During the Chinese New Year, I went to my sister’s house for a visit. During the chat, my sister sighed: “Now I realize that learning Chinese is a very important thing. Those who are good at Chinese and have good writing skills will summarize their work at the end of the year. You can write with just a swipe, but those of us who don’t have ink in our stomachs can’t hold back a few words for a long time.”

Nowadays, many people build their own personal brands by writing, because they can write. Some people have also lamented that they have found new opportunities, hoping that they can also achieve their ambitions through writing. However, the ideal is beautiful, but the reality is skinny. When I pick up the pen, I can't hold back a word for a long time. I scratch my head and say: "I have nothing to write, why can't I write?" This type of complaint.

The content I want to share next comes from these two books: "Wenxin" and "The Complete Guide to Writing". If you read these two books thoroughly, writing will be so easy for you.

No matter which popular article is written, from scratch to something, it only needs to go through 6 processes. The six steps are: clarify the goal - understand the audience - brainstorm - organize the article - write the first draft - revise.

Question yourself and determine the only topic

Many people have many ideas in their minds and feel that they can write about anything. However, as soon as I picked up the pen and started writing, I was confused again, not knowing what I wanted to write. This is caused by unclear topics before writing. Before you start writing, you should ask yourself: "What is the topic of my article?"

For example: If you want to write an article about how to apply for a job, you should think about the purpose of applying for a job. What is it? To find a good job? How can I find a good job? It requires a resume, skills, and interview. How many parts should you write in this article? Or should I just write one part and analyze it in depth?

First think about the purpose of your writing and figure out what you want to say? This way your readers will easily read your article.

What type of article do you want to write?

After you have determined your unique topic, you need to think about it next: What type of article do you want to write? Write soft articles for advertising? Write a review and analyze a certain industry or phenomenon in depth? Or write a novel? Different article types have different expressions.

What do you hope to achieve?

Before writing, you should ask yourself: What will readers get from reading your article? Did you get some kind of learning method? A certain skill? Or did it trigger her emotions and move her? pity? hatred?

If you write articles only for yourself, then you don’t need to think about these questions. However, the article you write must be read by others. You should think about these issues clearly before you write, instead of thinking about it after you have readers.

From “I want to write” to “Who should I write to?”

When doing sales, the salesperson should ask: Who is this product going to be sold to?

When making products, the product manager needs to ask: Who is this app for?

When designing an event, the chief director needs to ask: What is the main purpose of this event?

I think the same is true for writing articles. Since you want the article to spread, then it is a product. You must clarify who the user is? Who needs to read your article?

Not everyone in China’s 1.3 billion population is willing to read your article, so before every article you write, you must be careful: Who should I write this article for, and what kind of article it is. People may be its readers. What are the needs and pain points of such people, and what are they not interested in?

You may feel tired. Writing articles is a very artistic thing. Why has it become so utilitarian? Sorry, not really. Unless the article you write does not want to be disseminated and is only for yourself to read and is your own little secret, then it doesn’t matter how you write it. Or maybe you are a born celebrity, so even if you write shit, there will still be regular fans who are willing to buy it.

Current reader situation

After determining your target readers, you need to analyze the cognitive situation of the target readers. Which information and knowledge points are already known to them, so you don’t need to write them again. What information and knowledge points they don’t know yet, or even misunderstood, need your explanation.

For example, if you want to write a book review, you should know what knowledge points the readers know. For example, what content the book is about, the readers only need to look at the table of contents to know. You do not need to list them one by one. What readers don’t know is: What is the essence of this book, what is it specifically about, and what is the author’s situation? These readers don't know that you can write about it.

There are many brainstorming techniques, such as reverse thinking and changing the environment. . . . I won’t elaborate on them one by one here. However, one thing to note: the core of brainstorming lies in the reader, and you need to brainstorm from the reader's perspective. You can't think about it for a long time, all from your own perspective.

You can focus on the following 2 points, for reference only.

What emotions does the reader feel?

The book "Wenxin" talks about: The functions of our heart are divided by ordinary psychologists into three types: knowledge, emotion and intention. Zhi is knowledge, emotion is emotion, and meaning is desire. This is the function of knowing what a thing is and how it relates to other things. Feeling happy, angry or sad about something is the function of emotion. How to deal with a thing is the function of mind.

When you are brainstorming, you can think about what the readers may be missing from the three perspectives of knowledge, emotion, and intention. Can you fill in this missing piece?

Brainstorm information

You come up with lots of ideas through brainstorming, but that’s not enough. You'll need to storm the information again. You have to think about: Which information points will interest readers and make them willing to read your article. Which information points will not be of interest to readers. For example, if you write an article about financial management and talk about fund knowledge, if you use professional terminology, a novice would not be able to understand it at all and would not want to read it. However, if you compare fund to various dishes, Kung Pao chicken, pickled fish, hot and sour potato shreds. . . Using dishes as metaphors to analyze and explain the fund, would readers be more willing to read it? More acceptable?

Brainstorming is not about letting you think randomly, but brainstorming with a purpose after clarifying the purpose of writing and understanding the readers.

There are many ways to organize articles. A lot depends on the type of article and what you want to achieve. If you want to describe something, you can do it in chronological order; if you want to convince others, you can do it in order of importance; if you want to describe how to use it, you can do it step by step and break it down step by step.

The book "Wen Xin" believes that three principles should be followed when organizing articles. They are: order, connection and unity.

When talking casually, you don’t need to organize language and logic. It doesn’t matter if you say less or more. However, an article is an independent unit, like a team, a house, and a string of independent meanings and emotions. Once you become a unit, you have to be organized. Just like the saying: "No rules, there is no circle." Without organization, it is like a piece of loose sand.

Once everything is ready, it’s time to start writing. Now, you sit in a chair, turn on the computer, and then start writing based on the materials you have compiled.

Many people feel anxious when writing the first draft, as if they are about to finish writing, but as they write, they feel that their writing is not good enough and that they feel that they have not yet fully expressed what they want to express. . This kind of anxiety occurs just because you are too anxious and want to get it done in one step.

An article becomes a good article step by step, rather than becoming a popular article or an excellent article immediately after it is written. So if you don't want to be anxious, just relax. When writing a first draft, you just need to express what you feel. As "Wen Xin" said, why do we write? The answer is: Writing is a part of life. It is as natural as eating, sleeping, and talking. We feel something in our heart, so we need to express it.

When writing the first draft, you should not think about whether the writing is good or not, whether there are any typos, whether the sentences are smooth, or whether the readers will read it. Just finish writing and put other ideas aside for now.

Now is the time to consider whether the sentences are smooth and whether the content is easy to understand. The book "Wen Xin" believes that the quality of an article can be observed from three aspects.

The ideological content cannot be enriched immediately. It requires more reading and more experience. This cannot be done quickly. The common mistakes that ordinary people make are incorrect grammar and inappropriate word choice.

Secondly, the time when the article is revised also needs to be paid attention to. Don’t revise your first draft immediately after writing it. Because after writing the first draft, your brain has just begun to relax from the tense state, and your brain has not yet been released. You need to rest for a while, read the article you wrote, and then revise it.

Haruki Murakami wrote in "My Profession is a Novelist": When creating a novel, he writes it all first, then locks the written content in a drawer to do other things, etc. After a month, I opened the drawer again, read the novel I wrote again, and started revising it.

We ordinary people don’t need a month. You can write an article in the morning and revise it at noon and night. Or you can revise the first two paragraphs at noon and the last two paragraphs at night, or you can do it in batches. As long as you don’t revise it immediately after you finish writing it, it will be fine.

The article is modified, and it does not become a hit article just after it is written. Not only do you need to be able to write, but you also need to revise your articles and perform one or even several surgeries on your articles.

You must develop the habit of constantly revising until you can no longer correct the problem.

When I was studying, I wrote for exams and to complete tasks. I felt that writing 800 words would kill me, but now 800 words only takes about 5-10 minutes. Composition is life, not an embellishment of life. Once you get used to it, you will never be able to quit. You will suffer from the disease of "I feel uncomfortable if I don't write."

Why do I write, you ask? I just want to answer you with a sentence written by teacher Zhou Guoping:

"Writing has never been to influence the world, but just to settle oneself."

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