Nowadays, many people have established their own personal brands through writing, because there are new writing opportunities, and some people have such a sigh, hoping that they can make great achievements through writing. However, the ideal is beautiful and the reality is skinny. Once I started writing, I couldn't hold back for a long time and said, "I have nothing to write. How can I not write?"
What I want to share next comes from these two books: Wen Xin and A Guide to Writing. Writing is so easy for you if you read these two books thoroughly.
No matter which explosive article it is, it only needs to go through six processes from scratch. These six procedures are: clear objectives ―― understanding readers ―― brainstorming ―― organizing articles ―― writing the first draft ―― revision.
Self-questioning, determine the only theme
Many people have a lot of ideas in their heads and think they can write anything. However, as soon as I picked up the pen, I began to write, and I was confused. I don't know what I want to write. This is caused by the unclear theme before writing. Before you start writing, you should ask yourself, "What is the theme 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. To find a good job? How can I find a good job? Need resume, need ability, need interview. How many parts have you written in this article? Or just write a part and analyze it in depth?
Want to know your writing purpose first, and what you want to say? So that your readers can read your article easily.
What kind of article do you want to write?
After defining the only theme, think about it: what kind of article do you want to write? Writing soft articles and advertising? Write a review to deeply analyze an industry and a phenomenon? Or writing a novel? Different types of articles have different expressions.
What do you hope to achieve?
Before you start writing, you should ask yourself: What can readers get from reading your article? Get some kind of learning method? A skill? Or triggered her emotions, moved? Compassion? Hate it?
If you just write articles for yourself, you don't need to consider these issues. However, if you want to show your article to others, you should think about these problems before you start writing, instead of waiting for the readers to think.
From "I want to write" to "to whom"?
In sales, the salesperson should ask: Who will this product be sold to?
To make a product, the product manager should ask: Who is this APP for?
When designing an activity, the general director will ask: What is the main purpose of this activity?
In my opinion, the same is true of writing articles. Since you want the article to spread, it is a product, so you must know who the users are. Who needs to read your article?
China has a population of 65.438+0.3 billion, and not everyone is willing to read your article. Therefore, before each article, you should put a string on it: who am I writing this article for, what kind of people its readers may be, what needs and pain points these people have, and what they are not interested in.
You may feel very tired. Writing an article is a very literary thing. Why has it become so utilitarian? Sorry, it's really not. Unless you write an article that you don't want to spread, just write it to yourself. This is your little secret, so it doesn't matter how you write it. Or you are a born celebrity, even if you write a piece of shit, there are regular fans who are willing to buy it.
Current reader situation
After determining your target readers, you should analyze the cognitive situation of the target readers. What information and knowledge points they already know, you don't need to write any more. What information and knowledge points they don't know, or even misunderstand, need you to explain.
For example, if you want to write a book review, you should know what knowledge points readers know. For example, readers can know what this book is about just by looking at the catalogue, and you don't need to list them one by one. What readers don't know is: what is the essence of this book, what is specifically said in it and who is the author? These readers don't know, you can write.
There are many brainstorming techniques, such as reverse thinking and changing the environment. . . . I won't elaborate here. However, pay attention to one thing: the core of brainstorming lies in readers, so you need to brainstorm from the perspective of readers. You can't think for a long time, it's all from your own point of view.
You can focus on the following two points for reference only.
What emotions do readers have?
The book Wen Xin says: The general psychologists can divide the functions of our mind into three types: knowledge, emotion and meaning. Knowing is knowing, feeling is feeling, and meaning is meaning. Knowing what one thing is and how it relates to other things is the function of knowledge. For a thing, there is joy, anger and sadness, which is the role of love. For a thing, how to deal with it is the role of meaning.
When brainstorming, we can think about which piece the reader may be missing from three angles: knowledge, emotion and meaning. Can you fill in this missing part?
Storm information
You came up with a lot of ideas through brainstorming, which is not enough. You need to attack this information again. You should think about: from which information points will readers be interested and willing to read your article. Information points that readers will not be interested in. For example, if you write an article about financial management and talk about funds, if you use technical terms, Xiaobai can't understand it at all, and he doesn't want to read it. However, if the fund is compared to various vegetables, such as kung pao chicken, fish with pickled vegetables and shredded potatoes with hot and sour sauce. . . Do readers prefer to see a series of dishes as metaphors to analyze and explain the fund? More acceptable?
Brainstorming is not to make you think, but to brainstorm purposefully after you know the purpose of writing and the readers.
There are many ways to organize articles. Much depends on the type of the article itself and the purpose 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 follow the importance; If you want to describe how to use it, you can disassemble it step by step.
Wen Xin holds that there are three principles for organizing articles. They are: order, liaison and unity.
When chatting casually, there is no need to organize language and logic. It doesn't matter if you talk less and talk more. However, an article is an independent unit, just like a team, a house, a string of independent meanings and emotions. Once you become a unit, you must pay attention to organization. As the saying goes, "No rules can make Fiona Fang", and any organization is like a grain of sand.
Everything is ready, except the pen. Now, you sit in the chair, turn on the computer, and then start writing according to the sorted materials.
When writing the first draft, many people feel anxious, as if they can finish it soon, but they feel that they have not written well enough and what they want to express is incomplete. . This kind of anxiety will only appear when you are too anxious and want to do it in one step.
An article becomes a good article step by step, not an explosive article or an excellent article immediately after it is written. So don't worry, just relax. When writing the first draft, you just need to express your feelings in your heart. As Wen Xin said, why should we write? The answer is: writing is a part of life, and what we feel is as natural as eating, sleeping and talking, so we need to express it.
When writing the first draft, don't think about whether it is good or not, whether there are typos, whether the sentences are fluent or not, and whether the readers are willing to read it. This is not what you thought when you wrote the first draft. You just need to go all out to finish this article, and put other ideas aside for the time being.
Now it is time to consider whether the sentence is fluent and the content is easy to understand. Wen Xin holds that the quality of an article can be observed from three aspects.
The ideological content can't be enriched immediately, so we need to read more and experience more. This will not be completed soon. The common people's faults are incorrect grammar and improper words.
Secondly, you need to pay attention to the time when the article is revised. Don't revise the first draft as soon as you finish it. Because after writing the first draft, your brain has just begun to relax from a tense state, and it has not been emptied. You need to have a rest, then read your article and revise it.
Haruki Murakami wrote in My Occupation is a Novelist: When I write a novel, I finish it all first, then lock the written content in a drawer and do other things. A month later, I opened the drawer, reread my novel and began to revise it.
We ordinary people don't need a month. You can write articles in the morning and revise them at noon and evening. Or you can modify 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 writing it.
The article has been revised, and it can't be an explosive article after it is written. You should not only be able to write, but also modify your own articles and perform one or even several operations on your own articles.
We should form the habit of constantly revising until we can't correct the problem.
When I was studying, I wrote for the exam. In order to complete the task, I thought writing 800 words would kill me. Now 800 words only take about 5- 10 minutes. Composition is life, not an ornament of life. If you get used to it, you can't quit, and you will get a disease of "if you don't write, you will feel uncomfortable".
Why do you want me to write? I just want to answer you with a sentence written by Teacher Zhou:
"Writing has never been to influence the world, just to settle down."
The mind map of this article: