Great Writing Isn’t About Following a Formula, It’s About Feelings

Create work that remains with the reader instead of focusing on virality.

Photo by Elias Maurer on Unsplash

I used to have rage blackouts over the formulaic writing that felt borderline Bubonic in the way it permeated every square inch of the internet. It’s a simple set-up taught by people who charge you $399 for a course designed to sell you the illusion that you can achieve their level of fame and success if only you apply their secret tricks and elusive formula. 

Ma’am.

It’s a story with a three-part arc where it begins with an anecdote that’s meant to be relatable, drawing the reader in — much like a fakir with a basket of coiled snakes. We cleave to that which is familiar — we’re biologically wired for the tried and true, what’s safe. 

Perhaps a touch of vulnerability is offered, but this is the kind of writing that lies on top of sheets and never gets beneath the covers. It never burrows deep. Then the second part unpacks the neat and tidy story, imparting a learning. An awakening, if you will where all knowledge has been revealed and unfurls at your feet. And finally, the story closes with how you too can emulate, shape-shift, be like me, etc. 

I don’t have a problem with this formula, per se, because with age comes wisdom and calm and the belief that all writing serves a purpose and not all writing is meant to be high art. I get it. And I don’t believe in binaries because some formula writing can be deeply memorable and meaningful. If a listicle helps someone navigate their life, mazel tov. Get down with your bad self, etc. 

However, I wonder about writing that becomes so homogenized you can’t discern whether a human or machine wrote it. I worry people will come to believe a formula that breeds virality is considered great because more eyes are on it. When more is not better, it’s simply more. Because we live in an age that rewards people not for the work they create but how commercially successful it is. They become flipsides of the same coin, and the person who writes the poems five people read or the short story writer who breaks ranks with language are considered novelty acts not worth emulating. 

Because who wants to learn from someone with only 500 followers. Better to follow that guy over there with legions. He must be on to something. He must be great. And he may be great but he also might be a terrific marketer, or a combination of the two. Numbers don’t define greatness. 

But I wonder about losing wonder. Where is the risk? Where is the magic? Where are the rule-breakers? Where are the weirdos and artists who color outside of the lines. What about the people who don’t want to sell you a course or shake you down for coin, but simply want you to be moved by what they create? And if they make money from it, cool, but that’s not the objective. 

For me, great writing, writing that teaches, writing that endures long after a reader has abandoned the page, is about what is stirred in the reader. It’s about the person who delivers the unexpected, they’re not afraid to ditch formulas in favor of creating something that pulls a reader in by the weight of their words instead of how they’re marketed. 

I say this as a writer and a marketer who’s played on opposing ends of the spectrum and muddied their way through the middle. 

For years, I was made to believe a piece of writing was only deemed worthy if the legions read it. For both of my books published traditionally, the focus became less on craft and more on salability. How conventionally attractive I was. How healthy my socials were. Newsletter open rates and my ability to sell the book. I wanted to shout: is the book in the room with us or are we just here, and only here, to talk about money? 

And yes, I worked in publishing for years. I’ve worked in marketing for over two decades. I realize books are a business but it’s become such that the business has complete subsumed the art and often drives the art. And that binary scares me because I think healthy writing comes from all types playing harmoniously in the sandbox — not knighting those who shout the loudest or those who are the prettiest. 

I’ve had friction with my former agent and publishers because I prioritized art over commerce. I knew both were a reality but I wasn’t going to sacrifice my work in the pursuit of a wider audience. I wasn’t going to stop writing about difficult, unlikable characters because they weren’t “relatable.” Broken people move me because the learning is in the pieces they leave behind. We learn from their shards not their pristine and glossed-up bodies, their constant return to manufacturer settings. 

Writing for me is about danger, it’s about sitting in discomfort and going to the places I sometimes don’t want to go. But in that exploration, something new and fresh and beautiful is always discovered. And that’s why I keep at it because of the discovery. The fact that I’ve been writing and publishing for decades and it still feels hard and new and strange and wonderful all in the same measure. I come back to the page because I don’t want to follow a formula but I want to get under people’s skin and linger. Whether they’re angry, hurt, sad, excited, bemused, beguiled, overjoyed — the whole kit and caboodle — I want them to think, to see the world perhaps in a way they haven’t seen it. I want them slightly uncomfortable. Shook, even. 

(For some reason I just had a Mobb Deep flashback, IFYKYK.)

I do this by a constant exploration of language. I do this by studying other writers because I learn not by lists but by what others have created. I challenge my work and am surgical and unemotional in the editing of it. I do this by playing with structure on both the story and line level, trying to create the unexpected. And I do this by being the kind of writer that sometimes will alienate readers because what I create will polarize or irritate. And that’s fine because I write to find and connect to my people, not attract and convert the legions. 

Because, for me, the mark of a great writer is not in how they accumulate, but rather how they touch and move people. Your work is just as valid if five people or five million read it. And both ends of the spectrum are fine as long as there’s balance. As long as we still seek out the weirdos, word architects, and story explorers who believe the story’s journey is perhaps more important than its finished, neat product. 

This essay was inspired by a comment a reader left: 

I thought I was going to read a nice list-icle on how to write.
zedthemillennial.medium.com

I’m rotten at responding to people because I’m sometimes awkward (hi, autism) and say the strangest things, but this comment moved me because this is what I aim to do in everything I create: challenge and change expectation. Surprise and delight the reader. Alter them albeit in the simplest way. 

 So, if it’s great writing you seek — explore and read far and wide, high and low. If you want to learn how to be a better writer, be willing to play in and outside the lines. Be willing to write the formula but break it to create something shiny and new. Be willing to return to the formula and write in and expand its borders because balance. Because exploration. Because of the love it.