3 unexpected writing lessons from successful writers
(and they are not about writing)
Most writing advice focuses on mechanics, how to craft a perfect sentence, how to use active voice, how to structure your paragraphs.
The best writing advice? It’s not about writing at all.
It’s about thinking.
How you see the world
How you challenge assumptions
How you make people feel something
Writing is not about putting words on a page, instead think out of the box.
Break rules
Challenge beliefs
Give a different POV
If you want to write in a way that sticks, here are three counterintuitive lessons from successful writers that have nothing to do with writing technique, but will transform the way you write.
Lesson 1: Anti-description
Most people think good writing means painting vivid pictures. The more detail, the better. Right?
Heck, even I have written about painting a vivid imagery with your words.
But recently I got a new POV from an email I received, and this is what I learned. Great writers don’t describe everything. They let the reader do the work.
Take Haruki Murakami, Ernest Hemingway, and Margaret Atwood. They don’t waste time describing every chair, every streetlamp, every blade of grass. Instead, they use selective details, just enough to suggest the world without over-explaining it.
Hemingway’s iceberg theory is famous for this. He believed the most powerful writing was what wasn’t said. The reader should only see the tip of the iceberg, while the deeper meaning lurks beneath the surface. In Hills Like White Elephants, Hemingway never explicitly says the couple is discussing an abortion. But the tension, the unspoken words, the careful omissions, that’s what makes the story hit so hard.
Margaret Atwood does this in The Handmaid’s Tale. The details are sparse, but each one is loaded with meaning. A single phrase, "We had ceremonies" says more about the horror of that world than pages of explanation ever could.
When you anti-describe, you’re giving space for your readers to imagine and engage with the story. What you don’t say is just as powerful as what you do.