3: The Science of Great Writing
Do you ever feel like your writing is a muffled version of the brilliant ideas in your head?
In the last episode, we talked about the soul of writing—that elusive human spark born of vulnerability, intuition, and a mysterious creative force.
Today we’re talking about the other half of the equation, the part that used to raise my hackles—the rules, frameworks, and formulas that, as I’ve finally learned, lead reliably to clear, engaging prose. And that, as I hope to convince you, are essential to allowing the soul of your writing to flourish.
I explore why science isn’t a cage for your creativity but the very thing that frees it. Plus, I share my favorite way to think about the role rules play in the writing process and the crucial distinction that keeps soul and science working together in harmony to produce the beautiful, life-changing writing we love.
Listen below or on your favorite podcast app. The full text of the episode is also included below for your reading pleasure.
Episode text:
I’ve never been a fan of rules or routines. Bo-ring! I don’t want anyone telling me what to do, least of all some dead white guys who decided how the world should operate. I want freedom—to follow my mood, my curiosity, my intuition. I want to find my own way to do things, thank you very much.
As a young person, I prided myself on my independence and my ability to figure things out on my own. Which led me to develop some great skills, but it also meant I spent a lot of time reinventing the wheel. When something wasn’t working, I struggled in silence—convinced that asking for help meant I lacked the ‘natural’ talent to figure it out.
It also had something to do with the fact that making me follow a detailed procedure is pretty much the best way to drain me of the will to live. The combination of my ADD (no H for me) and my INFJ Enneagram 4 personality means my brain begins to atrophy the moment the possibility of experimentation is removed. My interest—and my attention—evaporates. Making use a formula without adaptation? Seventh circle of hell.
In college, I didn’t want to be a literature major because I didn’t care about the stuffy literary canon—I wanted to write something original! Sadly, Vassar didn’t have a creative writing major, so I took all the creative writing classes they had and chose an interdisciplinary major so I could design my own unique course of study. I did something similar for graduate school. By that time I had begun to love literature, thanks to an amazing professor who unlocked for me first Hemingway and then Fitzgerald, but I still balked at being told how to write.
Or rather, I would have balked at it if I’d had the chance. I remember very little writing instruction in my education. I had a great professor my first semester in college who helped me turn my C-level essays into A-level ones (boy was that first C a shock to this straight A valedictorian!), but that was more about individual feedback than general principles. It was helpful, but it didn’t give me a map. I was still flying by instinct, learning by feeling my way, based on years of voracious reading.
Still, great writing, both that I read and that I tried to produce, were, in my mind, entirely the product of innate talent, good instincts, and creative inspiration. You either had it or you didn’t, and that could change with the day, even the hour. And all you could do to try to encourage it was basically hope and pray.
And so I spent my 20s and most of my 30s not writing—paralyzed by the pressure of producing something amazing out of thin air. Of course I had no idea why I felt so blocked. All I knew is that, every time I sat down at the computer to write, it felt like torture, almost physically painful. That, and how I overcame it, is a story for another day, but now, looking back, I can see that my exclusive focus on the “magic” of great writing was a big part of the problem.
The shift didn’t come until I started teaching writing and saw a version of my struggle mirrored in my students. I couldn’t just tell them to ‘have better instincts.’ To actually help them, I had to figure out what worked and why, to give them something to lean on when their instincts—like mine sometimes did—went quiet.
And in that process, I realized something my younger, rebellious self would have hated to admit: sometimes, the way things are usually done is actually a good way to do them.
For most of my life, I had been so busy reinventing the wheel that I didn’t realize there was a blueprint already available. Not a mold but a guide. Not a formula but a framework, a pattern, an anchor.
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Today, we are talking about the science of writing—not as a cage for your creativity, but as the very thing that sets it free.
Now, if you’re like I was, you might think of “formula” as a dirty word. You might think that if you focus too much on grammar, structure, or the mechanics of the craft, you’ll end up with something cold and robotic. That by analyzing the magic, you’ll somehow kill it.
I get it. And you’re right to be wary of overly rigid approaches. But it’s also easy to overcorrect.
There’s this myth that, to be a great writer, you must write purely from the heart, letting your words spill onto the page in a glorious, inspired mess—hoping something comprehensive, or preferably genius, comes out of it.
And sometimes it does.
But I believe that we do ourselves a disservice when we prioritize creative inspiration and strokes of genius over craft, dismissing the role of practiced skill, honed techniques, and repeatable patterns in helping us produce that deeply soulful writing we love.
Imagine a jazz musician. They are the ultimate improvisers, playing from the soul if anyone ever did. But, they can only do that because they spent years mastering the science of scales, chords, and theory. Even those rare prodigies who somehow pick it up by listening and experimenting have to devote thousands of hours to doing so.
Science isn’t the opposite of soul. It is the structure that protects it.
In fact, they need one another, desperately.
Think of a good piece of writing as a river, taking your reader to a new place. The water is the soul (fluid, powerful, unpredictable). The riverbank is the science (solid, defining, guiding). Without the banks, that water just spills out into a muddy swamp, losing its force and its direction. It goes everywhere, and therefore, it goes nowhere.
In great writing, the soul and the science work together in harmony, taking the reader on a journey to that transformation we talked about in the first episode. Science provides the support that soul needs in order to flourish, and soul brings the frame of science to life.
So, in the rest of this episode, we’re going to explore how mastering the rules doesn’t trap you—it sets you free. How craft is actually a form of care. And why learning the science of great writing is the only way to make sure your soul is truly heard.
Let’s take a moment to define what we mean by the word science in the context of writing.
The science of great writing can be defined as the techniques proven through centuries of rhetoric and storytelling to make writing clear, concise, and compelling. It’s the ‘nuts and bolts’—the micro-science of syntax, punctuation, grammar, and rhythm—combined with the macro-science of narrative architecture, logical progression of ideas, and flow.
Used rightly, these tools and techniques stabilize, support, and enhance the soulful qualities we discussed last week.
But here’s the crucial distinction: the science of writing must always be used in service of the soul of the writing, not to replace it. Just as a river without the structure of a bank becomes a swamp, ie something no one wants to wade through, meaning read, that won’t carry you to your destination, a dry riverbed, the banks with no water, won’t take you anywhere either, at least not in an enjoyable way.
Great writing requires both, and they must work together.
Here’s another analogy to illustrate this point.
Let’s think of a piece of writing as a house, somewhere for your reader to live for a while. Just as a building needs a strong foundation, a wood frame, support beams, plumbing, air vents, and so on – all concealed within the walls and usually not visible once the house is finished – so do does great writing need structure and patterns to make it strong—even though that’s not what we notice when we read the finished product. But you better believe the writer thought about all those things. If it turned out well, those things were present.
Without the science, in this metaphor, the house would collapse. It doesn’t matter how lovely the paint color is or how well decorated or how beautiful the concept. None of that matters if you fall through the second story floor or can’t use the bathrooms because of faulty construction.
But at the same time, you don’t build a house just to stare at the studs and the drywall. You build the house so you can have a home, so you live in it.
So again, science isn’t at war with soul. It is the infrastructure that sustains it.
And like any good infrastructure, when done well, it becomes nearly invisible. There’s a quote from choreographer La Meri that speaks to this distinction:
“The only reason for mastering technique is to make sure the body does not prevent the soul from expressing itself.”1
In dance, if you don’t have the technique (muscle strength, balance, proper turnout), you might feel a beautiful leap or fouetté turns in your heart, but your body physically cannot execute it.
Likewise, when you don’t know the science of great writing (vocabulary, sentence structure, logical argumentation), your lack of skill can get in the way of expressing what you truly want to say.
The purpose of the science isn’t to replace the soul—it’s to free it. It removes the friction between the thought in your head and the words on the page.
When you don’t know the science of writing, you struggle to find the right word. You get stuck in a plot hole. You write yourself into corners.
But when you know the science, the friction disappears, or at least drastically diminishes. You have the vocabulary. You know how to fix the plot hole. You have strategies for overcoming blocks or finding clarity when your argument becomes convoluted.
The goal isn’t to stay focused on technique forever. The goal is to master the craft so thoroughly that you can eventually forget it—and let intuition take over.
Imagine a pianist. If they’re still hunting for Middle C, they can’t play with emotion. They have to internalize the scales until their hands move on instinct. Only when the technique becomes second nature are they free to truly play.
The point of learning the rules is never the rules themselves; it’s the freedom they provide, replacing friction with flow so the soul can run wild without crashing.
But learning the science of writing isn’t only good for the writer. It’s also a way of caring for our reader.
Let’s return to the house metaphor. You’ve built a beautiful house, and now you’re inviting the reader over for dinner. The soul is the delicious food you’ve prepared, the atmosphere you’ve created with candles and a centerpiece, the conversation you encourage about things that really matter. Those are the things your guest will remember.
Unless their chair collapses. Or the chicken is still bloody. Or the toilet sprays them instead of flushing. Or if the house is so cluttered they have to negotiate a maze of debris just to find the dinner table.
Your house doesn’t have to be immaculate in order to create an amazing experience (thank goodness, ‘cause mine never is!), but too many distractions and your guest becomes uncomfortable.
Applied to writing, if you ignore the science (no clear argument, bad grammar, confusing structure, poor pacing), it’s like inviting guests over but leaving the door locked, rotting food on the counter, and piles of laundry on the table. It doesn’t matter how good the food is if the guests can’t settle in enough to eat it.
In great writing, the author does the hard work of reducing the ‘cognitive load’ for the reader. They clear the mental clutter so the reader can focus on the ideas. Every time a reader stumbles over a clunky sentence or loses track of who is speaking, they have to spend ‘brain energy’ to fix the error. That is energy stolen from the experience. It’s energy they should be spending feeling the emotion of your story or processing the depth of your argument.
In this sense, technique is courtesy. If you’re offering them a tour of the garden, courtesy dictates that you clear the brush from the path so the reader can walk easily and enjoy the view, rather than hacking through weeds with a machete just to see where they’re going.
When you master the science, the reader relaxes. They subconsciously realize, “Oh, this writer knows what they are doing. I am in good hands.”
That trust is the key that unlocks the door for your writing to do what it set out to do. When the reader trusts you, they lower their defenses—and that is the moment they truly become open to the transformation offered by the soul of your work.
Whereas sloppy technique can leave the reader exhausted, skeptical, or even simply distracted, clean writing allows the reader to surrender to the experience.
That’s the ultimate goal of the science: care—for the reader, the writer, and the ideas themselves, giving them a structure strong enough to hold their weight.
So how do we get there?
Like all skill-building, there is a learning curve that moves through three distinct stages:
Stage 1: Intention. Where Soul must be protected, Science must be practiced. You have to study the concepts and put in the reps. It feels clunky here—you’re the pianist hunting for Middle C—but you’re building the skills you’ll need later.
Stage 2: Internalization. Eventually, the technique moves from your conscious brain to your subconscious. You stop ‘thinking’ about sentence structure or narrative arcs because they’ve become part of your creative intuition. The science has become second nature.
Stage 3: Improvisation. This is the goal. You’ve learned the rules so thoroughly that you can now break them intentionally—for effect—rather than accidentally, out of ignorance. This is where the Science fades into the background and the Soul truly takes the lead.
It can be frustrating; it can feel slow. But this is how it works, not just in writing but with all art forms.
Before Pablo Picasso painted the abstract, disjointed faces he’s famous for (known as Cubism), he was a master of realistic classical portraiture. He could paint like a camera because he practiced the foundational skills until he mastered them. Only then was he free to improvise—and to create his best work.
This is the missing piece that so many writers, and teachers, get wrong: Science doesn’t give you a single ‘right’ answer; it gives you a menu of possibilities. It gives you the tools, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you which one to pick for a given situation.
For example, the science says, Avoid redundancy. Don’t use the same word too close together because it tires the reader. But the science also says, Use repetition for rhetorical power and emphasis.
So, which one do you do? This is where the soul comes back in. Soul is the inner compass that helps us distinguish which ‘rule’ to follow at any given moment.
Once we understand the techniques that reliably allow us to express our meaning, we gain the power of discernment. We can see the difference between a mistake and a choice, and we can decide when and how we want to deviate from the rules.
Because we weren’t wrong when we first felt that rebellion against following rules blindly. Writing to a formula like a color-by-numbers painting—will always produce cold, soulless work.
That’s because science is a valuable servant but a terrible master. When science dominates, the work is stiff. But when the soul leads and the science supports, the work becomes transformative.
Great writers follow the rules—until they break them with a flourish.
And here’s the good news: that kind of mastery isn’t reserved for some elite class of ‘naturally gifted’ geniuses. If you’ve ever looked at a great piece of writing and thought, ‘I could never do that because I just don’t have the talent,’ I want you to hear this:
You can learn the skills that produce great writing.
The ‘magic’ you see in your favorite authors isn’t pure genius that poured from their brains fully formed; it’s the result of foundational skills practiced to the point of intuition. Ok, yes, plus some talent. I won’t deny the role of giftedness, but that gift is just the raw material.
The science is what allows that voice to be heard. Without it, even the most unique, beautiful soul can feel muffled or distorted on the page—like a beautiful voice singing through a bad microphone. When you master the craft, you’re essentially tuning the instrument, removing the static so that your particular truth, your unique perspective, can finally be heard without interference.
I believe anyone can produce great writing. Yes, even you. Especially you, if you’re here reading this article. Clearly you feel a call to this sacred work.
If you embrace the necessity of bringing both soul and science into your writing—discipline and devotion—if you’re willing to put in the reps, to learn from experts, to revise and revise and revise again, under the guidance of a good editor, you will produce something life-changing.
The ‘magic’ of great writing isn’t something you have to wait for; it is something you can build.
So, let’s stop fighting the rules and start mastering them—and then transcending them. Let’s clear the path and light the way, to build the cathedral that finally allows your soul to sing.
That’s it for today’s episode. Next week I’ll be starting a series on my favorite genre: memoir. And as part of that I’ll be doing a close reading of a fantastic memoir called What We Carry, by Maya Shanbhag Lang (that link also invites you download a discussion guide, but careful—it contains spoilers).
We’ll be studying both the soul and the science that makes this book so great—and how you can apply those same principles to your own writing.
If you ever wanted to write memoir or just to read like a writer, this is for you! Grab a copy now so you can follow along. (I’ll post my analysis on Substack and on social media.)
Until then, remember, words are more than ink on a page—they’re a path to wholeness.
I’d love to hear from you!
Do you resist the rules of “proper” writing, afraid they’ll stifle your creativity? Or do you perhaps skew the other way, embracing the discipline but neglecting the devotion?
And if you really loved it, please consider sharing this post/episode with a writer friend.
Footnotes:
1 I found the quote by choreographer La Meri in Merideth Hite Estevez’s powerful essay on the true purpose of technique, “Music of the Logos.”
