The novelist helping nonfiction writers become thought leaders

You've got ideas. But if you're like most experts, people are ignoring them.
The novelist helping nonfiction writers become thought leaders

You have the idea; you just can't make it read; the draft comes out clotted and dead.
So did W. Brian Arthur, until Cormac McCarthy spent four days taking apart every sentence, and it became one of HBR's most-read articles ever.
McCarthy's fixes weren't grammar: ground abstractions in something you can touch, let a person in, punctuate by ear, cut what the message survives without.
So what turns an unreadable draft into a thought-leader's article?

Not better ideas — clearer packaging.
Anchor every abstraction to something the reader could stub their toe on, drop the impersonal passive that only pretends to be objective, punctuate by the ear rather than the rule book, and cut every word, sentence, and section the message survives without.
A novelist's craft, adapted to nonfiction, is what carried a brilliant idea from obscurity into a classic.

More posts in Show

Oct 17
The Fear that Keeps Experts from Writing
Oct 17
The ONE Rule You Can't Break If You Want Readers to Care
Oct 17
Give Me 33 Minutes, I'll Show You How to Write (almost) Anything
Oct 04
6 Rules of Writing Worth Breaking
Sep 27
How to Transform Messy Drafts into Clear Writing