Today is our very first lesson on style.

Style is both hearty and complex. It’s the tomato & mozzarella between the chewy pizza dough of “structure” (which we’ve been focusing on until now), and the drizzle of white truffle oil known as “voice” (which we’ll get to soon enough).

Style ties everything together.

Damn. Now I want pizza.

We could spend an entire year on style alone. But when I reflect back on the writing I most admire, there are three style elements that, when used in combination with each other, trump everything else.

They are:

• Conciseness

• Vivid imagery

• And rhythm

So over the next few weeks, we’re going to do a crash course in all three. 👊

-Kristin 🍷

🍻 In today’s issue:

✏️ Sentence School: Conciseness isn’t about cutting words — it’s about choosing the right ones.

🥃 The Writer’s Pour: You can’t edit while you write. (Not well, at least).

🎙️ Drunk Talk: Here’s why I never posted anything about the Coldplay drama (even though it would be on-brand for me).

🤖 Robot Pals: AI can help you search your own memory.

STFU and be concise

Conciseness matters more today than ever because attention spans are puny. Readers skim. They get distra—

So if you don’t grab readers with concise writing, you’re toast. Every time someone reads what you wrote, they bestow a huge honor unto you. 

Respect their damn time. ⏱️

But do it correctly.

The biggest misconception about concise writing is that it’s all about cutting words. Nope.

It’s about choosing the right ones. Which is a helluva lot harder.

But I’ve got a trick that will make it easy for you. 👇

Replace weak phrases with strong words 💪

Why write, “He made the decision to leave,” when you can write, “He decided to leave”?

Why write, “She conducted an analysis of the data,” when “She analyzed the data” hits faster and harder?

I’ll tell you why—

Because when we were all in school, we were taught to write like bloated bureaucrats. We were given instructions like:

👉 “Write a 1,000-word essay on Of Mice and Men”. (A better assignment would have been “Make a sharp point about Steinbeck’s themes in under 300 words”.)

👉 “Your research paper must be at least five pages”. (So we filled it with “in order to,” “as previously stated,” and “it is important to note that…” just to hit the margin. 🙄)

👉 “Explain your answer in complete sentences”. (So instead of writing “Photosynthesis makes food,” we wrote “The reason that plants undergo photosynthesis is because it is the process by which they create their own food in the presence of sunlight”. Ick.)

Muscle memory’s a bitch, but you can begin to retrain yourself by replacing weak phrases with strong words. Here’s what I mean:

You can’t edit this shit in your head

You’ll have an aneurysm if you force yourself to write this way when you’re simply trying to get words on a page. So don’t even try.

Just like with our “Because” & “Therefore” lesson from a few weeks ago, you must get the crappy version down first — otherwise you won’t get it down at all.

Only after that version is complete should you attempt to edit for conciseness by looking for weak phrases, and replacing them with strong words.

And here’s another tip— 

If you can’t think of a strong word to replace your weak phrase, question whether that phrase is even needed. Then get out the scissors and… Cut. That. Shit.

The more you edit for conciseness, the more naturally you’ll start using strong words instead of weak phrases — the first time around.

AI can really help with this one…

If you want to get this done quickly, AI is rather helpful. Simply paste what you’ve written into your LLM of choice with this prompt:

I fed this prompt into ChatGPT, and gave it the 300-word opening section of Sunday’s issue of Drunk Business Advice to edit. It managed to cut 50 words, add bite (especially to the hook), and still get all my points across.

👉 Check it out here.

Y’all – this was something I had already edited AND published! So it was pretty damn tight to begin with.

And while there are certainly edits I wouldn’t keep (the changes to the last couple of sentences are confusing), the vast majority of these edits are 🔥.

Give it a try…

Dive into some exercises to put what you’ve just learned about conciseness into practice. 👇️

Here’s an example…

If you want to jump on a trend, make sure you have these two things…

Sunday’s issue of Drunk Business Advice wasn’t a story about me. It wasn’t a story about someone I know. Nor would I consider it journalism.

It was something else.

Sunday’s issue vamped on some headlines—

But not in the way everyone is creating content from the Coldplay affair shit. (Which I am, of course, tantalized by. I am human, after all.)

For the last few days, I haven’t been able to scroll LinkedIn for more than a minute without seeing someone’s “hot take” on cheating execs getting cozy at Coldplay.

I get it. It’s delicious gossip. It’s business-related. And some of the commentary has been decent—

But most of it has been unwelcome blabber from people jumping all over a trending topic to exploit it for their own visibility.

Now, I’m not saying that I would never join the noise, and write about a trending headline, but I would first challenge myself to find two things:

1. CONNECTION: Do I have some sort of personal connection to this headline? Am I closer to it than most other people? Or did an identical (not just similar) thing happen to me?
   

2. SUBSTANCE: Will what I have to say about this headline still matter in a year? Even if the headline fades, does my message stand on its own? Would I still write about this message, even if the headline didn’t exist?

On Sunday, I decided to write about the disastrous Fyre Festival — which happened over eight years ago. 

It wasn’t until after I was nearly finished writing the piece that I googled Billy McFarland to get an update on his whereabouts, and learned that he just sold the rights to Fyre Fest on eBay last week.

So it was by surprise, not design, that Sunday’s issue happened to coincide with a recent headline. 🤷

Here’s how I assessed whether my Fyre Fest story was publish-worthy:

1. CONNECTION: I had two personal connections to this story: 1) I met someone who had literally just escaped from Fyre Fest, and heard his first-hand account of what happened. 2) I briefly met Billy McFarland when I was a member of his first venture, Magnises.
   

2. SUBSTANCE: My message that logistics are often overlooked, but incredibly vital to every business, stands alone. But the “Instead of thinking about models, you have to think about toilets” line about Fyre Fest really drives home the point.

My happy little research assistant

In Sunday’s issue of Drunk Business Advice, I referenced three pieces of content that aren’t mine:

1. The Netflix Fyre Festival documentary

2. The Netflix Astroworld documentary

3. And the book What to Do When Things Go Wrong

These are all things that I’ve seen/read in the past, and wanted to reference specific facts from — but didn’t want to re-watch/read.

In the case of Fyre Festival, I was looking for a (rather gross) quote that I could only remember part of:

For Astroworld, I could viscerally remember how catastrophic it was, but I couldn’t remember the details. So I asked AI for a brief summary, and it delivered exactly what I needed:

And finally, I knew that I wanted to mention the “plan for anything instead of everything” concept from What to Do When Things Go Wrong, so I asked for both a quote and a chapter (since I have a physical copy of the book):

Without ChatGPT, I would have been forced to spend hours revisiting this content to pull out the details that I knew were in there, but didn’t have the specifics on.

I don’t trust a ChatGPT summary on its own — but it’s a great way to search through my own memory.

I don’t take my place in your inbox for granted.

It’s an honor to be welcomed into your world, and I know I have to work to continue to earn it, week after week. So if you have feedback, or if there’s a topic you want me to cover, just hit reply and tell me!

And if you love Drunk Writing Advice, consider sharing it with a friend. 🥰