If I could give one writing advice to my younger self...
One of my bosses asked me during a company-wide monthly virtual meeting:
“What advice would you give to people who want to improve their writing skills?”
If I only need to give one advice, this would be my answer: Learn how to craft your core idea.
Writing is communication.
If you’re content fails to communicate your core idea to your reader, if it fails to achieve its purpose - whether to explain, convince, solicit a response, urge action…
The piece is as good as not having written at all.
One of the most important skills for effectively communicating your core idea is first to learn how to craft your core idea.
Here’s how I do it:
Step 1. Brain dump ideas.
What’s the main point you want the reader to takeaway?
What’s the one thing you want the reader to believe?
Write more than 20 or more. Set a timer for 5 - 10 mins and ponder answers to this question. Write them down.
Step 2. Select the least dumb idea.
What’s the least dumb idea of all ideas you’ve collected? (“Least dumb” is a form of inversion.)
For this essay, I considered these ideas:
Learn principles of effective communication
Learn how to craft your core idea (My least dumb idea)
Learn how to write clear sentences
Learn principles of sentence brevity
Learn freewriting
Learn how to revise
Step 3. Compress your core idea into a simple, compact sentence.
Here’s the simple, compact sentence for this essay:
I believe that learning how to craft my core idea is the key to improve my writing and it’s attainable through the One Belief Framework.
Here’s the anatomy of that sentence:
I believe that [the new opportunity] is the key to [desire of the reader] and it’s attainable through a [unique mechanism].
The “I believe” beginning phrase forces you to think in “points.” I learned it from reading Joel Schwartzberg’s Get to the Point.
From Joel:
“A point is a contention you can propose, argue, defend, illustrate, and prove. If the point is received, the presenter succeeds. If the point is not received, the presenter fails— regardless of any other impression made.”
I’ve learned the One Belief Framework from The 16-Word Sales Letter by Evaldo Albuquerque, Agora’s top financial copywriter.
From Evaldo:
When most people write copy, they don’t have a mission. But how are you supposed to write copy that converts if you don’t know the ultimate goal of the letter? How are you supposed to succeed if you don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish? With the one belief, you will know what your mission is. It’s your North Star, guiding you all the way to a high-converting sales letter.
Core Idea = North Star
Crafting the core means boiling the idea down to its essence.
As Chip and Dan Heath wrote in Made to Stick, “Finding the core is analogous to writing the Commander's Intent—it's about discarding a lot of great insights in order to let the most important insight shine.”