for most of us, our work would benefit from reaching out to others more, trusting more in our readers. I have seen, in many of my students, that the first proof of progress is that their stories become more cognizant of the existence of the reader – more fun, less unnecessarily dense, truer to life, fairer, warmer; they start engaging with issues t... See more

People read nonfiction to learn and to feel. My framework for ensuring a blog post accomplishes both is to start with a first draft that focuses on "novel" ideas.

A novel idea is one that's not just new to the reader, but also significant and not easily intuited. Think of it as new and worthwhile . I've identified five categories:

• Counter-intuitive —

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