. Persuasive
3. Organized
4. Clear
Value lies only in the readers, not in the thing.
The patterns you use for step 1 and 2 are different.
Try this: circle every word in your writing that is creating value to the readers. guess what? soon you will have your own list of invaluable words to check your own writing against.
The horrible irony: the language we use is of stability and consistency. But your readers are searching for language of instability, inconsistency, and tension.
Use language to show your readers there’s a cost on them or if the instability is solved, there’s a benefit to them.
Use transition word to create tension, instability to challenge their ideas i.e. bad: hey readers, I’ve read your stuff and wow..., i know what you think and here’s what i think... i.e. good: hey readers, I’ve read your stuff and wow, i know what you think but there’s little thing you’ve got here, it’s wrong...
good tension words: inconsistent, but, however, although
You can’t be persuasive if you don’t understand your readers doubt. If you don’t know what they doubt, how are you going to change their world view? You must know them to predicate what they might say.
Every community has it’s own code. You must know what each one values.
Identify the people with power in your community. Give them what they want (i.e. build them up) but challenge them inside the terms of their code. It’s not about your individual voice, it’s about what’s valuable to your readers.
Structure
Layout in your first paragraph
who your writing too,
what you’re going to argue
what question you have you will answer
what’s urgent (i.e. people value reading about tension, trouble, bad stuff — instability)
Problem: what’s a problem your readers care about and they want to fix (not your problem).
Solution
Never explain stuff. Don’t demonstrate to someone you understand it. Don’t reveal the inside of your head. No one cares!
Your goal is to move the conversation forward. Not to preserve your ideas indefinitely. Nobody will ready your work in a year. It’s not about you, it’s about them.