The Framework Behind Every Successful Nonfiction Writer

This is a question I have a lot of compassion for, 'cause it's something that I have struggled with for a long time too. I'll tell you where I'm landing with it is I think that, and this might not be the answer you want to hear, but I think it's the most helpful one, which is I think that when people say, I want to write personal essays, I think, What they're really saying is, I want a license to write what I want to write about, which is fine, but then simultaneously going, and I want to unlock some sort of external result. And so if you, if you, you kind of have to start from a place of realizing that those are two different aspirations. And the way that you get them to work together is you realize personal essay is really just a style. It's just you being like, "I want to write it in a certain way," and you can absolutely do that. It's just in order to unlock some sort of external result, you have to have an awareness and ideally a focus on, "Okay, but who is this for?" And that's why I was asking, if you copy-paste yourself, you're like, oh, this is for someone like me. It's like, okay, so who is that someone, you know? And the most helpful framework that I've found for this, in Ship 30 we called it the 4A framework, which is if you reverse engineer all nonfiction, all nonfiction really could be organized into 4 different categories. You have actionable, You have analytical, you have aspirational, and you have anthropological. Actionable, the value prop is here's how to do something. How? Steps, you know, 1, 2, 3, right? Analytical is here's why, usually backed by like data or studies or whatever. You know, you read things where you're like, oh, that's a really interesting study. I didn't know that. You know, that, that's a completely different type of reader. Aspirational is, this worked for me, it can work for you too. Or this worked for someone else, it can work for you too, right? It's very mo— it's, it's like the value prop is motivating. And anthropological is, here's the psychology behind why. So if you think about like personal finance, actually is the example we used with this. What's an actionable personal finance book? It would be I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. What's an analytical personal finance book? It would be like Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. What's an aspirational personal finance book? Probably like Rich Dad Poor Dad. What's an anthropological personal finance book, probably The Psychology of Money. So all of these people are writing about the same topic, but the lens through which they're writing about it is very different, and each one of these readers is a different type of reader, you know? Like, if I'm an actionable reader, I want content that tells me, Here's how to do something. Whereas if I'm an aspirational reader, I wanna read something that gives me confidence, that makes me feel like it's possible. And so I think for you, personal essay is just the style. It's just the style in which it's written. But the real question is like chunk up a level is, okay, it's an essay, but inside that essay, is it an actionable essay? Is it an analytical essay? Is it an aspirational essay? Is it an anthropological essay? And that will, that will help give you some direction of, you know, here's the topic I want to write about, here's the person that I'm trying to help, and here, here is their expectation. That reader is an actionable reader, which means my essays need to be actionable. Does that make sense?

Yes, very much so.

So is there one that you're leaning toward?

Um, probably Anthropological.

Cool.

I do like Morgan. Yeah, I do like his book. Um, sorry, I was like, I was going to Anthropological, then Aspiration. Like, no, let me focus on one, so I'll stick with Anthropological.

Yeah, and you know, this is like the thing I nerd out over is unpacking different types of writing and then asking Okay, so what makes that type of writing that type of writing? And if we unpack The Psychology of Money and you go, okay, I want to write something similar, right? Well, if we unpack it, what are the— what are the things that are valuable in The Psychology of Money? Well, one of them is like fables or short stories, you know, allegories, little like stories that illustrate the point. Right? And then you pair it with psychology or like studies. You know, I think of, have you ever read the book Moonwalking with Einstein? It was all about like a memory champion and like how he built up his memory. Like this is a cool topic where you could tie stories to, you know, Actually, here's this little-known psychology study or little-known part of psychology that most people don't know about that are related to this story that I just told you that illustrate the point, right? And then you have sort of your essay. You have your personal essay component, which is really just you giving commentary on the story or allegory you just told, plus the psychology study you just referenced. Like if you did those 3 things in every newsletter that you wrote, that would be valuable to this type of reader.

Oh, nice.

Does that make sense?

Yes, very much. I think I was thinking about it probably too deeply because one part when I was thinking to myself, why do I want to start this newsletter? It was like you say, MPGA to test, you know, use yourself as the guinea pig because eventually I do want to offer newsletter writing as a service. But I don't have that content library out there. So that was part of it. And the second goal of it was to maybe attract, you know, get some inbound leads through it. But mostly the first part.

Yeah, I mean, just, just to put it out there, you don't need to have a massively successful newsletter to start providing it as a service. You, you can, you can start doing that as soon as you want to. But if you're, if you're asking how to increase the likelihood of success for your newsletter, you have to remember that success being an external outcome of some sort. I want subscribers, I want people giving me their attention. Like, these are all external things. Then that means some part of the focus needs to be on the value exchange. Like, yeah, you want it to be enjoyable for you to write, But it ha— if you want any sort of external outcome, it has to in some way be aimed at helping someone outside of yourself. And so that's why I like starting with, okay, if these are the 4 different paths, these are the 4 different types of readers, the more clarity you have over this is the one that I'm trying to serve, then you, you have that expectation in mind, and then your writings serves to meet that expectation. You know what I mean?

Got it. Awesome. Thank you so much. This is very helpful.

Awesome. I'm glad. Good question. Thanks, Brittany. And yeah, um, Natalie's follow-up, uh, would Brittany create content for each type of reader or choose one? The ideal is, I mean, you can do all of these things, like especially with short-form content, you, you could bounce around. One day you could have a short-form post that's actionable, and tomorrow you could have one that's analytical. But generally I find that What you want is congruence and you want— over time you will find yourself gravitating to one of these, you know, like Morgan Housel, the author of The Psychology of Money. When he writes social content that's related to the psychology of money, there's high congruence there, right? The content is the same as the book. It wouldn't be as effective if he was writing books like The Psychology of Money, but then his social content is like, here's nitty-gritty actionable ways to save money. Here's how to call up your cable company and negotiate a lower rate. Right. Can you? Sure. But like, is it as effective as just doing more of the thing that you've already been writing about? No. And so that's, that's the thing with, with writing and bouncing around is like, it's not that you can't do these things. You can do whatever you want. It's just a game of, of the things that you choose to do, which ones have the highest impact? And the answer is almost always whatever thing is most congruent to all the other pieces. You want the social content congruent to the newsletter, congruent to the service you provide, congruent to the digital product. You can deviate a little bit, but the more that you deviate, the less congruence you have, and the less congruence you have, the harder it is to, you know, move people through that funnel or through that process.

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