The Secret: How to Write a Perfect Medium Post
I HATE to write. This is not about how I hate to write, but what I learned at a writing workshop hosted by Medium and The Hustle. It made me like it more:
The First Sentence Needs to Punch you in the Face
My first draft started out: “I love the Medium format and platform”. It was failing the first advice… I changed it to “I HATE to write”. And yes, I’m using all their advice in this post.
Write a Dump for Your First Draft 💩
Just get the words out. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’ll just write and write and write. Not giving a shit about whether it’s good or bad. I’ll deal with that later. Because once I’ve got all my words down, not looking back, I …
Go for a Walk
This allows me to incubate what I’ve written. I’m told to wait for 24 hours until I touch my text again. That’s hard to do when on a deadline. With our posts on growth hacks in popular games, we wrote and published one post every day for a week. From now on we’ll try to plan a little further ahead.
CUT!
The first 25% of the post needs to go. It’s just rambling anyways. Then cut 30% more of the text!
This is just like “killing your babies”. I’m constantly challenging myself to get my point across with fewer words.
<800 Words or >1,500 Words
Well, that helps. Originally I had 1056 words. Hard cutting definitely helped and now it’s down to 799 words (25% reduction).
Space is Your Friend
Use it often. Break up your paragraphs and leave room to breathe. Make your stuff readable — like I’m trying now!
Write in First Person — Make it Feel Personal
All the top Medium posts are using first person writing. This is challenging as the academic writing way is as far from personal as it gets.
We actually tried to avoid using first person writing when we wrote our Dissection of Games posts. And even worse: We published them from our Megacool account instead of our personal ones. #fail
Write Sentences that Makes You Want to Read the Next
Because using words like ‘but’ and ‘because’, are good hooks. But my teacher told me never to start a sentence with ‘but’! I guess I’ll have to practice this.
We were recommended reading a Medium post about a prostitute to learn the skill of hooking the reader. I recommend that you do not try to use Google to find it (like I did)…
Write for 8th Grader Reading Level
Use simple, easy to read words, as if you’re in a casual conversation. I need to use active voice and avoid adverbs, words ending with -ly, really and very. Maaan, that’s all the words I usually use..!
Be a Good Storyteller
That’s easier said than done! For some of us this comes natural while for others we need to get our 10,000 hours of practice in. Well, here’s to my first 5 hours.
Storyteller > Grammar
I’m not dyslectic, but I still struggle with incorrect writing (doesn’t help to be foreign). I hope that my current storytelling level makes you accept my lacking grammar level. I use tools like Grammarly to fight this, but their integration is pretty bad when editing on Medium. I use the HemingwayApp to identify and clean up my long sentences and unclear language.
Get people to FEEL and get them to TALK
I need to create some sort of awe, excitement, and anger. This is like the word-of-mouth elements we used when I worked on the Fun Run games!
Headline — 90 % of Your Battle
I started this post with the headline: “What I Learned at a Writing Workshop with Medium”. After reading the Buffers headline formula, and searching Google for “Emotional headlines”, I changed it to “The Secret: How to Write a Perfect Medium Post”.
It’s all about: “What do you have to do to get them in the door?”
Use Images
You should use an image for every 4–500 words! Recommended free resources include Unsplash and Flicker.
Copy Others Work
Learn from the best. Find an article that you enjoy reading. Copy it word by word. Eventually, you’ll learn to write like that!
I hope you found this as actionable and valuable as I did. Check out The Hustle for their next workshop. I want to thank the staff from both The Hustle and Medium for putting this on!
This is my first published post after attending the workshop. I’d love to get your feedback on how I’m doing: Reach out on Twitter using @aurorakb or in the comments below.
About the Author
Aurora has embarked on her third startup journey, this time across the pond in the heart of the startup world: Silicon Valley. Since 9 out of 10 startups fail, she has been starting 10 with her amazing co-founder @nbroby. Follow their startup journey, and check out their Megacool products.
