the 3 things it takes to be a writer.
Summary
TLDRThe speaker emphasizes the holistic nature of writing, asserting its power to shape the world. They discuss the importance of clarity, meaningfulness, and persuasiveness in writing, using examples from social media and emails to illustrate effective communication. The process of crafting a message is highlighted, emphasizing working backwards from intent and iterating through drafts to connect with the audience and persuade them to take action or adopt a viewpoint.
Takeaways
- 📝 Writing is a holistic process that goes beyond just words on a page, shaping the world through storytelling and personal expression.
- 🎯 The power of writing lies in its ability to invite readers into the author's mind, stories, and worldview.
- 🌟 A good hook is essential for engaging the audience, whether it's in an email, tweet, or video script.
- 💡 The effectiveness of writing can be enhanced by pairing it with visuals, creating a more compelling narrative.
- 📈 Good writing should be clear, meaningful, and persuasive, aligning with the principles of good design.
- 🔍 Understanding the audience and tailoring the message to them is crucial for effective communication.
- 🔄 The writing process often involves iteration and refining the message to better connect with the intended audience.
- 🤔 Starting with the end goal in mind (working backwards from intent) can help clarify the purpose and message of the writing.
- 💌 The structure and content of a message can significantly impact how it is received and whether it prompts the desired action.
- 📚 Regular writing practice helps in honing one's ability to craft clear, meaningful, and persuasive messages.
- 🚀 Sharing personal experiences and stories can add depth and relatability to the writing, making it more impactful.
Q & A
What is the main idea the speaker wants the audience to take away about writing?
-The speaker wants the audience to understand that writing is more than just words on a page; it's a holistic way to shape the world and communicate one's thoughts, stories, and perspectives effectively.
How does the speaker describe the power of a single sentence?
-The speaker illustrates the power of a single sentence by showing how it can immediately invite people into one's mind, stories, and worldview, highlighting the emotional impact and the importance of context when interpreting meaning.
What are the three criteria the speaker mentions for good writing?
-The three criteria for good writing mentioned by the speaker are clarity, meaning, and persuasiveness. The writing should be clear to understand, meaningful in the value it communicates, and persuasive enough to make the reader take action or adopt the writer's point of view.
Why is it important to pair visuals with writing?
-Pairing visuals with writing is important because it enhances the overall message and can change the tone or perception of the text. Visuals are part of the greater holistic experience and can make the writing more engaging and impactful.
What is an example the speaker gives to show the importance of clarity in writing?
-The speaker provides an example of a tweet that is unclear and difficult to understand, emphasizing that if people don't understand the message, they will likely ignore it or scroll past it.
How does the speaker suggest one should start when trying to improve their writing?
-The speaker suggests starting by working backwards from intent, which means figuring out what the writer wants to communicate to the audience and then crafting the message accordingly.
What is the significance of the book title 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' in the context of the talk?
-The book title 'I'm Glad My Mom Died' serves as an example to show how context and visuals can dramatically change the interpretation of the same words. The title alone might seem sad or psychopathic, but when paired with a bright and humorous visual, it changes the perception and invites curiosity rather than judgment.
How does the speaker use the example of the email to Shan Perry to illustrate meaningful writing?
-The email to Shan Perry is used as an example of meaningful writing because it clearly communicates the sender's decision to quit their job and their interest in working with Shan Perry. It's meaningful because it conveys a significant life change and a direct request that is easy for the recipient to respond to.
What advice does the speaker give for creating persuasive writing?
-The speaker advises that persuasive writing should lead the reader to take action or adopt the writer's point of view. This can be achieved by making the reader's life easy by providing clear options, as demonstrated in the email example where the sender presents two ideas and asks for a yes or no response.
What is the speaker's approach to refining their message?
-The speaker's approach to refining their message involves multiple iterations and drafts, considering different aspects of their intent, audience segments, and the narrative they want to convey. They use a forcing function of communication to help shape their ideas and ensure they are clear, meaningful, and persuasive.
Why does the speaker encourage regular writing for oneself?
-The speaker encourages regular writing for oneself because it helps in wrapping one's head around their thoughts and ideas, which in turn improves the ability to communicate them effectively to an audience.
Outlines
📝 The Essence of Writing Beyond Words
The speaker emphasizes that writing is more than just words on a page; it's a holistic process that shapes the world. They highlight the power of writing by referencing influential figures like Bill Gates and the impact of written communication in various forms, such as emails, tweets, and videos. The speaker also discusses the importance of inviting readers into one's mind and worldview, and uses a provocative sentence to illustrate how writing can evoke strong emotions and interpretations. They stress the significance of visuals in conjunction with writing, using a book title as an example to show how context can dramatically change the perception of a message.
🚀 Crafting Meaningful and Persuasive Content
The speaker discusses the importance of clarity, meaningfulness, and persuasiveness in writing. They argue that good writing should be understandable and convey value, which can take many forms, such as saving time, eliciting laughter, or providing interesting information. An example of an effective email to Shan Perry is dissected, demonstrating how a clear and impactful message can grab attention and communicate a strong intent. The speaker also touches on the concept of marketing and the goal of persuading the reader to take action or adopt a certain viewpoint. They encourage the audience to understand the overall process of writing and to work backwards from the intended message.
🔄 Iterative Process of Writing and Communication
The speaker shares insights on the iterative process of writing, emphasizing the importance of understanding the intent behind the message. They discuss the challenges of clearly conveying the intended message and the need for continuous posting to receive feedback. The speaker uses their own experiences at their company to illustrate how they brainstorm and refine their communication strategies. They present different iterations of a message they crafted, showing how they adjusted their approach based on their audience and intent. The speaker concludes by reiterating the significance of working backwards from intent and the value of the writing process in shaping communication and connecting with the audience.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Writing Framework
💡Holistic
💡Emotional Impact
💡Visuals and Writing
💡Clear Communication
💡Meaningful Content
💡Persuasiveness
💡Intent
💡迭代过程 (Iterative Process)
💡Personal Connection
💡Audience Segmentation
Highlights
Writing is a holistic process that goes beyond just words on a page.
Writing is a powerful tool to shape the world and communicate one's thoughts, stories, and worldview.
The impact of a single sentence can evoke strong emotions and judgments.
Visuals are an integral part of writing and can significantly alter the tone and perception of the message.
Good writing should be clear, meaningful, and persuasive.
Clarity in writing ensures that the audience understands the message and can respond appropriately.
Meaningful writing communicates value, which can take various forms such as saving time, money, or providing laughter or interesting information.
Persuasive writing aims to convince the reader of the value of the offering or the correctness of the writer's point of view.
Writing a good hook, telling a story, or crafting an effective email are examples of applying good writing principles.
Working backwards from intent is a crucial starting point for effective writing.
Identifying the target audience and refining the message based on feedback is an essential part of the writing process.
Regular writing, even outside of one's professional work, can help improve writing skills and clarity of thought.
The process of writing involves iterating and refining messages to better connect with the audience.
Understanding the intent behind the message is key to crafting a compelling narrative.
The structure of a message should consider the emotional journey of the audience and how to effectively communicate with them.
Writing should be seen as a process that can be refined and improved over time.
The importance of understanding the different segments of the audience and tailoring the message accordingly.
Transcripts
welcome again to uh writing
101 and uh fed 14 hope that everybody is
having a good day so far and uh I want
to cover something about
writing and I spent some time thinking
about this and this is something a
framework I wanted you to start thinking
about that is that uh writing is not
just words on a
page writing is more holistic than that
and I want you to start thinking about
what writing really means
personally I think it's the most
powerful way to shape the world if you
think about Bill space at the end of the
day uh for the longest time we're really
just people who put words into email
words on a in a tweet and then words
into a video
right and you're literally inviting
people into your mind your stories and
your view of the world I'm telling you
this because I get a sense from most of
you that you're actually creators at
heart even though you're building
different
things
so anybody seen this particular phrase
yeah if you if you know about this don't
don't don't tell the rest right what
those of you who don't know what comes
to your mind when you see the just one
sentence I'm glad my mom died psychopath
psychopath
stupid m is abusive maybe the m is
abusive what else resilience
resilience what are some emotion
emotions that go through your
head so uh when I see this actually one
of the emotions that run through me is
uh less less less of a judgment more of
a that's really sad
actually and I'm showing you this
because immediately you're like invited
you're you're actually completely
consumed by this one sentence right but
I want to show you something more don't
ever separate visuals from writing it's
part of a greater hole so this can have
a psychopathic tone can have a very sad
tone but if you pair it with the it's
actually the title of a
book I'm glad my mom died so suddenly
like the color palette and uh this
picture makes it funny right so it's
like no longer just something that is uh
sad or
Psychopathic you think it's still
Psychopathic and I just don't understand
that contrast there
like
it the title by itself is is sad has
negative tones but then this is bright
and and I still don't associate the
entire ho as something like bright it's
just still weird yeah so this particular
book actually blew up and uh it's it's
meant to be a comedy but it's actually
about a uh she's actually an actress and
kind of talks about her mom in a comedic
way but the actual the media story is
rather
sad so I talked to quite a few of you
and I know that many of you want to know
how to this is the biggest one write a
good
hook tell a story write a cold email
better landing page copy the list goes
on and on and on and if you recall uh
staven had a mental model that was a
baby bolt looking at some of the stuff
that you guys have posted and written I
think it's better if we just kind of
look at the overall process
first I think it all starts with knowing
what good writing is if you recall from
the design lecture good uh good design
is actually what's good design according
to stavin you guys
remember uh usable useful and Beau yeah
there's something similar to
writing it needs to be clear meaningful
and
persuasive and we'll get to what each of
these mean and how we will do
that so clear this is something that I
see a lot if people don't even
understand what you're trying to say
they they won't even care and uh the
worst case scenario is that you put
something out into the world people
can't even say yes and they can't even
say no so they just scroll right past
right or they don't even read
it so here's a tweet and I'm using a lot
of examples and I don't actually want to
show who did them this is not from sf2
this is from online and if you want to
look at really bad writing examples
often times you could just look at uh
crypto web 3 type stuff so if you do a
quick scan like what is this tweet about
anybody tell
me it's really small it's I see
coin yeah it's like very hard to tell
exactly what's going on right so chances
are you're just going to scroll past
interestingly this account is actually
rather big
um so you need to have people understand
you first and the second thing is I say
meaningful because I want you to
communicate something of value and the
value actually can come in all kinds of
forms for a lot of you building SAS it
could be saving time saving money and
for some of you content creators making
them laugh that to me is like the
Pinnacle offering somebody value because
laughter can transcend many things and
or interesting information etc etc etc
so I'll give you an example this is a
very popular example of a called email
that somebody sent to Shan Pur um let's
just take a moment to break this down
right I made an irreversible
decision so this particular email is
because Shan Perry was kind of looking
for people to hire right so let's just
look at this hey Sean I made an
irreversible decision just 30 days days
in I Quit some job the opportunity cost
of not being full-time in crypto was too
high right lucky for you this means that
I'm on the market I think you should
hire me and you don't even have to read
the rest he already bowled what you
should read I quit this job I think you
should hire me I love to run nft
experiments for milk Road right so
already it's like if when Sean got this
to him it was a very
meaningful um it's also understandable
what this person wants right
and before I get to this last bolded
part I want to talk about persuasive if
you recall from the marketing lecture we
kind of talk about marketing ultimately
is you want somebody to take
action it could either to buy your thing
sign up for a subscription or adopt your
point of view when I mean by adopt point
of view is that you're convincing
somebody that what you're offering is a
value or convincing somebody that your
point of view is actually like the right
way if you look at Bill space right the
2424 lecture uh sorry not lecture the
live stream we spent a lot of time
telling the audience our view of
Education how we could do it better
right
um so if you come back to this
example it's very persuasive for Sean to
at least talk to him right because he
ends with I got two ideas one for milk
Road one for MFM one to hear them so it
makes it it makes the reader's life
really easy it's a yes or no
right so I want to break down how we
start from all of them any questions so
far
cool
so I was looking at a lot of
examples I think the most important
thing you need to start is work
backwards from
intent what do you want to say to people
I think that's actually a really
difficult thing that I have seen a lot
of the examples is it's very unclear
what is it that you actually want to say
to people and even our own content team
we often times struggle with
this and this is what I like to think
about a lot keep shooting and figure out
your target now this is actually really
important you need to keep on posting um
because this is the only way you can get
feedback whether or not you are finding
a right target or even if that's a
Target that you want
and think of this as a process and the
most important thing is uh you how many
of you like write on a regular basis
during sf2 not not for your stuff like
you write for
yourself yeah quite a few of you I
highly recommend that that if you're not
doing that take some time to do it our
entire team spend time writing about all
sorts of stuff so that we can actually
wrap our heads around what we're trying
to
build so let me give you an
example we went off grids for basically
a month and we're figuring out what to
build but the forcing function that's
really good for us is anytime we're
coming up with something new we
immediately think about how will we
communicate this to our audience how
will we communicate this to the world
and it's often times a messy process but
it's something that uh you can just
iterate even within yourselves so this
is from my app
ulyses farza and I we started jaming
about what's what's a message we can
send to your audience right so if you
look at this this is a there are four
versions of this actually end up being
like six to 10 version of just all these
different drafts you can see the title
we shut down our company for a month I
became a monk monk for a month um there
I don't know how many of you read bill
space emails but eventually the The
Landing title would always
change how many of you read this or
receiv received this yeah so this was
one version of our message right and we
really thought about our intent our
intent was one we want to tell people
that we're doing something different
this year two we want to tell people
that we have the same mission right to
build a world where anyone with an idea
can turn a reality and then the third
thing is there are different segments of
our audience
we need to address questions right so
this one would be wins nights and
weekends S5 and those of you are hit
this email is probably because you're in
S4 actually all of you are in S4 um
that's why I got the email and then this
is another
iteration of the same message right this
one is more personal to farza most of
you are probably familiar with founder
stories plus cliches Steve Jobs finding
himself in India while doing LSD Phil
night travel in the world before coming
up with Nike but this message again is
all tying back to like our intent and
our intent is to be clear about what
we're doing next and also provide
something meaningful and then lastly you
know persuade them to come to
2424 how many of you read
this you can go check it out it's a bill
space.so for hyper it's a it's a very
long read if you really want to
understand where our head is at this is
actually pretty good read um again same
message but now in a 10-minute format
right you guys all know that we're
building software now so for a month the
whole team would jam about different
ideas I would jam about all of the ideas
and then I made it down to a p pitch
deck to myself again I need I need to
First figure out what the hell am I'm
trying to say to the audience right so
to me you know I was like okay how do
people connect with each other so I
started breaking down to myself you know
their ancient forms of connection modern
forms of connection contemporary forms
of connection how can Bill space
elaborate or build upon that now all of
this building into a grander narrative
even things like this we'll kind of talk
about this deeper this is like this is
the map for the entire live stream and
Josh and I are thinking about you know
there are different moments that a
person experiences in a 1eh hour live
stream or even a 1 Hour film you know
when are when when are the audience when
is the audience happy you know I put a
smiley face when are they dipping down
you know I say you know when they figure
out S5 is going to be delayed they're
going to be sad as we got to bring
them back up make them happy so we
really have to communicate why s is
delayed right
so working backwards from intent is
probably one of the most important
things that's going to start to make
everything else really easy but figure
out intent is actually very difficult
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