The Best Articles in Writing
The most useful articles and videos in Writing from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Writing Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Writing by Refind users.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
Drawing for writers: Procreate 101
Even if you have never drawn before, we'll teach you how to draw and make your articles stand out using Procreate. Salman Ansari (https://letter.salman.io) a...
Writing Tips: The 6 Quickest Ways To Become A Better Writer
There are a lot of writing tips out there, but the ones I share here only take a minute to master and will help you become a better writer forever.It's an ex...
How to ...?
How to Write Concisely
It’s not the end of the world if you use an unnecessary word now and then, write the occasional overlapping sentence, or tell us what you’re doing in a sentence before you do it. But the extra words…
«But your readers don’t necessarily need to follow the journey you took while you were drafting the document. They just need to know where you ended up.»
How to Write Usefully
February 2020What should an essay be? Many people would say persuasive. That's what a lot of us were taught essays should be. But I think we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should…
«Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible.»
How to Develop Any Idea Into a Great Story
Even stories that start with brilliant strokes of inspiration too often fizzle out before we reach The End. Use this four-step method to develop your best ideas to their fullest.
«No matter your starting point—a love story, buddy tale, mystery, quest—you can do like the great innovators do: Bend it. Amp it. Drive it. Strip it.»
How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing
I long ago stopped reading books on note-taking. They were always too vague and boring, full of platitudes that had little to do with the world outside academia. I especially avoided “how-to” style…
How to Write Anything
Rules you can use to write anything you want to write — from a book to a tweet
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Writing on Refind.
CNET's AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism
CNET's AI-generated articles appear to show deep structural similarities, amounting to plagiarism, with previously published work elsewhere.
AI Writing Tools Like ChatGPT Are the Future of Learning & No, It’s Not Cheating
ChatGPT is the most advanced technology of its kind and its popularity is growing fast. Especially among students.
5 tips to write more like a human
As AI gains traction, writing emails with a human touch becomes more important than ever.
GPT-3 Is the Best Journal I've Ever Used
My slow and steady progression to living out the plot of the movie 'Her'
«It can summarize things you’ve said to it in new language that helps you look at yourself in a different light and reframe situations more effectively. »
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Writing—all under 10 minutes.
What If… Listicles Are Actually an Ancient Form of Writing and Narrative?
Measurement was a crucial organizing principle in ancient Egypt, but metrology itself does not begin with nilometers. To understand its place in human culture, we have to trace its roots back furth…
Little Beginnings Everywhere
David Byrne, Ernest Hemingway, and the importance of leaving yourself fragments to build on.
«Wherever I stop at the end of the day, I leave myself a little shorthand description of what’s coming next—almost like a bullet points version of the next few paragraphs. That way, when I return to the computer the next morning, I’ve got something to build on, as Byrne puts it.»
Attention, trust and GPT3
When AI is smart enough to write an essay, then what happens? GPT3 is back in the news, because, as expected, it’s getting better and better. Using a simple chat interface, you can easily ask…
«If your work isn’t more useful or insightful or urgent than GPT can create in 12 seconds, don’t interrupt people with it.»
In defence of freedom in fiction
While we may think we have moved beyond the censorship of the past, writers' artistic freedoms are still constrained.
Writing Tools I Use All The Time
My go-tos for reporting, research, and writing
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Writing.
Why Write? - The Paris Review
“I’ve been collecting these theories of why writers write because so many writers have written about it.”
How to write like Malcolm Gladwell
Prose style and structure in The Tipping Point
«Tyler Cowen once named The Tipping Point as the 2000s equivalent of The Great Gatsby. George Eliot put social science ideas to work in novels to make them more relatable by giving them context»
The death of literature
We have fallen out of love with good writing
«The paradox of this mystic inner quality is that its depth gets expressed by what we think of as a superficial quality: style.»
How Ambiguous Endings Lure Us In
Ambiguity in fiction, when done well, is not an escape hatch for the noncommittal writer. It’s an articulation of something otherwise impossible to articulate.
What makes writing more readable?
Looking at how to make writing easier to read
«Writing text that can be understood by as many people as possible seems like an obvious best practice. But from news media to legal guidance to academic research, the way we write often creates barriers to who can read it. Plain language—a style of writing that uses simplified sentences, everyday vocabulary, and clear structure—aims to remove those barriers.»
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Writing, including:

Stephen King
Author

Grammar Girl is also @grammargirl@zirk.us
Mignon Fogarty. Podcaster. Language lover. NYT bestselling author. Quick & Dirty Tips founder. @grammargirl@zirk.us
Darren Rowse
Speaker, Author, Blogger, Photographer, Muser & Founder of @ProBlogger & @DigitalPS. Hubby to @Stylensh + dad to 3 boys.

Madam Grammar
Professor, editor, grammar evangelist. Finding the joy in language and walking the fine red line between prescriptivism and descriptivism. She/her.

Merriam-Webster
Literally, the dictionary.
Publications
We monitor hundreds of publications, blogs, newsletters, and news sources in Writing, including:
Literary Hub
A daily literary website highlighting the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and criticism.
Every 📧
We publish smart, thoughtful essays on business and personal development. Our mission is to feed the minds and hearts of the people who build the internet.
Poynter
School for journalism and democracy, with tweets by @itsren, @TomWJones, @angelanfu and @annabelaguiar. Contact: info@poynter.org / 727-821-9494
copyblogger
Words that work for smarter digital marketing and sales.
The Pudding
The Pudding is a digital publication that explains ideas debated in culture with visual essays. Email us: sup@pudding.cool Support us: http://patreon.com/thepudding
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Which sources does Refind monitor in Writing?
We monitor hundreds of sources in Writing, including Literary Hub, Every 📧, Poynter, copyblogger, The Pudding, and many more.
Who are the thought leaders in Writing?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Writing, including Stephen King, Grammar Girl is also @grammargirl@zirk.us, Darren Rowse, Madam Grammar, Merriam-Webster.
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