Most writing advice is either vague (“find your voice”) or obvious (“be clear”). Neither helps when the stakes are real—when you’re writing for judges, editors, gatekeepers, or readers who are actively looking for reasons to stop reading.
What follows is not aspirational advice. It’s functional advice—the kind you learn only by writing under pressure, revising painfully, and discovering what actually works. These are ten principles that separate writing that sounds fine from writing that lands…