Writing online has made me, Ujjwal Nova, over 30k in the last 9 months. And if you give me 9 minutes, I'll make you a better writer than 97% of the population. Why? Because I believe writing is the number one skill you can learn that will lead to a better life and make you irreplaceable in the next 5 to 10 years.
And by writing, I'm not talking about writing in the sense of corporate or academic writing, where you use a bunch of fancy words to sound posh or to hit a certain word count. I am talking about persuasive writing – the kind of writing that helps communicate your ideas better, that helps you think and speak better, that helps you influence other people. As Jordan Peterson says, "If you can think, speak, and write, you become deadly."
After I improved my writing, it improved my quality of life. I got to connect with some of the most creative minds on the internet, people who I used to watch on YouTube – I got to work with them. It put me in complete control of my finances in my 20s. I have complete freedom of time; I have complete freedom of when I want to work, where I want to work from. And while I can't promise that this article will buy you a villa by the beach or buy you a Lambo, give you a loving family, or peace of mind, if you give me the next 9 minutes, I'll show you five writing principles that will make you a better writer than 97% of people.
Principle 1: Start With The End
Now, before I show you what the first principle is, I want you to look at these pictures (imagine pictures evoking specific emotions). What's the first emotion or the first thing you feel when you look at them? It might be a sense of inspiration or justice. Or it could be a feeling of love, tragedy, heartbreak. Or it could be a feeling of mystery, moral conflict, paranoia – all those things.
So, while this isn't particularly about writing fiction or novels, there's one thing we can learn from all great stories, and that's this: all great writing evokes certain emotions. Therefore, before you start writing, start with the end. Figure out what's the one emotion you want the reader to feel by the end. Do you want them to be shocked? Do you want them to be surprised, happy, mind-blown? Do you want them to feel inspired? Do you want them to feel heartbreak? What's that one emotion?
Or, if you are more of an educational writer, what's the one big lesson you want them to take away? Start with that, and then reverse engineer your writing. See if you can share a story, an analogy, or some statistics to support this emotional lesson. Because if you have that clear ending in mind, writing becomes 100 times easier than if you just try to make it up as you go and ruin the ending. So, start with the end.
Principle 2: Hook Them Immediately
Now, the next principle might feel contradictory to the first one, but let me explain. Let's go back to the land of fiction for a moment.
In The Dark Knight, the opening scene is the Joker robbing a bank. In Mission Impossible 3, you have Ethan Hunt's wife getting kidnapped by this bad guy, and this bad guy says that he will shoot her unless Ethan reveals the location of the rabbit foot. Fight Club begins with a gun in the protagonist's mouth. Or if we look at one of the most popular animes of all time, Attack on Titan, it starts with the Colossal Titan breaching the wall, and you're immediately thrown into this feeling of chaos.
Now imagine, instead of that, Attack on Titan started the first 10 episodes with some long-ass, boring history explanation of how, a thousand years ago, there was this one girl who was cursed, and then everyone turned into Titans, and 100 episodes later, Erin's mom gets eaten by his stepmom and all that. It would ruin the entire pacing and intrigue of the story, basically.
Why is this relevant? Because while you might spend days or weeks or even months writing your masterpiece, 80% of your readers, 80% of your audience, they won't read past the first page. And if it's something like an email, they won't read past the first four lines. If it's a short-form video, they won't watch past the first 3 seconds. You have only a short window of opportunity where you have to grab their attention.
That's why you need to spend at least 70% of your effort on the hook – on grabbing the reader's attention. A good hook usually makes the reader curious, or it surprises them. It tells a story, or it calls out their pain points or desires. Of course, there are like other hook variations depending on what you're writing – whether it's a book, an email, a sales page, or a YouTube script. But as a general rule of thumb, you want to almost create an itch with your hook that the reader needs to scratch. And to scratch that itch, they have to keep reading.
Principle 3: Stick To One Big Idea
Now let me show you the biggest and most common mistake most people make that ruins their writing. It has nothing to do with the words they use or the style of writing. It comes down to a basic rule of writing which, once again, we understand by looking at some works of fiction, like John Wick.
Let's say you're having a movie night with your friends, and you want to watch John Wick. Your friends have never watched this movie, so they ask you to summarize the story of this movie in one sentence. So you say something like, "It's the story of this retired assassin who goes on a rampage after his dog is killed."
But your other friend, she wants to watch A Quiet Place instead. So you ask her to summarize the story in short, and she says something like, "It's the story of a family who's trying to survive after Earth has been invaded by aliens who can detect your location by sound. So if you make a sound, you die."
Now the third friend, who thinks he's super intellectual, he doesn't want to watch these action movies. Instead, he wants to watch The Truman Show. So you ask him to summarize the story, and he explains it something like, "It's about a man who realizes that his entire life is a TV show."
So, while there's more to each story, you'll notice that all great pieces of writing, the most memorable ones, they focus on one big idea. The mistake most beginner writers make is they try to mix too many things, and it dilutes the main message of their writing.
Like, for example, my goal with this piece is to make you a better writer. I'm not showing you how to get jacked, how to improve your social life, how to pass your exams – none of that. It has one big idea, and that is: writing is the best skill; here's how you can be a better writer than most people. That's the idea.
So whenever possible, you want to stick to this rule of one big idea. Are you showing the reader how to make 10K as a student? Are you showing them the importance of walking? Are you sharing a health secret that helps them stay young? Are you selling them a better smile or how to lose weight? What's that one big idea?
Packaging Multiple Ideas: Thingify
Or, if you do have to share multiple ideas, make sure you package them under one umbrella. For example, Hamza, who is in the self-improvement space, his offer, his program, is around teaching men how to get jacked, get rich, be disciplined, be more social – all that stuff. So there are too many ideas, right? But if you see his content, he packages all of those ideas under one umbrella, one single term: Adonis. That's what you call 'thingify' in copywriting terms – giving it a unique name. And there's actual research around it that when you give your ideas a name, people tend to remember it better.
Principle 4: Find Inspiration (Great Artists Steal)
Now you might be saying, "Okay, Ujjwal, I get it. I need one big idea. But the problem is, I don't have any ideas. So how do I deal with that?" To solve this, let's go back to the example of The Dark Knight. You might have already watched the movie, but what you might not know is that a lot of scenes in the movie, especially the bank heist scene in the opening, it was inspired by another movie called Heat. Or another popular work of the same director, Nolan: Inception. It was inspired by Paprika. Or The Matrix, which was heavily inspired by another anime film, Ghost in the Shell.
So, most great writing is not original; it's inspired. Which brings us to the most overused and most misinterpreted quote of all time: "Good artists copy, great artists steal."
Now, most people have the completely wrong idea of what stealing means in this context. It doesn't mean you just straight up take someone's writing and claim it as your own. You take bits and pieces from different pieces of writing you like, you combine them, and make it your own. Just like the concept for this content – it was inspired by other similar formats in different niches.
So it's less about coming up with original ideas and more about forming connections between your different interests, seeing where they overlap, the common points between them, and presenting them, explaining them in your own unique style. Like, for example, you can take this same article you're reading right now, you can take the ideas and make it your own by changing the examples and replacing them with other movies and TV shows that you like. Or you can apply it to a completely different field like fitness or dating.
Keep a swipe file or library of your favorite works of writing. Set aside an hour or 2 hours every week to just consume good writing, good content, to rewire your brain to think in terms of good writing. This can mean signing up to email lists, newsletters, listening to podcasts, reading books, watching movies, and taking ideas from them and using them in your own work.
Principle 5: Writing Is Thinking Made Visible
This brings us to the final piece of great writing – the one that holds back most people from even starting and keeps them stuck staring at a blank page. So, for a second, I want you to think about what writing actually is. It's not some magical art form. It's not painting or calligraphy. It's just a form of communication. It's you sharing your ideas through words. Basically, you're sharing your thoughts in the form of words on a screen or page.
Like this article – it's just me talking to you by using words. That's all there is to writing. But most people overcomplicate it and say, "Oh, I'm just not a good writer," which is a complete lie. It's not that you're not a good writer; it's that you're not a good thinker. If you cannot articulate your thoughts clearly, you cannot write clearly.
So next time you struggle with writing about a certain topic, don't write. Instead, speak it out loud. Explain it to a friend. Talk as you normally would. Record it, and then write down the same thing. You can edit it and make it beautiful later on, but getting your thoughts down on a piece of paper or on a Google Doc – that's the first step to good writing. And if you're having trouble doing that, chances are your brain is just fried from overstimulation and doom scrolling.
There are practices which help with that clarity of thought, enabling better writing. Apply these five principles – start with the end, hook immediately, stick to one big idea, steal like an artist, and remember that writing is thinking – to your writing, and it might just change your life.
