Writing Better By Focusing On One Thing

It’s all about the angles.

No, seriously.

If you’re going to write, you might as well try to write better.

By thinking about your angles before you write you exponentially improve your final product.


In school I used to construct shoddy outlines, and write like I thought — stream of consciousness.

That made for grammatically correct but wordy and boring papers. In today’s information-packed age, that kind of writing isn’t helpful.

People read and want to be taken on a literary journey.

They want a seamless transition between words and thoughts.

They want an angle that is fluid and gets deeper throughout the piece.


When I pick an angle, I ask myself, “what do I want my reader to walk away thinking?”

Then I ask, “what would lead my reader to think that?”

Then I begin my outline.

Angle changes everything.


When it comes to storymaking, you can choose hundreds of different angles and create hundreds of different stories with the same information.

That’s the point.

The world is complex, and which makes choosing one narrative difficult. Complexity is built upon complexity, and you need to make something simple.

The way to break through the complexity is to focus on one point — the one point you’re trying to make, or the one angle you’re committed to.

Focus on one thing. Decide on one angle. Construct one narrative.