Writing advice from a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist at The New York Times

Bret Stephens is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has penned hundreds of op-ed essays and news columns that have been read by millions of people. Last year, he joined The New York Times as an op-ed columnist, after a long stint at The Wall Street Journal as deputy editorial page editor and one of their most widely read commentators on foreign affairs.

In an article published last year in The New York Times, Stephens shares a list of writing tips which, while clearly intended for potential op-ed contributors, are highly relevant to writers of other types of non-fiction prose, from 650-word LinkedIn blog posts to long-form research-based reports.

Of the fifteen tips he lists, I've pulled out seven that I thought would be worth sharing here, and added a few observations based on my own experience as well.

1. Get to the point.

“A wise editor once observed that the easiest decision a reader can make is to stop reading. This means that every sentence has to count in grabbing the reader's attention, starting with the first. Get to the point: Why does your topic matter? Why should it matter today? And why should the reader care what you, of all people, have to say about it?”

My take: If your main point is buried in paragraph four or fourteen, pull it up to the very top and make sure the rest of the piece flows from there. Your first paragraph or two are the signposts for what follows. Make them clear and compelling so your reader knows where you want to take them.

2. Write to be understood.

“The ideal reader of an op-ed is the ordinary subscriber—a person of normal intelligence who will be happy to learn something from you, provided he can readily understand what you’re saying. It is for a broad community of people that you must write, not the handful of fellow experts you seek to impress with high-flown jargon, the intellectual rival you want to put down with a devastating aside or the V.I.P. you aim to flatter with an oleaginous adjective.”

My take: Every profession has developed its own lingo. That might work when communicating with colleagues, clients, and those in the know. But if you want to bring your ideas to a much wider audience outside the confines of your corporate cubicle, boardroom, or laboratory, don't assume your reader will understand the terminology and references that you take for granted. (I had to look up the meaning of "oleaginous," too.)

3. Take a stand.

“It is not a news analysis or a weighing up of alternative views. It requires a clear thesis, backed by rigorously marshaled evidence, in the service of a persuasive argument. Harry Truman once quipped that he wished he could hire only one-handed economists—just to get away from their "on the one hand, on the other" advice. Op-ed pages are for one-handed writers.”

My take: Stephens is simply saying: don't hedge when you've got a point to make. Take a stand, and defend it confidently with facts, logic, and language.

4. Authority matters.

“Readers will look to authors who have standing, either because they have expertise in their field or unique experience of a subject. If you can offer neither on a given topic you should not write about it, however passionate your views may be. Opinion editors are often keen on writers who can provide standing-with-surprise: the well-known environmentalist who supports nuclear power; the right-wing politician who favors transgender rights; the African-American scholar who opposes affirmative action.”

My take: This gets to the oft-quoted advice to "write what you know," or "write what you're passionate about." It can be a brave challenge to take on a topic you're not an expert in. I wouldn't discourage it entirely. But when you're writing about what you know best, it shows.

5. Sweat the small stuff.

"Read over each sentence—read it aloud—and ask yourself: Is this true? Can I defend every single word of it? Did I get the facts, quotes, dates and spellings exactly right? Yes, sometimes those spellings are hard: the president of Turkmenistan is Gurbanguly Malikguliyevich Berdymukhammedov. But, believe me, nothing's worse than having to run a correction.”

My take: This is such a critical point, and one that I've seen even the most seasoned journalists and experienced business professionals get wrong. If you can easily hit the edit button and correct your mistakes, that's great. But if your material is at the mercy of an editor, or your words are committed permanently to print, you'll know just how painful it can be to discover you were wrong.

6. Kill the clichés.

“If you want to give the reader an outside the box perspective on how to solve a problem from hell by reimagining the policy toolbox to include stakeholder voices—well, stop right there. Editors notice these sorts of expressions the way French chefs notice slices of Velveeta cheese: repulsive in themselves, and indicative of the mental slop that lies beneath.”

My take: So much language in the business world, and in other domains, is riddled with stale jargon and annoying clichés. We're fortunate that languages like English and Chinese—to take just two examples I'm most familiar with—have such enormous reservoirs of words to call upon to express ideas. Make good use of them.

7. Start long, end short.

“If you find writing easy, you’re doing it wrong. One useful tip for aspiring writers comes from the film 'A River Runs Through It,' in which the character played by Tom Skerritt, a Presbyterian minister with a literary bent, receives essays from his children and instructs them to make each successive draft 'half as long.' If you want to write a successful 700-word op-ed, start with a longer draft, then cut and cut again. 'The art of writing,' believed the minister, 'lay in thrift.'”

My take: I enjoy writing prose that allows me to express myself and which sounds pleasing to the ear inside my head. But if what I'm writing is not relevant to or otherwise supporting the point I'm trying to make, I cut it out and place it at the bottom of the screen under a header, "Extra text." Sometimes I dip into it this pool of rejected words and re-insert them, but only if they serve a purpose elsewhere in the text.

Read Stephens' complete set of tips on The New York Times website (paywall).

What's your take on Bret Stephens' writing advice? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading! Please reach out and connect with me here on LinkedIn. And to listen to conversations with great writers, check out my podcast, Write With Impact, on Apple Podcasts.

Image of Bret Stephens: https://www.flickr.com/photos/worldeconomicforum/