From the course: Shane Snow on Storytelling

The Ben Franklin method

From the course: Shane Snow on Storytelling

The Ben Franklin method

- Benjamin Franklin is one of my favorite people in history. We think of him as this great inventor, statesman and writer, but there was a point in his life where he wasn't very good at writing. He came up with a technique to train himself to be a better writer. What he did is he'd take the most prestigious magazine of his day, sort of like "The New Yorker" of the 1700s called "The Spectator." He'd takes his favorite articles, and he'd put them down next to his notebook, and sentence by sentence, he would describe in his own words the sentences and the paragraphs of these articles. Then he'd put the magazine away, wait a couple days, take his notes, take another notebook and try and rewrite the article from his notes. Then he'd compare his new article to the original article, and he'd see where he made mistakes, where what he wrote was not as good as what the article wrote, and he did this over and over and over again, comparing himself, deconstructing the best writing of his day and reconstructing it until he in his own words said that, "Well, I think my writing is actually better than this writing." He did this very deliberate method to improve his writing skills until he became one of the great writers of our time. I discovered this method in Franklin's autobiography and when I wanted to become a better writer, I used the same thing. I called it neurotic spreadsheeting. I'd take my favorite articles and in a spreadsheet, I'd break down the sentences, the paragraphs, the techniques, the word counts, the syllables, and then I would reconstruct those articles to try and improve my writing chops. Most of us get to a certain point where we decide we're either not good writers or we're good enough writers, and we don't actively work on our storytelling skills. You may not consider yourself a great writer, but neither did Ben Franklin. This method of deconstructing and reconstructing great writing will help you become a better storyteller, no matter where you are today.

Contents