how to write well

On Feb 20th 2025, I wrote this internal memo on "how to write well.

It was for the first few writers I had ever hired for Letter Leverage. And every writer who has joined us since receives this in their onboarding.

Now you might wonder…

“Why not just hand new writers templates, prompts, skills or whatever the next shiny tool promises to do the writing for them?”

A template gives someone a fish. I wanted to teach mine how to fish.

If you're a founder and have ever tried to get someone on your team to write like you do, you already know templates don't solve that. You can hand someone the exact structure of your best email and they'll still produce something flat, because the structure was never the hard part.

The hard part is helping someone understand what great writing looks like.

In today’s edition, I want to share that memo with you. Feel free to forward this email to your team.

It’s full of one-liner bars that your readers silently rehearse in their thoughts for weeks after reading it. 

I still remember Hormozi’s quote “quantity creates quality” because it’s so simple and true. You create sticky writing by explaining something the reader already knows in a beautifully simple way. It’s the minimum viable idea. 

Make your words flow. How? By varying the pace of what you say, you create a melody in the reader’s mind. Satisfying, right? You. Can. Also. Use. Periods. To. Make. The. Reader. Pause. But don’t overuse them - it’ll get boring. Mozart once said something like “It’s the silence between the notes that makes music sound good.” Writing is like that. Vary your sentence length. Use commas strategically, but don’t use too many of them, since that would, sadly, interrupt the flow. 

David Ogilvy wrote a headline for Rolls-Royce in 1958:

"At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock."

Anyone shopping for a luxury car is already asking themselves one question: Is this thing actually built as well as they say.

Ogilvy never answered it directly. He handed over one specific detail and let the reader arrive at the answer themselves. That's how you build intrigue. Not by announcing what you want the reader to believe, but by joining the conversation they're already having with themselves, and handing them a detail that answers it before they've finished asking.

The reader who reaches the conclusion on their own trusts it more than the reader you told.

I watched the Pixar movie “Up” yesterday. 

It starts by showing a shy boy dreaming of becoming an adventurer. He meets a girl who shares his dream. They fall in love, get married, and buy a humble house together, faithfully setting aside coins in a piggybank for their adventure. Every day together feels like paradise, their shared dream keeping their love young. But they never manage to fill the piggybank, and before they know it, they’re both in their 80s. One day, the husband remembers their old dream. He promptly rushes to a travel agency to buy tickets to South America. But it’s too late. His wife can barely walk uphill anymore, and passes away soon after. 

This whole scene is just 4 minutes long. Yet, it makes us feel the regret and sadness of postponing our deepest dreams until time runs out.

The brain is an “autocomplete” machine. It creates meaning from omission. 

Hemingway famously told a story in six words - “For sale: baby shoes, never worn”. Observe your mind reading these words. It paints an entire world for you. 

Here’s another example - 

In Harry Potter, Snape bullies Harry relentlessly. When you look at Snape, you see a bitter man taking out his trauma on a child. Until the last movie, where it’s revealed that Snape secretly protected Harry with his life because he never stopped loving Harry's mother.

Emotion comes from epiphany. Epiphany comes from revelation. Revelation comes from omission. 

= Omission creates emotion.

Anyway -

This is the same memo every writer at Letter Leverage gets. I hope this helps you.

/Nils