Full Guide: How To Start Writing Long Form (Essays, Articles, Newsletters, etc)

For those who don't care about short form and have deep ideas they want to articulate online

Long-form writing is so back.

At least for now. My articles are doing mindblowingly well on X.

People are saying it’s “just a trend,” but a friend of a friend is in charge of this stuff at X, and articles seem to be keeping people on the platform longer, which is what the social media companies want.

And, long-form content in general is just… better. Very few people can abuse it. It builds trust more. You can’t just tell ChatGPT to generate 1000 articles and expect there to be enough attention to go around like there is with short-form. If you want to stand out, it requires you to think. I will continue to stay bullish on Substack, X articles, YouTube, and podcasts - because the value in them lies in perspective. It lies in the craft of writing and articulating ideas in a way nobody else could. I’m tempted to just drop short form entirely, but I’m unsure if I’ll do that. I want to, though.

With that said, I think it’s timely to just give out my entire process.

I can’t promise anything with this, but if you’re looking to start talking about your interests on the internet, this is a great place to start.

I don’t want this to be a “how to go viral” guide. I want this to simply act as a foundation anyone can start with to begin writing long-form content in an impactful way.

To start, we are not going to focus on the actual nuances of writing and wordcrafting. I think that is best left for your own experimentation and allowing your taste to develop over time.

With that, it sucks to stare at a blank screen and not know what to say. If that’s the case for you, I want you to think of writing as thinking.

How do you “think?”

You question.

We’ll start with this short writing process, then we’ll go deeper and deeper: