Day 29

In the 29th email from 50 days of writing, David Perell talks about the Raymond Chandler Rule, where he basically explains how the Novelist Raymond Chandler used to write on index cards on his typewriter.

Raymond's only rule was -

Something had to happen on every notecard.

With this rule, Raymond's stories always moved at a brisk pace. It made his writing's crisp and direct. David states the internet writing must be looking for similar strategy to be on the reading lists.

In par with the above statements David also states that -

The readers you want to have appreciate long, in-depth ideas, provided that they’re wrapped in a compelling narrative and come with a string of mini-epiphanies that work in harmony.

My thoughts:

The entire Raymond Chandler Rule is reminding of Quentin Tarantino's movies. His movies has this quick scenes and always to the point without any sidetracking. The most famous one is 'Django'. Everything looks so crisp and no nonsense type writing.

I do understand this writing will help in building the draft faster and keep your creative thinking limited to the idea on the index notes. This may feel hard at first but it definitely is one of the methods I will be trying out in any one of my essays.

Building context limited to the idea you want to explain is similar to what happens on twitter as well. It is a better idea to share one idea on one tweet as it will help readers distill information more easily and effectively.

One person who does this is Sahil Bloom. In his tweets and writings at Curiosity Chronicles, he breaks down concepts in a simple way and help us understand what is going on in the world of economics, tech and life in general. For more insights, check out this tweet about how to win (without talent or luck):

These types of writings is what I aim to achieve and having one idea on an index card is the starting point to achieving it.

Key takeaways:

1. While Writing online have index cards for each idea you want to convey. I have written more about it here.
2. Explaining ideas in the simplest way is one way to keep readers hooked.
3. Simple writing does need a compelling Narrative.
4. Having an idea on index is forcing you to be in a constraint while writing and enable you to nurture the art of writing even better.

Thank you for reading

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