The Craft of Writing Effectively

My Reflections

Mostly people used to listen to us or read us because they were paid to do so. Teachers, office workers etc. But that doesn’t work in the normal world.

You are not writing to get your own ideas out, you are writing to change people’s ideas. No one cares about your idea. People care about why it matters to them.

What really works is if something is valuable to the reader. It doesn’t need to be new, but it needs to be valuable. The example is so simple yet gold: “how many people are in this room?” Sure, it’s new information. But it is not valuable.

So the two important words are valuable and reader. You need to know who your reader is, what code they speak. And then you need to give them value. Value is given by challenging a particular mental model they have. Words like “but”, “although”, “however”: you set some background context of a problem and then challenge the reader with your statement so that their ideas are challenged. Only then do people care to read.

In his words

The function of an academic piece is not to communicate your ideas, it’s to change the ideas of an existing community.

You need to stop thinking about rules and start thinking about readers.