Writing nonfiction that resonates so deeply people have no choice but to change

A complete guide to writing powerful nonfiction that builds reader buy-in, creates emotional connection, and actually transforms people.

Oct 05, 2025

Hi,

Not to be cocky, but my nonfiction slaps.

It’s witty, informative, and clear, and that has taken over 15 years for me to say. I’m probably only comfortable with saying it now because of working with Writer MBA, and the fact that tens of thousands of people read my articles every week and stay subscribed.

I never set out to be a nonfiction writer, though. Nonfiction was always a byproduct of having fiction success. People would ask me questions, and I would write a book. People wanted more, so I made courses. People needed individualization, so I offered coaching. People couldn’t do it themselves, so I offered to do it for them.

I never “learned” how to write nonfiction, at least not in the traditional sense, and I only started using myself as a standin for the audience because people literally asked me questions about my career.

I never even had a “process”. I just wrote and wrote and wrote, but then, a few months ago my wife said something like “I want to bring in this company to give a talk to my company about turning research into story, but our team is too small to afford it.”

And y’all, I’m not prone to anger anymore, but I got bent out of shape. “But…I could do that for you in 15 minutes…like on this car ride.”

While that was a little presumptuous, in that moment I realized I had a process for nonfiction. I just hadn’t defined it yet.

Honestly, I kind of bumbled through that car ride, talking it through in recursive loops, but after thinking about it the rest of the morning, I developed a teachable process for turning research into story and really for writing nonfiction.

I apparently could be charging thousands for this methodology, but instead I’m giving it to you. If you want to become a paid member, though, that would be cool.

Prewriting

Before we even get to the writing bit, there are three bits of prewriting that need to get done. Once you have these three bits, the actual writing part is much, much easier. Being a discovery writer in nonfiction is really hard because most of nonfiction is about the transformation. This prewriting is about flushing that out.

*** Please note that if you are reading this via email, Substack only sent out a partial version and the article will eventually stop without notice. If you want to read the whole 8,500-word article, then go to this website.***

1. The Thesis Transformation

Every nonfiction piece lives or dies by transformation, which is codified in your thesis argument, just like the type you learned about in school. I bristle at calling it a statement, because it can be more than one statement. Mine tend to be 200-300 words, but this is the transformational mindset shift somebody will have once they embody your piece.

I use the word embody intentionally because the goal of nonfiction is to get somebody to take action. By going through your process, they should have the tools necessary to transform and embody a new version of themselves.

It doesn’t have to be a big change, but all nonfiction is about transformation. Honestly, all writing period is about transformation, but that’s a bigger conversation. So, let’s put a pin in that.

The thesis is the seed of that transformation. It is the clear, undeniable truth you’re planting in the reader’s mind. It’s the idea that reorders how they see the world.

Everything we build around it is there to make that shift feel inevitable. The goal of your article isn’t to explain your idea, but to make them believe it deep in their soul and move them from intellectual agreement to emotional buy-in.

We do that through story because humans have evolved to learn through story. Our ancient ancestors told parable stories to teach children what berries to eat and what animals to hunt. Aesop wrote fables to show people how to live. We might learn through frameworks, but we remember stories.

Stories are how we transform our lives.

Think back to the first time you read your favorite story. Can you feel how your body shifted thinking about it? Relaxed, interested, even joyful…that is the only thing that matters about everything we talk about moving forward.

If we can elicit that feeling in our readers, we are programming them to relax and ready themselves to receive what we have to say. People almost always come into nonfiction with their hackles raised. If you can nail the story bit, people will accept hearing about your process. Everything leading up to the process teaching bit is just getting them to lower their shoulders and ready for it.

After all, if they already believed what you had to say, then they wouldn’t need to read it, right? We are here to break blocks and knock off socks here, not get high on our own supply.

When they reach the end and feel that quiet internal click, the one that says I have to do this, that’s the first step in enabling that transformation.

In order to craft this statement, you need to know:

The current struggle they are having.
Where they need to get to fix their problem.

This should bring you clarity of thought. A good non-fiction article shows you how to make one transformation using one process. So often writers try to bring too much to bear in one article and it muddies the water.

If your process is 10,000 words long, people will keep reading, but it should exclusively deal with one problem, one solution, and one process.

It might feel presumptuous to assume you know what a person is going through, but I would contend it’s pretty presumptuous to write an article at all, so get over yourself and do the work.

Nobody told you to write this article. You did that because you saw a problem and a solution. This is just putting what you already know into words.

2. The Win Condition

Once you have the thesis statement, it’s time to set up your reader’s win condition. A win condition is the ultimate goal that makes all your reader’s hard work worth it.

It it is the state they will embody. The thesis transformation leads to the win condition, but they are not the same thing.

Think about a caterpillar. It transitions into a butterfly by dissolving into goo and breaking out of its chrysalis, but then it lives in that condition for the rest of its life.

Nonfiction is laser focused on writing to that transformation, but that’s only half of it. To really make somebody embody their transformation, we have to get them to envision living in that transformation.

To do that, we need to take time to envision what that means in our own writing. How does it feel once they do this work? How do they move through the world? What does their day look like? What are they doing hour by hour? How does their relationship change? How does their life change? How does their work change?

When they transform into this new reality, what does winning actually look like and why do they want it?

Most writers don’t think about that part. They’re too focused on the topic or the takeaway, but the win condition is the point. It’s the state someone reaches when they fully absorb what you’re saying and take action on it.

It’s called a win condition because they have won the game. They did the thing, bought into your writing, and made it happen. Now, they are winning at life. What’s their reward?

It’s not a metric or a milestone. It’s a shift in how a reader sees the world, or themselves, or their work. It’s the version of them that exists on the other side of the article.

Sometimes it’s practical. Maybe they finally know how to sell their work without hating it. Sometimes it’s emotional. Perhaps they stop feeling like their broken because they realize system was built wrong, but there’s always a change.

If there’s not a change, then you’re not adding anything to the world, and why even bother?

The win condition forces clarity. It’s the destination everything else has to serve. Once you know it, the rest of the article becomes a map of what people need to understand, unlearn, or practice to reach that new state.

3. Key Mechanics

Once we know the win condition, it’s time to figure out the key mechanics that have to change for someone to reach it. These are the internal and external systems that must change to get them unstuck from their old patterns and habits.

Every win condition depends on a few core mechanics that need to click into place before somebody unlocks it. Yes, there could be an infinite number, but I usually aim for 4-6 major ones (though this article has like 10) so as not to overwhelm the reader.

It’s hard for somebody to keep more than six things in their head at once.

Bonus points if you can come up with a cool acronym for it (Like the HAPI Compass or the CHAOS Framework from my own work). Again, this article doesn’t have an acronym, so this is more a “do as I say not as I do” situation.

Think about a recipe for bread. You start out with a bunch of ingredients, mash them together into a goop, and transform them with heat into bread. Your job is to properly lay out the steps in the recipe so the reader ends up with delicious bread and not poisonous soup.

Nonfiction is basically a recipe for life. An article teaches them one recipe that transforms them from starving to full.

A book shows them how to never go hungry again.

Notice that our recipe for bread isn’t trying to also be a recipe for meatloaf or one for flourless chocolate cake. In the same way, your article should deal with one problem, one process, and one solution that align together.

In practice, that might mean reframing how they define success, changing how they approach story, or learning to see information as something alive instead of static. It depends on the idea, but the job is always the same.

If you end up unsatisfied because you barely scratched the surface, then you can always write another article. People love a good blog series.

How do we set up the key mechanics? Well, they are the steps that transform your reader from where they are struggling into their win condition. And guess what? We already have all that information.

Where are they struggling: We learned this in the first prewriting step.
Transformation: This is the process of going from step 1 to step 2 we unlocked in step 1.
1. Key Mechanic step 1: What is the first thing they need to do to get to their win condition?
2. Key Mechanic step 2: What is the second thing they need to do to get to their win condition?
3. Key Mechanic step 3: What is the third thing they need to do to get to their win condition?
4. Key Mechanic step 4: What is the fourth thing they need to do to get to their win condition?
5. etc…
Win condition: We learned this in the second prewriting step.

Do you see how this is all just connect the dots now? It’s really so easy if you just have the right sequence.

Now, what happens if you end up with 20-30 Key Mechanics and you want to include them all? Then, maybe you have a piece of cornerstone content.

Cornerstone content are the most important articles on your site, roughly 3,000-5,000+ words (this one is 8,500) that are meant to rank with search engines and drive organic traffic. The best practice used to be that you should build your site with 3-5 pieces of cornerstone content, and then place to make ten in the first year of your blog.

I like to write one of those every month if I can, and you’re reading one right now. I love these kinds of articles because they keep people busy for months and answer questions once that I never have to answer again.

Even if they don’t get the most traction at launch, they are the ones that get shared the most over time.

Writing the article

Okay, we’ve come a long way already and we haven’t even started writing yet. You’ve built the latticework though, and the rest of this is getting buy-in from the reader

Reader buy-in is the moment someone stops skeptical consumption of your work and starts participating. I consider it when somebody drops their shoulders and they start nodding their head.

Without buy-in, everything else falls flat. With buy-in, you can take them anywhere. You can challenge them, surprise them, even confront them because they’ve already decided you’re on their side.

Most nonfiction writing falls flat because they start teaching before they even have buy-in. In my process, 90% of it is buy-in, and teaching is almost the last thing I do. People are almost always stuck because they’ve dug in on a mindset or habit that has taken hold.

You can root it out in a couple seconds. You need to spend time getting people on your side. Otherwise, they will reject what you have to say out of turn.

Every strong piece I write follows the same rhythm.

Introduce the problem: Start where the pain lives. Name what’s broken, confusing, or exhausting about the topic. This is about recognition. The reader needs to see themselves in the first few lines, and believe you know them on a deep, fundamental level. This is why we need to know where they struggle before we start writing.
Prehandle the objections: Everyone comes into an article with baggage, that prevents them from being able to hear what you’re saying. This part is about showing them you know where they are coming from and what’s holding them back, but it’s also about letting them off the hook. Most people are stuck because they’ve been given bad advice or trapped in the wrong system. Show them it’s not their fault. You’re building trust here, not assigning blame.
Meet them where they are: Tell a story, preferably your own, about the struggle as it stands now. It should feel hopeless, and bring in as much drama as possible. This will feel antithetical, but specificity breeds universality. Your struggle is not unique, and showing that struggle, by making it feel hopeless, you are bringing people into the story with you. The more visceral (without being disgusting or vulgar) you can make it, the better.
Reframe the truth: This is where you offer the core idea that makes them sit up. It’s the line that reframes everything they thought they knew. This is why you bring them low first. The more hopeless you can make the situation, the more likely they will be to embrace your reframe. Right now, we’ve “seen” them at their lowest, and proved we understand their struggle, which makes our reframe much easier to swallow.
Contextualize: Zoom out and connect the dots. Explain why the story matters, where it fits in the bigger picture, and how it applies to them. This is the bridge between empathy and instruction. We’re building back up to the teaching moment.
Teach: Now they’re ready to learn. Deliver the Key Mechanics. Keep it grounded in action or perspective and something they can test right away. Give them a small win that leads to a big transformation. Also, notice we’re at the sixth step before we even get to the teaching moment.
Reconnect: Pull back to emotion. Remind them why this matters. Reaffirm the win condition and what’s now possible for them. This is where the piece lands with weight instead of applause. This is where they should be living in their win condition. You show how you have changed, and why life is better on the other side. This is the “phoenix moment”. You have burned to the ground and rebuilt yourself from the ashes.

Each part of this framework has a job, and if you let it do that job, the reader moves naturally from confusion to clarity, from resistance to belief. It’s the difference between information and transformation.

Now, let’s take about each section in a little more detail.

1. Introduce the problem

The most important thing to have at the beginning of your article is confidence. Most people start with saying something like “Have you ever?”

No, that is not the way.

You are the expert. You already know where they are right now. That’s why you’re writing the article, right?!

They found it somehow right? It didn’t magically appear on their screen, so own that confidence and start with an active voice. Pick a scenario you know they’ve gone through or they wouldn’t be reading.

This article starts with “My nonfiction slaps” because the title is “Writing nonfiction that resonates”. So, it’s a good bet you want to learn how to make more resonant content, which makes it a good bet that you don’t think you’re nonfiction slaps.

By having the confidence to say “Hey, I know you aren’t confident about your nonfiction, but mine is great” it should have shocked you off the bat. Maybe you are skeptical, but then in the next paragraph I say three things that prove I’m an authority.

It’s witty, informative, and clear, and that has taken over 15 years for me to say. I’m probably only comfortable with saying it now because of working with Writer MBA, and the fact that tens of thousands of people read my articles every week and stay subscribed.

The first bolded elements shows I have been doing this a long time. The second shows that I worked with a popular company in the space, and the third shows that a lot of people read my work.

So, would you expect somebody like that to have nonfiction that slaps? Yeah, I would.

Honestly, this is an advanced technique, but you can see it through my work. Here’s the first paragraph of Three counterintuitive ways to boost engagement during your crowdfunding campaign.

Most writers jump into crowdfunding with high hopes. We want to connect with our audience, rally a tribe of enthusiastic readers, and raise enough funds to bring our books to life. The standard approach is to make a polished pitch, share your campaign link, and hope your community grows. Yet despite good intentions, it can feel like your efforts fall flat. The marketplace is crowded, your inbox is quieter than you’d like, and those well-meaning “launch day” posts often slip by unnoticed.

Here’s the start of Break through a ceiling. Turn it into a floor.

When I first started my career, everything felt exponential.
Every show I tabled at, I met more people. Every book I put out, I doubled my readers. Every launch seemed bigger than the last. It was a rush.
And like most new authors, I assumed the curve would just keep going up forever.
Spoiler: it doesn’t.
Eventually, I started seeing the same people at shows, and now I was a known commodity. People had made opinions about me, and many of them not positive.

Do you see how this works? Good introductions feel like recognition. They make the reader feel seen. That’s the only way they’ll let you take them somewhere new. It’s empathy without indulgence.

2. Prehandle the objections

Right after you name the problem, you have to handle the objections. These are the quiet reasons people think this doesn’t apply to them, or that they’re too far gone to fix it.

Every reader has defense mechanisms. The moment you say “here’s what’s wrong,” they start rehearsing excuses in their head. “That’s not my situation.” “I tried that once and it didn’t work.” “Maybe that works for you, but not for me.”

Here’s how I prehandle objections in The 7 pillars that actually matter in building a publishing career

Yes, they’re big categories. Each one is a rabbit hole that can consume years of your life if you let it, but everything else is just a variation on one of these seven.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that most authors never get even one of them working sustainably.
It’s not because they’re lazy. It’s not because they’re untalented. It’s because of two lies we’ve all been sold about success in publishing.
The first lie is that if you just write a good book, everything else will magically happen. That’s the fantasy the publishing industry desperately wants you to believe, but it doesn’t work like that. Writing is foundational, but it’s not a system. A book is just inventory until you connect it to readers through one of the other pillars above.
The second lie is that you have to do everything, all the time, and if you don’t then you’ll never succeed. It’s the lie of silver bullets, magic strategies, and overblown hype.
They are comfortable lies, so it’s easy for writers to fall into them. They bounce around doing everything at once and thinking they’re making progress. Maybe they try a Patreon for two weeks but it doesn’t get big enough for their aspirations immediately, so they abandon it. They dabble in Kickstarter, but don’t fund in 24 hours, so they call it a scam. They buy Facebook ads, lose $200, and decide ads don’t work.
That cycle guarantees you’ll never succeed.
Why? Because every single pillar has a failure period built in. The first few months are going to be messy. You’re supposed to get it wrong. Nobody hits the bullseye first shot.

This is a little further than I usually like to put these objections, but do you see how I full on attack the things that block a reader’s ability to accept this to be true without ever calling them bad. The system is bad. They are good. Nobody has ever been chastized into changing.

People don’t like confrontation, so they just ignore this part. If you don’t address those voices early, they’ll drown you out before the article has a chance to land.

This section isn’t about arguing with them. It’s about disarming them. You do that by removing blame. You show them it’s not their fault. It’s the system, the bad advice, the lie they were sold. You let them exhale.

Here’s another one from The art of sustainable productivity: A writer’s guide to doing more with less

When I talk about productivity, I’m not interested in cramming 200 hours of work into a 20-hour week. I’m focused on something far more valuable, which is leverage. What I mean by productivity is doing an hour’s worth of work in 10 minutes. I don’t want to fill up the rest of those 50 minutes. I just want to do the work efficiently so I can move on with my day and have more time for myself.

Notice here that I’m attacking the idea of productivity at its core. You think productivity means X, but it really mean Y. I actually agree that kind of productivity is dumb, but there is productivity that works.

Once we can both agree on that framing, then we can have a conversation. Until then, it’s a lecture.

The point isn’t to win a debate, it’s to lower resistance. The reader has to feel safe enough to imagine a different outcome. When they stop feeling judged, they start listening.

Handled well, this section is where trust begins. You’re not promising an easy fix—you’re proving you understand the weight they’ve been carrying. And once that happens, they’re finally open to a new way forward.

3. Meet them where they are

Once the idea lands, you have to make it real. That’s what story really does. It turns a concept into something you can feel.

Your goal here isn’t telling them the whole story. You want them to feel uncomfortable and in pain. People hate discomfort. The more you can make them sit in that discomfort, the more likely they will accept your solution…

…to a point.

There is a point when it’s too far, and you go too deep, but most people are nowhere near that limit. Our goal is in getting them to the “dark night of the soul” as we call it in fiction.

This isn’t about making you the hero, but in making the system, or the situation, the villain.

It’s about using experience as evidence that something is deeply wrong, and that if they keep on their path they’ll surely run into it, too.

Sometimes that means telling your story, because you’ve lived the problem and earned the insight. Other times it’s someone else’s story. Maybe a student, a peer, a client, or even a cultural example that proves the same truth from a different angle.

You can even use their story since you already know the struggles they face. People have an infinite capacity to learn more about themselves, especially if it feel like “magic”.

Here’s the start of “If I needed $1,000, I could always…”

It starts with the gut punch of an unexpected bill.
Your car breaks down. A medical bill hits. Rent spikes. Or maybe it’s just that your book sales dried up unexpectedly this month. You open your bank account and stare at a balance that wouldn’t cover a trip to Taco Bell, let alone real life.
42% of people don’t have an emergency fund and couldn’t cover a $1,000 emergency bill that comes up.
2025 has been a year that won’t stop taking from me. First, I lost my biggest client. Then, I shuttered a company responsible for half my revenue. Then, I had to spend $8,000 getting all the pipes under my house fixed. Then, my car fell apart and now I need a new one, only to find out that I still need a new dishwasher.

The job of this section is to show the worst possible consequences of not changing. It should feel brutal and debilitating. Everyone reading should either relate it to their situation or be desperate to avoid it ever happening to them.

Here’s a section from How I lit $28,000 on fire with ads, and what it taught me about building a sustainable author business.

Let me take you back. Over a year ago, I ran paid ads to grow my newsletter. I spent over $50k on that project, and it did not go well.
I didn’t need to do it. I already had a newsletter that worked. It already made money, but I wanted more. We had a conference at the time, and it was revenue intensive, so I wanted to grow the list to grow the conference, among other things.
Since I started doing this work decades ago, I’ve known that in order to scale you need a self-liquidating offer, which is one that pays for itself when you run ads, and I thought I had cracked the code.
So, like any good entrepreneur trying to level up, I invested in paid ads to grow that list faster. I wasn’t starting from scratch. I wasn’t fumbling around trying to figure out if newsletters were even effective. This was about throwing fuel on a fire I’d already lit.
What happened instead? I lit my bank account on fire. That’s saying something, since I’m almost always game for a high risk venture with very little chance of success.
Even for me, though, this was a lot.

I think we can all agree that losing $50k is a lot, even for somebody successful. Every person reading has lost money, and everyone wants to avoid losing that money again.

Notice that it doesn’t take a long time to make this connection. I was able to do it in a couple of paragraphs, but it does take intention to really make them feel the pain.

4. Reframe the truth

This is the turn in the story. You are at the dark night of the soul. All hope is lost. You are in deep pain…and then something magical happened.

You found a way out. You found a strategy that worked. You found a system that worked. You caught a lifeline, and that’s what will prevent the reader from feeling that suffering, too.

This is the part that makes the reader stop skimming and start paying attention. You are delivering hope, and hope is a powerful thing.

You’ve named the problem. You’ve made them feel unsafe. Now you show them what they’ve been missing…

…but this only works if you brought them low first. Unless they feel the problem, there is no reason to seek a solution. You have to bring them as far into the darkness as you safely can before you offer them salvation.

The reframe is the “what if everything you’ve been told about this is wrong?” moment. It’s not about shock value. It’s about clarity. You take what they already believe and tilt it until the whole picture changes.

This is often done with one single line. Here it is in You’re not broken, but your author business might be.

It’s not the tool that makes the business. It’s whether that tool is doing the job it was meant to do.

Here it is again in Breaching the trust thermocline.

In fact, it’s a gradual process, and understanding how to avoid breaching the trust thermocline can help authors build and maintain long-term, loyal audiences.

Here is it in My thesis about how to thrive as a writer in a capitalist dystopia.

The universe is dumb, and capitalism is nonsense, but at least it is consistent nonsense, which makes it gameable and thus winnable.

Here it is in Is it Even Possible to be a Writer and Happy at the Same Time?

You can’t guilt people into buying something.

Done right, the reframe doesn’t feel like you’re teaching them something new. It feels like you’re showing something obvious…

…and you are because the rest of the article up until this whole point led to it. It is the only logical outcome of the story you are telling.

Of course if you read a bread recipe, the point will be to make bread, right? Duh.

If you read a book about a chosen one and at the end of the first act they became a habidasher, that would be odd, but while reading fantasy the magical is obvious because that’s the story we’re telling.

Truly great writing takes something wholly unnatural and makes it ridiculously obvious. It feels like you’re reminding the reader of something they always knew but couldn’t articulate.

It sounds true because it is true, They just needed someone to put words to it.

That’s why it hits so hard. The power of the reframe comes from contrast. The reader has to see both sides at once, the old belief and the new one, and feel the tension between them. That friction is what pulls them forward.

If you get this part right, everything after it feels inevitable. The story, the teaching, and the resolution all flow out of this new understanding. The reframe is the heartbeat of the piece. It’s the moment you hand them a new lens, and suddenly the rest of the world looks different.

The hero always makes it out of the dark night of the soul, even if the way forward isn’t obvious to them until they see it. Your reader is the hero of every article you right. You are the mentor guiding the path forward.

You know what’s on the other side of the darkness, but the only way through it is for them to see it for themselves.

This is the core of every story, and almost nobody does it. This is why we do all the prewriting, because everything is leading up to this moment when everything changes. The reader steps through the portal into a new world, and is ready to hear what you have to say.

They may not believe it yet, but they are on your side.

5. Contextualize

Once the reader has seen your process as the answer to their problem, you need to widen the frame. Contextualizing is where you show how your reframe fits into the bigger pattern.

Here’s how that looks in Money as means or money as ends?

Most advice about “growth” comes from people who see money as the ultimate goal. They are usually agnostic about what they sell or how they sell it. To them, the process, whether it is crafting a book, building a platform, or designing a marketing plan, is just a means to an end. Their focus is on the outcome: the accumulation of wealth.
For many creators, this mindset grates against their souls. Writers tend to care deeply about the process and the work itself. Writing is not just a job; it is a craft, a calling, and often a form of self-expression. For most authors, money is not the ultimate goal. Instead, it is a tool, a necessary means to create more books, connect with readers, and sustain a writing career. Once the basics are covered—keeping the lights on, buying time to write—money often fades into the background.
This difference in priorities creates a disconnect. Advice aimed at maximizing revenue can feel out of sync with what authors truly value. When money is the end goal, the strategies you use are very different than when writing and creating are the end goals. This misalignment leads to authors and growth experts talking past each other, unable to connect because they are speaking entirely different languages.

This is where the lesson becomes durable. You’re no longer saying, this happened to me or this happened to them. You’re saying, this happens. You connect the personal truth to the systemic truth.

Context gives meaning to the reframe. You might bring in research, data, industry trends, or a shared cultural reality that supports the larger point. The goal is to make the reader think, Oh, this isn’t just my problem. This is the problem.

But don’t let the scope drown the humanity. Keep the context rooted in the same emotional core. It should clarify, not sterilize. You’re helping the reader understand where their experience fits in the landscape, not turning your piece into a white paper.

Here’s an example from How to Reframe Capitalism to Make Sales and Marketing Work (Better) for You

Reframing your marketing through this lens allows you to stop seeing rejection as a personal attack and start seeing it as what it is…a chance to earn somebody’s trust.
Yes, it is sad to find out somebody doesn’t trust you yet, but you can earn trust. Once people trust you to write great books, they often will buy from you…
…if the conditions are right.
One of my favorite marketing reframes I’ve developed over the years is called “the theory of the case” or “the case for your book”, depending on how I’m feeling that day.
The idea is that any marketing campaign is not about flashy graphics or slick copy but a concerted effort to make a case for why somebody should care about your book.
This isn’t about begging, pleading, or cajoling but about looking at the positive reasons somebody should care about your book and overcoming the negative objections somebody might have.

When you get this part right, the story you told stops being a single thread. It becomes part of a tapestry the reader can see themselves in.

That’s the power of context: it transforms empathy into understanding, and understanding into momentum.

6. Teach

Notice there are seven parts to this framework and teaching is the sixth part. Almost nobody waits this long to start teaching, and it’s killing your writing. If you just kept everything you teach the same and changed the sequence, it would exponentially increase how many people connect with your work.

I know its the part you’re most excited about, so you want to rush into it, but nobody is going to care what you have to teach if you don’t get them in the right mindset to accept your transformation.

Only once you’ve shown what the idea means in the context of the reader’s life do you have permission to explain how it works.

This is the practical core of the piece, but “teaching” doesn’t mean lecturing. It means demonstrating in motion. As I mentioned above, it’s nice to have a name for your framework, like the HAPI Compass:

This triangulation manifests in what we call the HAPI Compass you can carry into any market shift. Point it at your work and four coordinates come into view:
H – Heart: the projects and inspiration that give you goosebumps and will resonate deeply with your readers.
A – Audience: the people orbiting those ideas, ready to champion them, amplify your reach, and fall deeply in love with what you create.
P – Prioritization: Deep focus on one high-leverage move at a time, letting it pay off, then reinvesting the space and cash it creates to widen your runway and buy yourself time for what matters.
I – Income: Generating the money that sustains your ideal life while fueling the creative work that lights you up.

Or this C.H.A.O.S. Framework:

In working with so many successful creators, and learning from their process, I developed a simple framework that can hopefully help you harness the power of chaos, learn to live with it, and use its magic to propel you forward.
This C.H.A.O.S. framework has five stages: Center, Harness, Adapt, Observe, Simplify.
Remember, harnessing chaos magic isn’t about being chaos. It’s about flowing with the chaos, aware and awake for opportunities when they present themselves, and being able to redirect its energy into productive outlets when you find them.
(C)enter yourself: The first step to mastering chaos is grounding yourself. When everything feels like it’s spinning out of control, your inner stability becomes your anchor. This might mean developing a daily ritual like meditation, journaling, or even a walk in nature to calm your mind and clarify your priorities.
(H)arness productive chaos: Not all chaos is destructive. Creative bursts, unexpected connections, and sudden opportunities can be incredibly productive. The key is learning to recognize the difference. Productive chaos adds energy to your life, while destructive chaos drains it.
(A)dapt with flexible systems: Rigid systems break under pressure. Flexible systems bend and thrive. This means creating processes that allow for experimentation, iteration, and change. For example, instead of micromanaging every step of a project, set broad goals and empower your team to find their own solutions. Flexibility isn’t a lack of structure. It’s a structure that evolves over time, like one of those inflatable tube men waving their arms all over the place.
(O)bserve and learn: Chaos is a powerful teacher, but only if you’re willing to listen. Instead of rushing to control the situation, take time to observe. What patterns are emerging? What opportunities are hidden within the mess? Chaos often reveals insights you’d miss in a more orderly environment.
(S)implify to rebalance: When chaos becomes overwhelming, the solution isn’t to fight it harder—it’s to simplify. Cut back to what matters most. Eliminate distractions. Focus your energy on the essentials. Simplification isn’t about giving up; it’s about creating space for clarity and action.

It’s a lot easier to remember a named framework like these, both as a student and a teacher, and the easier something is to remember, the more likely somebody will be to use it, but it’s nowhere close to the biggest mistake people make.

The most consequential error people almost universally make in their teaching practice is not baking in a little mini-story to demonstrate each step.

Yes, you have to explain the concept clearly in each step, but that explanation should read more like Aesop’s Fables than a car manual. A simple way to make this happen is to follow the simple rhythm of I do, you do, we do for each part of your framework.

I do is where you model it. You show how you applied this idea in your own work or life. This is you in action doing the thing wrong, doing it again, and then doing it better. The story is the proof.
You do is where you hand it to them. You translate your story into something they can use and implement. You’re saying, “Here’s how this shows up for you,” not “Here’s what you should do.”
We do is where you close the distance. You remind them this is shared work. You frame the lesson as something we’re all navigating, not something you’ve mastered. This makes them feel like they’re part of something, not being graded on it.

Each part should have its own mini-story. Remember people learn not from instructions, but from story integrated into instruction. You don’t need to do all of them in every step, but you should choose 1-2 for each one.

Here’s an example from The art of harnessing chaos magic.

5. (S)implify to rebalance
When chaos becomes overwhelming, the solution isn’t to fight it harder—it’s to simplify. Cut back to what matters most. Eliminate distractions. Focus your energy on the essentials. Simplification isn’t about giving up; it’s about creating space for clarity and action.
Going back to the beginning and retracing your steps usually reveals the flaw in your process, and being fluid in your systems should allow you to backtrack to the problem and pick another path or abandon it completely. If something isn’t serving you, feel free to stop working on it. You can always pick it up later. Your intuition is probably telling you that you missed something, and you need to reenter the chaos to find out how to move forward.
We might think we know what’s going to happen, but even if we have run the same experiment a hundred times before there’s a small chance that you’ll get a wildly different result, which is fabulous and frustrating in equal measure.

You can see the you do in the second paragraph and we do in the third. Here’s an example of I do from Growth, or something like it...

I was at a party recently, and I could not have been more uncomfortable. The party was loud, and I didn’t know many people. It was the kind of place 21-year-old Russell would have gone to, but 36-year-old Russell felt out of place.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the place I was at either. The other people that were there seemed to be having a perfectly pleasant time. It was the right place for them, but I could not have been more awkward and ill at ease, because it wasn’t the right place for me.
I maybe said 100 words the whole night, which, if you know me, is not normal.
However, it made me realize that often there is nothing wrong with us when we’re trying to connect with our audience. We are just in the wrong place, talking to the wrong people, surrounded by the wrong music, dancing to the wrong beat.
In another setting, I’m perfectly pleasant.
In the right setting, you would have to pay me to shut up. In fact, just a few weeks ago I was with many of the same people and had a perfectly lovely time chatting up a storm. However, when I’m in the wrong setting, I just don’t have the energy. It’s the same for us in our creative lives.
Often, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with us. It’s just that we’re out of place. When we find the right place, we’ll shine. All of this stuff we’re doing is just to find our people.

You can see that in both examples you do and I do became we do naturally, demonstrating the concept I’m trying to get across without describing the process.

The titles of each key mechanic should clearly explain the step. The main thing we’re doing here is demonstating the concept and how it applies in practice. If people can’t envision how to apply it to their own situation, they will tune out. We have to keep them invested, and we do that with story.

In the examples above, there’s a story baked into the teaching, each with their own little setup, conflict, and resolution that explains the concept.

There should be an arc to the whole piece, but there are mini arcs to each of these sections.

In each example, we’re setting an initial struggle, introducing conflict, and giving resolution, just like the overarching one we’re following across the whole piece. That rhythm keeps the teaching alive and moves the reader from observation to ownership. Keeping this structure throughout will keep your article readable and engaging, instead of lagging once you reach the most important part of the article (and the reason you’re writing it).

If you teach through demonstration, you’re not telling them what to think. You’re walking them through how the idea behaves in the real world, until they can feel it working for themselves, and letting them make the decision for themselves.

To do this most effectively, it helps to use examples from different lived experiences than yours, too. So, if you can use co-workers, clients (anonymized and with permission, of course), or parables that center different people in the narrative, then more people can see themselves in these transformations, and you’ll get more buyin from more people.

Here’s an example of that from Understanding the modern customer journey:

One evening, while unwinding after work, Bob comes across a piece of content that catches his eye. It’s a thoughtfully designed giveaway for collectors of vintage sci-fi memorabilia, one of his passionate interests that he rarely indulges. The timing is perfect; he’s just finished reorganizing his collection and has been thinking about expanding it. This isn’t just any promotional content, though. It’s been carefully crafted to appeal to true enthusiasts, with prizes that demonstrate a real understanding of the community.
The initial touchpoint is just the beginning of Bob’s journey. After clicking through, he arrives at a landing page that speaks his language, featuring references that only true fans would appreciate. The page isn’t just pimping an offer to buy. It’s filled with interesting content about collecting, preservation tips, and stories from other collectors. So, he signs up to the company’s promotional material, what we call an “opt-in”.
When he finally signs up to learn more, the experience is seamless. Instead of an abrupt “thanks for entering” message, he receives a personalized email that includes a curated guide to caring for vintage collectibles, something of genuine value whether he buys from the company or not. The brand has anticipated his needs and interests, providing relevant content before he even asks for it.

This specificity will help people imagine this happening to them, or at least that it’s applicable in more than one situation. Even though people come to your piece with the same struggle, their exact experience is different.

7. Reconnect

At the end of the piece, it’s time to bring it back to the transformation you wrote it in the introduction. Now is when you deliver the win condition and explain what is possible.

This is the inevitable result of the rest of your piece. Literally, everything you’ve done has led to this, and just like any good story, your job is to offer catharsis and tie up any lose ends, while readying them to walk out into their new life.

Here is an example from The art of harnessing chaos magic:

This is you circling back and showing how far the reader has already moved toward it. You want them to feel that quiet shift from “this is interesting” to “this is mine now.”
Here is an example from The art of harnessing chaos magic:
Chaos magic isn’t about controlling the uncontrollable. It’s about learning to dance with it. The most successful people I know aren’t those who avoid chaos; they’re the ones who embrace it, channel it, and turn it into fuel for their ambitions.
The next time life feels chaotic, remember, chaos isn’t a problem to solve. It’s an opportunity to grow. Be like Princess Unikitty. Channel the madness. Build your kingdom not in spite of the chaos, but because of it.
And when you do, you’ll discover the real magic: thriving in the unpredictable and creating something extraordinary along the way.

The tone here is steady, not triumphant. You’re not declaring victory, but offering possibility. You’re sharing what changes when you live this idea. At its best, you’re giving them a glimpse of the version of themselves who already believes you.

After the teaching, the reader’s head is full. You reconnect through the heart. Remind them what’s at stake, what’s worth building, what it looks like to keep going.

Here’s this part in Freedom to vs. freedom from.

You get to decide. That’s the gift and the burden of this path. You can choose to write strange books, or start a newsletter, or launch your own imprint, or stop writing entirely and build furniture instead, and it’s all valid.
But make no mistake, choosing not to choose is still a choice.
The longer you stay in the purgatory of freedom from, the more your dream decays into regret.
So, I’m not going to end this by telling you to quit your job or start a Substack or launch a Kickstarter. I’m just going to ask this one question.
What are you building with your freedom, and is it enough?

A good reconnection feels like an exhale, just like the resolution of a great book. You’ve teased the win condition this whole time, and now is the payoff. The goal is to leave them standing at the edge of the win condition, already taking the first step toward it.

This framework isn’t about making what we write matter because it already matters. We know it matters because we have seen it work. That’s why we’re writing about it.

The real challenge is getting people to care.

To do that, we must make the writing resonate deeply enough that people stop scrolling and start thinking, which means making them feel seen, challenged, or understood, sometimes all at once.

That’s what this structure does. Every part exists to close the distance between writer and reader, so your ideas have more impact.

When nonfiction resonates, it sticks in people’s bodies, not just their brains. They quote it without remembering where it came from.

They bring it up in conversations weeks later. It becomes part of how they think.

That’s the goal.

Not to convince or impress, but to connect so deeply that the idea keeps echoing long after they’ve closed the tab.

That’s what makes nonfiction work. Not its theoretical importance, but its ability to move people.

If you need this as a fillable worksheet, here you go.

Nonfiction That Resonates Worksheet

170KB ∙ PDF file

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What do you think?

Where does your nonfiction lose buy-in? When you think about your own essays, where do readers check out — the story, the shift, or the teaching? What makes them stop believing you?
What’s your win condition? If someone fully embraced one of your ideas, what would their life or work look like afterward? Have you ever written that transformation out before you started a piece?
Which mechanics are holding your readers back? Think about the last thing you wrote that didn’t land the way you hoped. Was it the structure, or the belief underneath it? What would have to change for your readers to actually feel the shift you’re describing?

Let us know in the comments.