As I said in my last post, writing is my favorite way to learn by forcing input on output. This article will focus on how to write.

Why write

The purpose of writing, there are a lot of people have listed a lot of reasons. But those are just other people’s reasons, you have to find your own purpose to write. Take myself as an example. I used to write private diaries to record my mood, write modern poems to express my emotions, and write my real stories in a serial way in QQ space to record some of my life experiences when I was young. All of this writing can be attributed to one purpose: self-expression. In recent years, I wrote a blog to build my personal brand, and now I write a column to build my first product, which is also my first independent business project. This kind of writing is nothing but to spread personal influence, it is a kind of writing that transmits value. On the other hand, record writing, such as meeting minutes at work, workflow and documents, emails and documents, is intended to faithfully and structurally reflect facts.

Different writing purposes require different styles of writing. Please be careful not to use the wrong style. Many people use the way of “self-expression” to write “transfer value” articles, it is difficult to increase fans. For example, the number of readers of my blog articles about my own experience and summary is generally low. Writing that conveys value can be to convey knowledge, ideas or values, etc., but mainly to be of value to readers. The usual style of writing should be argumentative, not narrative or prose.

The most effective way to send output is to write a blog or a public account to deliver value. There are two reasons. One is that this kind of writing is essentially teaching as learning, and according to the learning pyramid, it is the most efficient way of learning. Second, writing is cognitive reverse engineering, helping to upgrade the way of thinking. According to Steven Pinker’s definition of writing, writing is the transformation of a network of thoughts into a tree structure and the expression of linear language. Our cognitive process works the other way around. We read a linear language, form a tree of knowledge in our minds, and store it as a network. When this kind of reverse thinking operation is completed, the depth of thought will naturally have obvious promotion.

Let me talk a little bit about how I approach this personal impact writing.

What to write

The first step in writing, of course, is to identify a topic of value to the reader. So what counts as valuable? I like the concept of knowledge-based writing, which was proposed by CAI Tong, a great god of Zhihu. He pointed out that knowledge-based writing is not aimed at attracting attention, but at passing on knowledge, spreading new knowledge and enlightening people’s minds. When I write, I think not of pleasing the public, but of leading it. This kind of knowledge writing is valuable writing. But this kind of writing output article, generally not the kind of fast food dry goods article, because knowledge writing generally has a certain depth of thought, not to see it once can understand, generally need to see more than a few times, but also after deep thinking or practice is likely to understand the essence. Most of my writing has been knowledge-based, both in my previous articles on architecture and in my current column.

In addition, when I write, the topics I choose are not just isolated points of knowledge, but a line, trying to convey systematic knowledge. Because I know that the value of conveying isolated knowledge points to readers is generally low, because there is no system, it is difficult to form a knowledge network, and it is easy for readers to fall into the trap of fragmented knowledge. So, most of my writing is a series.

Also, worthwhile writing doesn’t have to be about topics that no one else has written about. We are all ordinary people, and we learn most of what we know from other people. Therefore, our writing is mainly to sort out and summarize the existing knowledge, and organize the knowledge points into a knowledge system, which is where the value lies. As for the column I write now, I don’t have any original concepts or ideas. I just sort out the existing knowledge and let it form a knowledge system.

Writing goals

Once you’ve decided what to write about, decide what to write about. Please note that writing objectives are different from writing objectives and should not be confused. The purpose of writing is to guide us in the direction of writing, and the writing goal is a specific requirement to achieve. My goals for each writing session are as follows:

  1. Number of articles: Since I mostly write a series of articles, I usually break down the big topic I am going to write into several sub-topics and write an article for each sub-topic.
  2. Completion time: I usually set myself a week to finish each article;
  3. Word count control: sometimes, the word count of each article will be controlled, for example, I generally ask myself not less than 3500 words for column articles;
  4. Typos: I have a low tolerance for typos, so I will try to avoid typos in my article;
  5. Faithfulness: faithfulness, that is, expressing your opinions accurately; To convey your ideas accurately to the reader; Elegant, that is, to express elegant.

Let me expand on faith, expressiveness and elegance. It can be said that there are three levels of writing, the lowest level is “letter”, the highest level is “elegant”. “Letter” is relatively easy to achieve, as long as there are no miswords, incoherent words, and the structure is correct, you are basically ready to express your opinion. If you want to achieve the level of “reach”, you must also carry out empathy, stand in the perspective of the reader to read your article, if you can accurately convey your point of view to the reader is qualified. Many times, however, we write words that we think will accurately convey our meaning, but inevitably the reader will have a different understanding after reading them. Obviously, it is not easy to achieve the level of “da” completely. “Elegance” is more difficult to achieve, especially for writers who lack literary talent. However, literary talent does not mean to use a pile of advanced rhetoric, gorgeous words, only moderate gorgeous is a kind of literary talent, and moderate simplicity is also a kind of literary talent. In fact, to do a good job of the article typesetting bold, to some words for some embellishment, is also a literary talent.

How to write

Many people cannot write, the main reason lies in the mistaken belief that writing is just like a writer, who can write with a little thought and write an article in one go. The result may also have something to do with our poor training patterns in writing essays as children. When writing a composition, just give us a fixed topic, and do not let us turn the book, look up information, but want us to write out in class, so we had to rack their brains to build up text. Because this has been the case for a long time, many people’s thinking habit of writing is the same as writing a composition when they were young. They have to rack their brains to form an idea before they can write.

However, the correct way to write a paper should be like writing a research paper — outline and questions, then gather information, then pile all the material together, and finally write the paper by piecing together questions and blocks.

1. Outline

Therefore, the first step in how to write is to make an outline, that is, to determine the structure of the essay. The structure of the article is also the skeleton of the article, so the structure directly affects the quality of your article. The simplest structure is to answer the 3W question: What? According to? How? This structure can be used to write articles conveying concepts. For example, I used this structure when I wrote “Small Steel Talking about the Full stack”. I first answered what is the full stack, then explained why to develop the full stack, and finally explained how to develop the full stack. For these three questions, focus on solving the “How” question, because the answer to this question is the most valuable knowledge for the reader.

Another structure is a step-by-step solution, the first step, the second step, the third step, and so on. This structure applies to the practice summary type of articles, as you can see in my column several articles in this category — including “How I Learned Blockchain” and “How I Developed the Complete stack” — basically adopt this structure.

In fact, many times, it is possible to combine some simple structures. For example, when the 3W problem structure is adopted as a whole, the step-by-step solution structure can also be used to solve the question How. When explaining each step in detail, you can also use the 3W problem structure to explain what the core of each step is, why to do this step, and how to do it in detail.

Of course, there are many other structures you can use, but in a nutshell, it’s just a matter of dividing your overall point into sub-points and supporting each of your sub-points with evidence.

Spend a lot of time on the outline step. Try not to start writing before you have finished the outline, or you will easily get stuck again. Once you have a clear outline, it’s all about filling in the structure.

2. Write articles

Outline is to determine the structure of the output, then the input, input is nothing more than a lot of extensive reading after collecting a lot of information. Materials, or sources of knowledge, fall into three main categories: books, official documents, and scattered articles on the Web. As I said in a previous article, the first place to collect knowledge is from books, then from official documents, and finally from scattered articles on the Internet.

Then do a lot of extensive reading, with each specific question to find the answer, and write the answer, to fill in the structure of the article. For example, IF I want to answer the question “What is a full stack?” When it came to this question, I looked for others’ definitions of the full stack from a large amount of information collected, sorted them out, arranged them into my article, and added my own views. So, one problem solved. Do the same for other questions. Look for answers, sort them out and arrange them into your essay, then add your own ideas.

To put it bluntly, writing articles is just filling in the structure. However, it is important to note that the content should not be empty, but should be fleshed out. Structure is skeleton, content is flesh and blood, flesh and blood have soul. What is flesh and blood? That there are arguments and there are arguments; There are theories and there are cases.

3. Revise your essay

After the article is written, just finished the first draft, the next is to modify the article. The goal of the modification is to achieve the letter, therefore, generally need to go through at least three modifications.

The first revision is to correct typos and wrong expressions, and strive to accurately express your meaning.

The second revision was mainly to change the logic, to change descriptions that might be ambiguous, to change parts that would be difficult for readers to understand, and to change things that said too much or not enough. In short, it is important to avoid any misunderstandings that may arise in the reader’s mind and try to convey your ideas accurately to the reader.

The third modification, is to change typesetting, keywords to bold, the size of the title distinction to high, appropriate with a picture, so that the article looks comfortable.

After these three rounds of revision, the writing is really complete. When you’re done, you can publish it. After receiving the feedback from readers, we may find that there are still areas that need to be improved, but it doesn’t matter. We don’t need to pursue perfection. If we can provide more readers with real value and win their recognition, our writing will already be successful.

conclusion

To write, first figure out why you’re writing, then decide what you want to write about, and set your own goals. As for how to write, the correct writing method should be like writing a scientific research paper – outline and question, then collect information, then pile all the materials together, finally the question and block stitching together, and write the article. After writing the first draft, remember to revise it. The goal of the revision is to achieve good writing.

When you finish writing, you will notice that you have a much better understanding of the points and are beginning to form a body of knowledge.

Thinking and practice

What are you writing for? How to write? If you haven’t started writing yet, give yourself a week today to write an essay.

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