Focus on the subject. The rest will follow.

A million years ago, I was getting ready to go to Burning Man. And my grad school thesis advisor, the late, great journalist Phil Patton, suggested that I write an article about the Burning Man art cars. He even said he’d help me pitch the idea to a few outlets.

I was reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson at the time, and the pitch I wrote had a very Gonzo quality to it. I was going to bring readers “out into the post-apocalyptic desert” to experience “the future of psychedelic automobilia.” The word “freaks” was used repeatedly.

I sent it around to a few people and they all passed. I was mystified.

Phil asked to see the pitch. He offered one sentence of feedback:

“Just say you’d like to write about the cars at Burning Man.”

This seemed like patently insane advice. But I figured why not give it a try? Of course the next pitch was accepted.

What changed?

The original pitch wasn’t really about cars. It was about me. And as an unknown, relatively novice writer, I was of precisely zero interest to anyone but me. Phil’s feedback brought the pitch back to the subject. And the subject spoke for itself.

It’s not always so easy. Sometimes the subject is kinda boring. (Or it seems boring at first…) Other times you’re writing and you’re not entirely sure what the subject is.

If you’re writing for other people, though, you always have to answer one basic question: Why?

Why are you writing about this? Why should the reader care?

You find those answers by focusing on the subject. Not yourself.

PS: In case it wasn’t clear from the above, I’m no expert on pitching to publications. To see what goes into a really thoughtful pitch, check out this article.

Start with more. Build to less.

Omit needless words. It’s perhaps the surest way to make your writing more readable.

But there’s a catch. “Less is more” is a great editing strategy. It’s a bad writing strategy. And it’s an awful brainstorming strategy.

I’ve learned these things the hard way.

When you’re writing a first draft or brainstorming a new idea, you want to have some sense of flow. You want to let ideas bounce off one another. Doing so helps reveal connections. You begin to see the ideas waiting below the surface.

To flow, you must give yourself permission. You must allow yourself to think and write down all the shit. You can’t do this if you’re thinking less is more. At this stage, more is more.

For me, this is the hardest part of writing. I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to think dumb thoughts—especially if people are paying me to have good ideas.

And yet you must. Because if you don’t go through this crucial process…if you try to start at the end…if you begin with “less is more” and don’t explore any further…

You usually wind up with writing that feels like a first draft. Because that’s really all it is.

Minimalism isn’t about doing less. It’s about stripping away what’s unnecessary, to reveal the essence of something. To do that you start with more, and build to less.

Make the end the beginning

Writing a first draft can often feel like a guessing game. The whole time you’re wondering What the hell am I trying to say?

In my experience, the answer often appears—somewhat magically—in the very last sentence of your first draft.

Why? I can’t say for certain, but here’s my guess:

By time you’ve written a first draft, you’ve done some deep thinking about your subject. What’s more, you’ve done the hard work of actually writing down those thoughts. They’re outside your head now. So you’ve gained a new perspective.

Plus, the last sentence is often a nice distillation of everything that came before.

So here’s what I like to do:

Once I’ve written that last sentence, I move it to the beginning. I make it the very first sentence.

This edit doesn’t always work or make sense. But you’d be surprised by how often it does.

Now your essay/blog/email/Tinder message opens with a really clear statement. It says exactly what it’s about.

From there, you can see how everything else you’ve written relates to the first sentence. It becomes much easier to cut, restructure, or rewrite, because you finally know what you’re trying to say.

One way to make a sentence funnier

Here’s a trick I stole from Gene Weingarten’s book The Fiddler in the Subway. He stole it from the newspaper columnist Dave Barry.

Put the funny word at the end of the sentence.

Let’s try it.

My ass is sore.

Vs.

I’ve got a sore ass.

Which is funnier? I think it’s the second one. Here are my totally unscientific reasons why:

“Ass” is the most interesting word in the sentence. The most vivid. Putting it at the end punctuates the sentence in a more memorable way.

You could think of the funny word as the cherry on top. The little present you give to your reader. Saving the funny for the end builds some tension and release. Tension is crucial to interesting writing.

Of course, neither sentence is comedy gold. There are plenty of ways to punch it up further. For instance:

I suffer from a sore ass.

Now you’ve got a stronger verb (“suffer”) which creates a stronger image. It also adds some nice alliteration (suffer…sore), which makes a better sound in the reader’s mind. You’re on your way to a funnier sentence.

For now, try experimenting with how your sentence ends. In other words:

Play with your sentence’s ass.