The Framework I Use To Make Any Nonfiction Piece More Valuable

After writing so much nonfiction, I really came up with this through ghostwriting because I was— I have ghostwritten for hundreds of people. I eventually realized that the value of any piece of writing can really just be reverse engineered into a simple list of things. And I like to call this list the 10 Magical Ways to Expand Anything. All nonfiction writing comes back to these 10 ways. The reader— if you give the reader tips on how to do something, that is valuable. If you give the reader stats that explain why they should or shouldn't do something, that is valuable. If you give them steps to accomplish something, that is valuable. If you give them lessons, lessons like, like pulling the future forward, telling them things that they should know before they've experienced the thing that teaches it, to them. Lessons are valuable. Benefits, explaining why they should go do something in the first place, educating them is valuable. Reasons, getting them bought into why they should do something is valuable. Mistakes, knowing what not to do is valuable. Examples, give me pattern recognition, show me other people who have done the thing, that is valuable. Questions, what, what questions should I be asking myself, that is valuable. And some sort of personal story that gives the reader confidence. I did this, you can too, or this other person did this and you can too. That is valuable. Now, what's really interesting about this is this is such a simple idea, and yet the simplicity of it is what makes it so difficult to execute. A lot of times writers get lost in— when I sit down to write a newsletter, it's like I have to do this massive song and dance to somehow articulate value to the other person. And that's the wrong way to think about it. Instead, you should think with the end in mind and go, what does the person value? Well, I'll just skip to the end and tell all of you the answer. The person values 1 or 2 or 3 or all 10 of these things. That's what a reader values, which means your job in writing a newsletter is delivering on that value. So the very first question when you sit down to write The very first question you should ask yourself is, which of these am I giving the reader? That is quite literally— if you were to summarize the value of reading your newsletter, that is the core decision. Before you get into the writing, before you start debating sentence structure, before you start picking different adjectives, before you decide whether the writing is good or bad, all of that comes second to this fundamental decision, which is Literally, what am I giving the reader? And if you do not know literally the value of the newsletter— I am giving you tips, I am giving you steps, I am giving you mistakes— if you don't know that, if you don't have that decision, then how are you ever gonna deliver on it? And that is fundamentally why you have so many newsletters that just read like these meandering long opinions with no— like, where are we going? I don't know. I'm just reading and I have no clue what I'm actually getting out of this because the writer didn't start from a place of, okay, I have clarity over what I'm giving the reader. All right. Now, here is where things get really interesting. If you pick one of these, if you pick two of them, if you pick five of them, ultimately this list is very interchangeable and I'm going to show you, show you how this works because you can pick one and then use others to expand it, etc. Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to walk through this. But if we understand, all right, so value is the exchange of one of these things on this list with the reader, right? Well, then there are levels to value. So let me use a really simple example. Let's take Let's take tips. Okay, I'm gonna give the reader tips. Now, uh, let's do this live. I always love doing this as an exercise. Drop in the chat what is the topic that you're writing about, and the more specific you can be, the better. But give me, give me some topics to play with. Okay, let's do this one. We're going to do this for— and the topic is how, how to raise high-agency kids. Okay, so high agency kids being like, how do you raise kids that are independent, um, a lot of initiative, self-starters, right? Okay, here is where there are levels, and this is, this is the game for if you are here and you go, I want to build a successful newsletter and/or I want to in some way use writing. Let me introduce you to the game. This is the game. The game is how do I speak with increased levels of specificity and instruction and objectivity. Okay? So let's start with a really bad example. Let's say we're writing a newsletter called How to Raise high-agency kids. Okay, and before you start writing, you go, I've decided the core value of this one newsletter. I'm not saying you pick one of these and then you commit to it for 10 years. I'm saying every time you sit down to write one newsletter, you pick one of these, and that is, that's what's in the spotlight. That is the primary value to the reader. So you go, I want to write about this topic, how to raise high-agency kids, and the 10 Magical Ways, the one that I'm gonna pick is tips. I wanna give parents tips on how to do this, okay? Now here is a level 1, a very beginner writer, this is what they would do. They would go, the first tip is you gotta love your kids, and the second tip is you gotta push 'em, and the third tip is You got to hold them accountable. Are those wrong? No, those are, those are tips. But drop in the chat, are they valuable to you? Are they helpful? Did anyone see me write those 3 and immediately go, oh my gosh, I want to raise high-agency kids. I better pull out a pen and paper and write this down. Did anyone do that? No, you didn't. And the reason why you didn't is because, A, you know all— everything I just told you, you already know. Like, I don't think anyone here needed to be told you gotta love your kids, right? I don't think anyone here needed to be told you gotta push your kids, okay? So the first, the first biggest problem is you I didn't tell you anything new. I didn't, I didn't introduce you to anything that you don't already know or assume yourself. And the second problem is, if you look closely, these are bundled terms. Like, what is it? What does it actually mean to love your kids in such a way where you raise them to be high agency? What does it actually mean to push them? What does it actually mean to hold them accountable? These are bundled terms. So either— so the two problems I see most often with people's writing is, one, I didn't tell you anything you didn't already know, and second is I didn't unbundle the language and tell you what you need to do. I might have told you something, but I didn't tell you what to do with it. Okay? Does everyone, everyone understand? Same page? Quick pause. We all, we all get that. We all see the issue, right? I have mentored and trained north of probably 15,000 writers at this point. I will tell you that 99% of the time when I look at and evaluate someone else's writing, this is what I see. And that's okay, because everyone starts here. My job and my goal is to introduce all of you to, okay, becoming a proficient writer is not hard. It just requires you to understand what game you're actually playing. And so the game here is going, I need to do two things. One, I need to tell the the reader something they don't already know, and/or I need to unbundle the language and tell them what they need to do. Okay? Does this make sense? So your level of proficiency, I think oftentimes we, we confuse in the world of writing, we think that it's like you're either a terrible writer or there's a massive ocean or you're a genius. And it's— that's not really what's happening. What's happening is you have varying levels of specificity, varying levels of objectivity. And so your proficiency as a writer is your ability to increase and be more specific and more objective and more actionable and more instructional to readers, especially in nonfiction. okay? So let's push this a step further. Let's go, you know what, V2, okay? This is V1. V2 is how do we improve this? All right, well, we want more specific, we want more specific tips, right? So specificity is like, honestly, a really great thing you can do is like just go back to the 10 Magical Ways, and even though you're giving tips, you wanna think, all right, so what is it about the thing that I'm trying to tell the reader that would be helpful for them to know? And how do I— if I'm going to give them a tip, how do I make it as objective and measurable and easy to understand as possible? Okay, so instead of— and the way that I like doing— I think about this is if you start with something very broad, like, you gotta love your kids, this immediately becomes more resonant and more powerful if you think of a moment in which that happens. So let's do this together. Drop in the chat if you're a parent, what is a moment, like a literal moment, where you show your kids that you love them? Full attention at the dinner table.

Great.

How do we raise high-agency kids? "Tip number 1: No phones at the dinner table and you give them your full attention." This is actually saying the same thing as this, "You gotta love your kids," but I think we can all agree that that is perceived to be more valuable. Why is it more valuable? Because I can imagine it. I can feel it. I can measure it. How many nights a week did you allow phones at the dinner table? That is measurable. Okay, so the difference between vague, broad writing and specific objective writing is this. That is why you read one thing and you go, that was really helpful. You read another thing and you go, that was not so helpful. They might be saying the same things, but they're saying them in different levels of specificity. Now, the decision— when you're writing, the decision happens at the list level. Okay, so before I even get into the writing, the first thing that I'm asking myself, if you just sort of like reverse engineer this into steps. The first thing I'm asking myself is, which of the 10 magical ways is the primary value I am giving the reader in this newsletter? Now, can you— if the primary value is tips, could I also include some stats? Of course. Could I also include steps? If I wanted to. Could I also talk about lessons? Sure. Could I also speak to benefits? Yes. But one of them has to be in the spotlight. So just for this newsletter, the first decision is which one is in the spotlight? Then you go decision number 2: What's my list of that thing? So if the— if what's in the spotlight is tips, you don't need to go write a whole newsletter and write 1,200 words in order to figure out what you're trying to say. Your primary value is tips, so what are the tips? Your primary value are— is mistakes, so what are the mistakes? Your primary value is reasons, so what are the reasons? So before you write anything, you have some very high-level decisions, which is which one of the 10 magical ways is in the spotlight and What is my list of that thing that I picked? So here, if I'm writing a newsletter about how to raise high-agency kids, before I even get into the writing, I wanna make a list of, so what am I sharing? And I'm sharing, let's say, 3 tips. So great, so now we repeat what we just did. You gotta push 'em. What does it mean to push them? 'When your child fails at something, you don't give them an out or validate their excuse to quit. You force them to try at least one more time.' Great. Very, very actionable. You gotta hold them accountable. Tip. Your child doesn't do what they said they were going to do, you have to come up with some sort of punishment that negatively reinforces their action. I'm not a parent yet, so I have no idea if these are correct or not, but hey, you know what, let's, let's just run with it as an example. Okay, so I don't need to go write a whole newsletter to make this decision. Does, does everyone see that? I do not need to go spend 4 hours writing 3,000 words in order to decide what am I giving the reader. All I need to do is make the decision which of the 10 magical ways is in the spotlight, and then I just make a list of of, okay, so what am I giving them? Now, I wanna let everyone in on a little secret. The way that people consume media online, they do not read it, they skim it. And they only read it if in skimming it, they've decided that this is worth their time. And does anyone wanna guess, drop in the chat, what is the person looking for when skimming to decide whether or not this is worth their time? Yeah, they're looking for relevance. They're looking for relevance. But they're also— the main thing that they're looking for is they're looking to make sure that you actually deliver on the thing that you said you were going to deliver to them. Right. If you click on the title of this and you go, how to raise high-agency kids, that looks, that looks pretty helpful. And then you start skimming and the first subhead is, "You gotta love your kids," and the second tip is, "You gotta push 'em," and the third tip is, "You gotta hold 'em accountable," what's the natural conclusion that you come to? You probably go, "Eh, this writer's not giving me a lot," right? So this happens within 4 seconds. I see a title, I'm interested, I click, I skim, I look at the subheads, The subheads tell me how good the writer is at delivering on the thing that they're promising. So what's really funny about even long-form writing is that 80% of the value is this. If I, if I see a title that says Tips to Raise High-Agency Kids, what am I here for? I'm here for the specificity of the tips. If I see mistakes parents make when trying to raise high-agency kids, what am I here for? I'm here for the mistakes, right? That is the primary value that I am getting. And so 80% of the value and 80% of the decision before you even start writing is here. It's what am I promising in the subject line, in the title, and how do I deliver on that in the writing.

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