How Daniel Pink Wrote 6 Research-Based International Bestsellers
A cheat sheet from a best-selling author reveals, how he researches, writes and transforms vague ideas into masterpieces
What is abundant in the world today are opinions. But what is scarce is substance. Backed with evidence and research. — Daniel Pink.
Have you ever dreamed to write a book that can inspire millions?
A book that can shake the world with its opinion.
Anybody can write something, publish it, and get slashed the next day.
To write something meaningful, that people can resonate, inspire, and shape new perspectives, you need to follow a process.
A process all the elite writers follow. They have internalized these habits and routines, which seem second nature to them.
Their neural patterns developed so powerfully in this process, that they can transform vague ideas into absolute masterpieces.
Though it seems this would be similar research, writing, and editing thing; but every savvy writer has got a slightly different angle to write and we can learn from each.
Daniel Pink is one of such authors who has inspired and shaped some of my opinions. He is a hardcore researcher, published 6 bestselling books in the last 20 years. He writes on motivation, persuasion, and selling; demystified what ticks people and how to use this information in businesses and in personal lives.
In this article, I have dissected Daniel’s entire book writing process and how he transforms raw ideas into bestsellers.
Why writing is a key skill?
Before we dive into the article we need to consider why writing is important not only for writers but for everybody.
We live in a world where most of our communication is virtual. Face-to-face communication is diminishing.
You need to write something to communicate, whether through an email, proposal, report, writing presentations, blog posts, or a social media status.
Therefore writing is crucial to present and persuade people about your ideas. It is an incremental skill to succeed in business today.
The second compelling reason is, writing is a form of thinking. The process helps you think clearly about ideas.
For Daniel, the writing process could be divided into three phases:
1) PREWRITING-Research, outline, everything before he actually starts writing.
2) WRITING-Actual draft of the book, blog post, or report.
3) EDITING- Process after the first draft, involves editing and feedbacks.
According to Daniel, this process is not linear. You have to embrace the messiness and unpredictability of any writing process. Often at the editing stage, you realized that you missed a key perspective, and you need to go back to the prewriting stage.
1. Prewriting
a) How to develop great ideas
We usually listen that great ideas appear in flash of moments during diffuse modes of our brain. As our subconscious mind works when we are not focusing on the task. But you have to feed something into your subconscious mind to receive great ideas.
You need a process to acquire ideas. Daniel executes a 3 step process.
1. He gathers all the ideas in idea buckets.
2. Revisit these ideas often, determine the best ones and discard the crappy ones.
3. Pick out ideas that would stand the test of time.
He accumulates these idea buckets in Dropbox, physical paper files, email folders, and Evernote. Whenever he encounters something intriguing, while reading an article online, in a book, or talking to somebody, he would immediately put it in the idea basket.
These ideas are often incomplete, vague. He keeps a running list of such ideas. So idea-collection is the first step for Daniel.
He ponders upon these idea buckets periodically after every 6 to 12 months. As a writer, it is your job to acquire ideas, visit them periodically, filter and remove them ruthlessly.
Once he teases out the best ideas then he reflects, what is the possible book or article he can harness from this idea. There is a hell of a difference between writing a book and an article. Because a book consumes 2 years of his life. (There are some ideas you love to pursue for a longer time).
How Daniel figures out book ideas?
“I trust my intuition because I have to do the work. Sometimes, I discuss with my literary agent, publisher, close friends and ask what they think about the idea. I specifically look for their body language and questions that start triggering in their mind. It’s like social proof for a writer who is working alone, thinking and wondering. Such collaboration is valuable to receive different perspectives that help me to refine the idea further.” — Daniel Pink
This idea generation strategy can work in many forms. A book or a full article. Collect your ideas in a single place, review and reflect them often, figure out the best one, and see if you can stick to this idea for a long time.
b) Research Process
Research is an incremental step in the prewriting phase because it helps you to test the validity and reliability of your ideas. It guides you to communicate your perspective in a persuasive way.
A key factor to stand out from the crowd. High-quality content is created only by great research which differentiates average books from the classics.
It is often recommended to craft an outline before writing an article or a book. But Daniel applies a slightly different approach. He suggests doing some research before making an outline. Research helps you to figure out what are the right things to start finding out.
For Daniel, the essence of research is following the clues. You are just following clues, and only following clues. Let yourself learn and grow during the research process. This serendipity leads to build meaningful connections.
How to find the clues?
To find clues, he read research articles, and search-related experts and asks them specific questions.
For example, if he is writing a book on how groups synchronized, he would explore Google Scholar or Pubmed and scan interesting research articles in this domain. Read and jot down key points. Often most research studies cite a common paper so he delves into that paper to gain maximum insights.
This approach is common in academic writing, but it can equally be applied to general writing. He is just following the clues and only following the clues.
At the beginning of this process, you actually don’t know what’s going on and where you are leading. For some people, this ambiguity could literally kill them. What you need is patience in the process. It will lead you somewhere.
It is absolutely fine to go without a plan at this stage. In fact, it is handy to stay flexible here and let yourself learn and grow in this journey.
You can use Google scholar and reach the best papers. If you get stuck somewhere, there are email addresses of the authors you can consult with. Have few questions about the paper or conduct short interviews with these experts.
How to reach experts for interviews?
Insights from experts build credibility to your work. So don’t hesitate to ask them.
- Always keep your message brief and remain professional.
- Identify yourself and what you are trying to learn.
- Ask specific questions.
Keep your sources credible
Whether you are writing a book, an article, blog post, or social media status, a crucial element is the credibility of sources. Because credibility is fragile, easy to destroy, and difficult to restore.
Talk to people and ask if they respect a journal in the field. You have to be skeptical about the sources you use.
How Daniel Crafts an outline?
After you have carried out some research, you need an outline or a map to categorize your main points and organize your sections. It empowers you to write your first draft with minimal resistance and figure out gaps for further research.
Let us assume Daniel is writing a book on sales and persuasion. After research, he discovers that he should allocate one section about the best pitches to use for persuasion.
He would think, I have done enough research about social aspects that influence people in best pitches, and I have talked to experts and I found few points repeating again and again and now I have mastered the subject.
So he’ll outline a chapter on best pitches, and decide there will be three parts in this chapter. In these three parts, one would make a compelling case about pitching people, the second part about stats, research and discuss some of the examples of the past work. In the last part, he would list strategies of great pitches and how to use them in the real world.
During this process, he often recognizes there could be another section added to this chapter so he will revert to research mode. After researching the fourth part, he will print out all this material and place it into a separate file compiler. Occasionally he discovers other missing elements, so he disposes of them in the outline and research for that part.
The point is, this process is not linear, and during the process, you will know the missing links.
Though you need research to start, it is in the process you discover pieces or holes you don’t know. Do enough research then start writing.
Writing Environment
The writing environment is oxygen for every writer. Some people like light music in the background, some prefer in busy places such as coffee shops. Some favor silence. Some write in the early mornings or during the nights. There is no best environment.
You have to figure out what conditions you can write best and what is your ideal environment. It will help you to stay focused and progress steadily.
2. Writing Process
After rooting out a feasible environment, it is critical to find the ideal writing process.
Daniel is a morning person, he mostly kicks off work at 8:30 and wraps up at 12:30. But he dedicates a word count of 700-800 words every day. During writing, he loves silence and avoids distractions. Even use earplugs and on top of that put on noise cancellation ear-phones.
He escapes all activities until he succeeds in his daily quota. (Avoid email checks, or gazing mobile notifications, place mobile outside the office).
For some days he achieves the word quota earlier, like 10:30, sometimes 11:30, or 12:30. For hard days it could even proceed till 3 pm, but he still resists the temptations and achieves his daily target.
He recommends writing a specific number of words every day. Writing is like a thousand-step marathon and you have to run each step until you hit your mark. Sometimes, it is really hard to show up and do work. It seems many forces in the universe are conspiring against you to not show up.
Be a soldier against all the pleasures, email, social media, news, gossip material, and show up. The key is to put your butt on the chair and do the work.
Writing the first draft
Writing the first draft is mental torture. Daniel is similar to most writers and aims to finish the initial rough draft (no matter how shabby it is), as early as possible.
Typically writers feel helpless in writing introductions. Mostly the introductions are throat-clearing, and your actual message starts from the third paragraph. So it isn’t weird to chop off the initial paragraphs.
Daniel prefers to write a compelling story in the introductions. Or hook readers either with a powerful question, unique statistics, or some mouth-watering facts.
In the body, he deploys navigational tools like sub-headings, pictures, or charts. These headers and sub-headers engage the reader; allow him an outline to follow the material easily.
In the conclusion, he uses quotations, or phrases that stir an urge on the reader to hold for a second and reflect on what he has already read.
3 Tips to becoming a better writer
Most celebrated authors are powerful readers. If you desire to transform writing to the next level, you need to read voraciously. Daniel practiced 3 things to upgrade his reading ability over the years.
1) Read widely-Domain and non-domain specific.
Many people read widely but in their specific fields. It facilitates acquiring depth in a certain field. But elite writers read diverse subjects.
This diverse reading will elevate your storytelling skills and you’ll gain different perspectives.
Daniel read non-fiction, fiction, long and short form, writers from different races and genders. It’s extremely powerful, and many writers don’t do this to a deeper level.
2) Chronic Notetaker
Whenever he reads, he takes notes. Highlights on the eBooks, and use pen to document or underline on printed papers.
3) Be a diagnostician.
Whenever he reads captivating content, step-back and reflects why it is so good. Read again and analyzes what these writers are doing here. Evaluate how they have organized stories, structured paragraphs. When they have used the stats and data to build arguments.
3. Editing and Proof Reading
The key to good writing is rewriting. And rewriting is editing. The first draft is often rubbish. It takes several rewrites and feedbacks to convert it to a great story.
Self-editing is the first stage of the editing process. There are three pitfalls Daniel looks for in this stage.
- Too thin. When the content is not convincing. Needs more research to make it compelling.
- Too Boring-get rid of stuff that doesn’t move the story. Your reader doesn’t bother how much effort you put in if the paragraphs aren’t advancing him. You have to kill your darlings.
- Too repetitious. You are writing things again and again.
There are two sides to editing: macro and micro editing. In macro editing, he focuses if sections transition smoothly. The right pieces are in the right order.
For the micro side, he assesses sentences if they are moving the story. Investigate the overused words.
The next stage after self-editing is to ask for constructive feedback. It facilitates reaching your full writing potential. You let your reader especially editors or friends dive into your system.
What Dan is looking for in feedback is their input about the storyline, grammar and spelling checks, flow, transitions, word choices, and overall work.
He consults his reviewers in three aspects. Which sections they’ll chop off, how will they summarize the same point of view, and if this manuscript makes sense? This feedback is significant in adding value to the draft.
How to choose a title?
Choosing a title is part science and part art. Suggestion regarding the title is most pertinent feedback you can receive.
3 Tips from Daniel about choosing titles:
1. They are accurate
2. They are exciting
3. They are concise
How to measure writing success?
It takes Daniel 2 years to publish a book after an intense process of research, writing, and editing. Now the book is at the mercy of readers.
They’ll decide if they were moved by the book. Dan employs two success measures for every book. Hard and soft.
Hard. The number of copies sold. The number of downloads/views or eBooks shared.
Soft. Are people emailing him? Did they say, the book has changed something in their life or they are asking questing about the topic? Soft measures demonstrate the reader’s engagement with the book.
Focus on the hard measures but don’t underestimate the soft measures. They tell you how much your reader engage with your work.
Summary
Here are some takeaways from Daniel’s process to write something meaningful today:
- Gather ideas whenever you stumble upon them, and keep them in idea buckets. Reflect often these ideas. Tease out the great ones and discard those that don’t make sense.
- Research differentiates an opinion from substance.
- In research look for the clues. It is in this process you discover great insights.
- Practice, and just practice. Writers write. This is the only way your craft will outshine gradually. The key to practice is consistency. Block a specific time in a day or a week, and write for 1-2 hours, and set a quota of words to achieve in this session.
- Figure out the best writing process supported by a feasible environment.
- Take constructive feedback during the editing process.
- Read widely, take notes like a pro, and dissect how great writers write stories. This is how Daniel crafts best-selling books.
Something I’ve learned over 20 years of writing. Consistency beats inspiration. The best — the only — way to get good work done is to show up every day. — Daniel Pink.
