Category: Writing Craft
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Borrow Tarantino’s Storytelling Method to Create Magnetic Content
I saw Pulp Fiction on opening night in 1994, and I remember two things with perfect clarity. First, the audience burst into applause after the opening scene, not the ending, the opening. I’d never seen that before. Second, I spent the next two hours with a question humming in the back of my brain like…
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Adopting Hemingway’s Bold and Simple Writing Style
Whenever I tell business people to write like Hemingway, someone inevitably says: “Hey, I’m no Hemingway!” To which the only reasonable response is: exactly. You’re not. Neither am I. That’s not the point. The point is that Hemingway chose to eschew obfuscation at every turn, to write simply and clearly instead of hiding behind flowery…
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A Straightforward Routine for Producing One Strong Article Every Week
The best writing advice I ever received was delivered in slippers. Mine, not someone else’s. I’d dragged myself to my desk on a cold morning, wrapped in flannel, nursing a cup of coffee that was more hope than caffeine, and I realized: the articles I was most proud of hadn’t been written in heroic marathon…
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A Reliable System for Writers Who Struggle to Deliver on Time
If you have trouble meeting deadlines, you’re reinforcing a stereotype I loathe: “Creative people are flaky.” That statement makes my blood boil. But I understand where it comes from. For professional writers, distractions aren’t always the enemy, they’re often the raw material of insight. The line between productive wandering and plain procrastination gets blurry, and…
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A Five-Phase Writing Workflow That Eliminates Three Common Frustrations
I once asked a room full of writers to name their biggest struggle. The answers poured in, dozens of them, but they all collapsed into the same three complaints: I can’t get started. I can’t stop rambling. I can’t finish. Sound familiar? (If it doesn’t, congratulations, you’re either lying or you don’t write.) Here’s the…
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A Detail-Oriented Writer’s Twelve-Step Preflight Guide for Blog Posts
I once watched a writer accidentally publish a half-finished draft to a site with six figures of daily traffic. The post went live with a placeholder headline that read “WORKING TITLE, FIX THIS.” It sat there, in all its glory, for forty-seven minutes before anyone noticed. That writer was not me. (This time.) But it…
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Editing Techniques That Turn Rough Drafts Into Compelling Masterpieces
I used to think writing was the hard part. Then I became an editor and learned the truth: writing is the first part. Editing is where the work actually happens, where you take the raw ore of your thoughts and hammer it into something that gleams. The content people share, bookmark, and email to friends…
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Twenty-Two Proven Headline Templates You Can Rely On
You already know the headline is the most important part of your article. You know it because every writing teacher has told you, because your own behavior proves it (you skim headlines and click the ones that grab you), and because the data is unambiguous: eight out of ten people will read your headline, but…
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Six Essential Ingredients Every Engaging Article Needs
Ask most people what their content marketing strategy is, and after you cut through the jargon, it boils down to something roughly translated as: “More eyeballs. Please. Any eyeballs.” This is not a new impulse. The quest for attention is as old as commerce itself. And it does matter, ask anyone trying to build a…