Nicolas Cole says most writers miss what actually matters: specificity, tangibility, and objectivity. Vague advice like "care about customers" fails. Precise advice works: target a $1M software company struggling with churn, give measurable steps, skip the interpretation.
Whenever you're asking yourself, is the thing that I'm writing valuable? This is what you need to ask. What is value? Value is specific, it is tangible, it is objective, and it clearly answers someone's question. So like specific, if you're like businesses need to care about their customers, is that specific? No, it's extremely vague and high level. Specific would be like if you run a software company doing less than $1 million a year in revenue, the number one thing you should be focused on is reducing reducing churn. That's specific. You're going through this little checklist of, am I saying something that is hyper-specific to the person that I'm trying to reach? Can I make it tangible? Can I quantify it in some way? Can I hold it? Can I feel it? Can I measure it? Is it objective? Subjective being, is it open to interpretation? Subjective would be, here's how to live a happy life. If I ask 10 people here, how do you define living a happy life? I'm going to get 10 different answers. But if I say, here's how to move to Michigan, buy a lake house, and retire with your 2 dogs and half a mil in the bank. That's very objective. If I ask 10 people, what's your interpretation of that? 10 people will all tell me, oh, I guess we're moving to Michigan and buying a lake house. We got 2 dogs and half a mil in the bank.
What Every Writer Gets Wrong About Their Audience #writing #creator #writingtips
