Writing Thoughts

Summary

A collection of Ray’s writing frameworks, principles, and processes gathered over time. Covers content structure, storytelling technique, editing workflow, and category thinking for what to write about. Several actionable frameworks here that directly inform newsletter strategy and content production.

Content Structure

Three-tier hierarchy for written content:

1. High-level foundational — establish principles and mental models
2. Project proposal outline — connect principles to specific business problems
3. Specific how-to with tooling — practical, hands-on implementation

Major themes: Business and Data Modeling.

Storytelling: South Park’s “But & Therefore” Rule

Most stories are boring because they lack tension, conflict, and rising action. South Park’s creators (Trey Parker and Matt Stone) have a solution: when laying out a series of events, put the words “but” or “therefore” between each one to show how events interact. Never write “and then.”

This gives writing momentum. Each event causes or complicates the next rather than just following it sequentially.

Writing Process (via Statamic)

A five-stage workflow worth adopting:

1. Gathering Knowledge — Brain dump. Data, code examples, important steps, non-obvious details. No editing, no flow — just capture for Future You to deal with.
2. Working on Draft — Outline emerges, intro and overview added, existing content rewritten and rephrased.
3. Ready for Editing — Ensure full scope coverage, flow, and structural consistency.
4. Needs Polish & Humor — Check correctness, formatting, grammar, spelling. Layer on personality. “We love docs that are fun to read, as long as the humor doesn’t get in the way.”
5. Ready for Feedback — Assess and receive feedback. Loop back through steps as needed.

Writing as Leverage

Writing is high leverage. You produce once and share as many times as needed. This helps new people get up to speed quickly. This is the same principle behind compounding knowledge.

What to Write About

Three categories (via Nate Liason):

1. Things you know
2. Things you are excited about
3. Things you believe

Topic Seeds

• Consistent vs. Correct — the tension between new information (more accurate) vs. holding everything consistent. Ops vs. Accounting mindset.
• Keeping the same grain — forecasts and reporting actuals need to match grain from the start.
• Getting enough “flow” to make sense of data — sometimes you lack the feedback volume to understand user behavior.