Finding Your Writing Style / Note Continuation (Secret) Strategy II

A little while ago, I wrote an article called “Note Continuation (Secret) Strategy”. In it, I recommended establishing a pattern where you create a writing style and pour your ideas into that mold as a secret to keeping it up.

That said, even though I wrote it myself, the task of finding a writing style is not that simple. In this article, I would like to examine several patterns.

First, King Kong Nishino's style, which everyone loves, is very helpful. It is a style where the theme is presented at the beginning, and then the author talks through their views on it. They prepare content for two or three major headings and develop the argument.

As for the content, it seems that there are many stories about how he approaches the latest business environment and how one should approach it. There are also many patterns where the title says it all, and I think he is always conscious of being specific.

There are many continuing Noters who are influenced by Nishino to a greater or lesser extent.

However, while Nishino seems to value specificity, there is also a common pattern among those influenced by the Nishino style where the title is abstract.

Examples include "Learning," "How to use time," "When you are worried about human relationships," and "Ability to take action." Since I think there are few people who can come up with specific ideas every day like Nishino, I think daring to throw an abstract theme at yourself and digging into your own heart is also effective.

Episode-based types are also often seen. For example, in the case of someone raising children, it is a pattern where they write about what happened in their interactions with their children recently and then write out what they felt from that.

Even if the event itself is trivial, by frankly writing out the thoughts that emerge from it, it inevitably becomes an essay-style piece. The tone varies from person to person, ranging from a diary style of talking about oneself to an empathetic style that speaks to others.

There is also a way for the writer to send out a message from their own position. If they are a teacher, it might be about child education methods; if they are a cooking expert, it might be about cooking; if they are a salesperson, it might be about sales tips.

Even if you don't have a special title, if you have guts, it's how to show guts; if you are into Twitter, it's how to tweet or increase followers; if you are particular about savings, it's how to save money, which becomes a pattern that focuses on "conveying something to someone".

Making output the core of the article is also a "style." Representative examples might be reviews of books read or movies watched. Besides that, the content to output is diverse, such as "events," "sweets," "convenience store bento," "100-yen shop goods," and "real estate information."

My Note is also an output type, and I am currently implementing a challenging attempt to specialize the theme in “Fujiko F. Fujio works”.

By the way, while it is important to find your own "style," I often see people giving specific advice on these "style" patterns. While you can use them as a reference to some extent, you should keep it as a reference and properly pursue your own style.

For example, "keep sentences short," "change paragraphs every three lines," "keep the whole thing between 1000 and 1500 characters," "use as few kanji as possible," "use vocabulary that a junior high school student can read," "think about the usefulness for the reader," "make it a positive conclusion," and so on...

Thinking about the reader is fundamental when creating text, but reader preferences are not uniform. For instance, short aphorisms on Twitter don't resonate with me at all, and I don't necessarily want to read only positive conclusions. I also hardly believe in things like quick, useful information.

As a writer, even if a word is difficult for a middle school student to understand, if it is the right word for the description, I do not hesitate to use it. (← This word "hesitate" might be one such example.)

In any case, since everyone is different, I believe that even when it comes to a style, it must not become a cliché.

By the way, how long does it take to find a "style"? Looking around, even for those who claim to do "daily notes," it seems most are just using trial and error at first.

In my case, I created many trial articles, such as "Let's just write what I want to write" or "Let's try writing about this topic." After writing about 60 articles, about two months after starting, I felt a sense of response to my own way of doing things.

The policy that emerged was,

・Compete with the whole rather than individual articles
・Write Fujiko articles and other articles in a 3:1 ratio
・Write series articles to avoid running out of topics
・Assume readers will come from external searches
・Create a mechanism to have readers read past articles one after another

and so on. Following this policy, I have created an INDEX (site map) and changed the author name to "Fujiko F Note."

Now, this text is written strictly as a concrete measure for the "Note Continuation Strategy," but conversely, it is extremely difficult to continue daily with a note that has no "style". If the style is different every time, you will definitely hit a wall somewhere.

I think you will agree with the idea that creating a style leads to longevity if you consider how comedians create their routines. For example, the styles of Knights or Bakusho Mondai, who deal with current events, seem to have considerable durability. When watching shows like M-1, the duo whose routine style resonates with the audience always wins.

When watching Sandwichman's manzai, they choose classic themes like "doctor and patient," "delivery person and customer," or "police officer and passerby," but their unique style of straight man and funny man is excellent, and I can listen to them endlessly.

Because of this, I have reached the conclusion that it is not the "topic" you take up, but rather the "style" that is important.