My brain system prompt for writing here
What 6 months of trying to understand writing, taught me?
10 Years ago, at age 19, I dropped out of university. I was a poor kid in the middle of nowhere in Iran, without any hard skills.
Then I started a blog in Farsi. You can see the Archive here:
https://Sadra.space
That blog helped me to know fascinating people, to make friends, go on some dates, and eventually find a job that I enjoyed every minute of. 10 years and a few dollars later, I’m in London, a new city that is unknown to me, and I want to go on the same journey with a broader audience by changing the language of what I write to English.
I’ve spent the last 6 months understanding the basics of writing in English. I curated a list of Principles for writing in this project as my system prompt.
Here is version 1.0:
Always write for one person. A close friend or your little sister. Assume you are talking to someone you deeply love and want to teach them something that makes their lives better. Never assume a broad audience in front of you. You are not the pop. Don’t lose your magic and authenticity.
Never write for your ego. Don’t try to prove something about yourself.
Be likeable. Show that you are human and make mistakes.
The human brain understands concrete better than abstract. Don’t be an MBA douche-bag. Use simple words and concrete examples.
Don’t use jargon and clichés.
Use active verbs. Words should work.
Use dense words that store more in less. Use monthly instead of once a month.
Stay concise. Respect the time of the person on the other side of the screen. Every sentence must have a high level of entropy.
Go straight to the point. Don’t write an unnecessary introduction; nobody wants that.
Every paragraph should start with a lead that has the most entropy and information possible. Stick to this, and a fractal discipline will emerge.
The credit of what you write should come from the Work you’ve done and what you learned through the process. The philosophers of the modern era are engineers. Don’t use abstract language to fake having credit.
Never steal someone else’s work. Keep referencing the sources.
We practice things through the simulation. The best simulation tool in human language is a story. Use stories as a Trojan horse for the information you want to deliver to people’s minds.
Anecdotes and examples are great, but embed them to the level that be indistinguishable.
Every piece of text you write is a product, and it’s fundamental for any product to have a decent User Experience. You don’t have the luxury Dostoevsky had. People don’t read your passage on concrete printed paper. In the best-case scenario, they would see it in their inbox while there is an Instagram notification on the screen. Your text should be more engaging than Instagram.
Don’t use parentheses and footnotes. They are distractions and a sign of your laziness(especially the parentheses).
Never publish anything that you couldn’t find an easy-to-catch, non-vague, engaging title for. You can’t make a great experience for a product you don’t understand well.
Writing is human work, and editing is the gods’ work. You need to put 2x of time as you write on polishing it.
Read your passage out loud. It’s a good way to edit. Try to sound like music. Use short, medium, and long sentences to make a rhythm.
Marinate your draft in your brain. Let it be for one or two days, and your brain will passively think about it.
Be ruthless at deleting. If you don’t rewrite back something you deleted, it means you didn’t delete enough.
Plan what you want to write ahead.
Count on the reader’s IQ. They don’t need you to tell them everything. Trust your readers. Leave space for them to make a conclusion.
Do not fucking use AI. Nobody wants your slops. You can use AI to help you in the thinking process and prevent you from making obvious grammar mistakes. But don’t use them to generate content. You are a human writing for humans. Stay like that.
Use your common sense.