I think most of the top authors on the list actually do align with the techniques I mention here.
Paul Graham doesn't, I agree. But a lot of the rest do.
Krebs, Julia Evans, Dan Luu, John Gruber, and Simon Willison all get to the point quickly and write for broad audiences. Dan Luu and John Gruber don't use a ton of images or headings, but Krebs, Evans, and Willison do.
>almost all of my front-page posts were no-headers!
Those posts would all still be on the front page today if they had included headings!
But really, I admit that this is my most subjective point. I feel like headings are helpful, but a lot of the writers I admire don't use them (Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, DHH).
You went from "Images should above all never be funny," to "You get this jarring tonal whiplash when you add funny images to an otherwise serious text."
Yeah, if a post's text is 100% serious, then yes it would be jarring to insert funny images. Nobody's suggesting you do that, though.
>It also appears insecure and juvenile, as though you're not fully confident that what you are saying will stand on its own without attempts at comedy, and ironically raises questions about the age and experience of the author.
This comes across to me as strangely judgmental and narrow-minded about what good technical writing is.
Joel Spolsky is, in my opinion, the best software blogger of all time. His posts often integrated humor, and I think it definitely heightened rather than detracted from his writing.
Look at the bloggers who are most popular on HN: Paul Graham, Julia Evans, Simon Willison, Rachel Kroll, Terence Eden. All of them often use a lighthearted style and integrate humor, often with humorous images as well.
>And read it out loud! If you cannot, at least get an AI voice actor to read it for you. You catch so many more problems that way.
Definitely agree.
I initially included this in the article but I took it out because I wanted to limit to just advice I didn't see covered much elsewhere, but I always tell people to read their writing aloud.
I don't think an AI voice would get most of the benefits, though. For me, a lot of what I notice when I read my writing aloud is that I find myself naturally finishing sentences in a way that departs from what's on the page. And however I finished the sentence naturally almost always is a better rewrite than what was originally there.
>Counterpoint: writing blog posts so that they are read by someone else completely defeats the point of writing for 99% of people.
I think it's totally fine for authors to write for themselves, but I think the number of authors who have that goal is far lower than 99%. Maybe 5-10%?
For almost every author I've spoken to, they get satisfaction from people reading what they write. It doesn't have to be millions of people, but I don't think most people find it satisfying to spend hours writing an article for it to only reach a single-digit number of readers.
So, I don't think it should be every blogger's goal to find a wide audience, but if it is, I think the recommendations in OP will be helpful towards that goal.
You're obviously very good at writing things that get read by many people. It seems to be a very high priority for you.
The link on your website says "Write Blog Posts that Developers Read". I'd have expected that to explain _why_ writing blog posts that developers read is worthwhile.
> It doesn't have to be millions of people, but I don't think most people find it satisfying to spend hours writing an article for it to only reach a single-digit number of readers.
I write a blog that gets read by no one. When I publish a blog post, I don't check how many people read it. The blog has no particular topic, just whatever random thoughts pop into my head. Yes I'd like to improve my writing, so I can formulate my thoughts better. But I'm a little suspicious of anyone who thinks reaching a big audience is so obvious a goal it doesn't even require explaining why.
[Edit]: Ah, I think I get it now! You write about how to write so that people read your blog. And you're good at it, which leads to many people reading your blog. Naturally, your readers are people who want their writing to be read more. You interact with your readers, and that's why you think people write blogs with the goal of them being read.
>The link on your website says "Write Blog Posts that Developers Read". I'd have expected that to explain _why_ writing blog posts that developers read is worthwhile.
The post is aimed at people who want their writing to reach more developers. If they've reached the article based on the title, I assume they already want to reach more readers, so I don't think it's worth explaining at that point.
If I clicked an article called, "How to vertically center a div using CSS" and the article explained why I might want to center a div, I'd find it kind of strange and not what I want to spend my time reading.
>I write a blog that gets read by no one. When I publish a blog post, I don't check how many people read it. The blog has no particular topic, just whatever random thoughts pop into my head. Yes I'd like to improve my writing, so I can formulate my thoughts better. But I'm a little suspicious of anyone who thinks reaching a big audience is so obvious a goal it doesn't even require explaining why.
I think that's fine, and I support you doing that, but it just means that you're not the audience for this particular post.
I've published several other excerpts on the book's website that are about craft rather than strategy for reaching readers, so you might be interested in those.[0]
Thanks for responding. I guess I was getting at the fact that 99% of people won’t consistently hit high reader numbers. So to pick this as your goal, or starting point for an article, is dangerous because it just leads you to stop writing at some point.
But fully agree on the advice if the starting point is getting a lot of views/front page.
>I guess I was getting at the fact that 99% of people won’t consistently hit high reader numbers. So to pick this as your goal, or starting point for an article, is dangerous because it just leads you to stop writing at some point.
Oh, but I don't even think the numbers have to be "high" for this advice to apply.
Like I talk to bloggers who don't really have a strategy except to just keep writing and submitting to HN or reddit, but they don't get traction, so they get discouraged and give up.
The point I'm hoping to get across to those bloggers is that they can find readers if they think through from the beginning what topics they want to write about and what channels allow them to reach readers that match. That technique works even if you just want a few dozen people to read your posts.
My advice for just starting out is to not worry too much about following all the right practices. The more important thing is to try the process start to finish of picking a topic, writing a draft, editing it, publishing it, and finding places to share it. I'd start with something narrowly scoped that you can explain in 2,000 words or less.
I suspect that just experiencing the process end-to-end will give you a better sense of what areas you struggle with, and it will help you prioritize what writing advice to seek out.
Your comment suggests that you at least read the last section. : )
But still, that's headings and structure working as intended: You skimmed it, got a good sense of what it's about, and decided it wasn't for you.
I'm assuming that if I had presented the same information in a different way, it still probably wouldn't have appealed to you if you could tell from the headings that you weren't interested.
>So long as your article has a decent enough structure – which this article makes it seem is the only thing that matters.
Author here.
I hope I didn't give the impression that structure is all that matters, as that's not what I believe.
I think all the usual advice about choosing an interesting topic and writing well apply too, but I tried to focus in this article on blogging advice I don't see people discuss.
I think most of the top authors on the list actually do align with the techniques I mention here.
Paul Graham doesn't, I agree. But a lot of the rest do.
Krebs, Julia Evans, Dan Luu, John Gruber, and Simon Willison all get to the point quickly and write for broad audiences. Dan Luu and John Gruber don't use a ton of images or headings, but Krebs, Evans, and Willison do.
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