--- title: Ben Franklin's Secret to Becoming a Better Writer description: For starters, he did a lot of it. canonical: https://time.com/4243924/writing-benjamin-franklin/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-03-03T13:00:38.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:56:08.151Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Ben Franklin's Secret to Becoming a Better Writer og:description: For starters, he did a lot of it og:url: https://time.com/4243924/writing-benjamin-franklin/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt59f4541ab2621335/69887fdb0b72e3ad906e85e2/benjamin-franklin.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4798 og:image:height: 2699 og:image:alt: Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Wright at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ben Franklin's Secret to Becoming a Better Writer twitter:description: For starters, he did a lot of it twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt59f4541ab2621335/69887fdb0b72e3ad906e85e2/benjamin-franklin.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Ben Franklin's Secret to Becoming a Better Writer > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=c793c3a9-bcaa-478d-be92-8c0ef6076591&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success [Watch (HLS stream): The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/HSYDj99Q.m3u8) (17:44)  _Published 2015-02-17. The Nantucket Project: How Storytelling is Getting in The Way of Your Success_ by [Shane Snow / LinkedIn](https://time.com/author/linkedin/) ## Shane Snow / LinkedIn Contributor Mar 3, 2016 1:00 PM UTC  Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Wright at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Wright at Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Joseph Wright by [Shane Snow / LinkedIn](https://time.com/author/linkedin/) ## Shane Snow / LinkedIn Contributor Mar 3, 2016 1:00 PM UTC When Benjamin Franklin was a boy, he yearned for a life at sea. This worried his father, so the two toured the various trades in 18th-century Boston until Ben found something else he liked: books. Eagerly, Ben’s father set his son up as an apprentice at a print shop. Ben went on to become a revered statesman, a notoriously prolific inventor, and one of the most influential thinkers in American history. He owed most of that to his early years of voracious reading and meticulous writing—learned while at the print shop. Franklin wasn’t born an academic savant. In fact, in his autobiography, he bemoans his subpar teenage writing skills—and outright terrible math ability. To succeed at “letters,” and eventually inventing and critical thinking and all the things which would later flow from his writer’s mind, Franklin devised a little system for mastering the writer’s craft without a tutor. To do so, he collected issues of the British culture and politics magazine, _The Spectator_, which had some of the best writing of his day in it, and reverse engineered the prose. He writes: --- > “” --- Basically, he took notes _at a sentence level_, sat on them for a while, and tried to recreate the sentences from his own head, without looking at the originals. --- > “” --- Upon comparison, he found that his vocabulary was lacking, and his prose was light on variety. So he tried the same exercise, only instead of taking straightforward notes on the articles he was imitating, he turned them into poems. --- > “” --- As his skill at imitating _Spectator_\-style writing improved, he upped the challenge: --- > “” --- He did this over and again. Unlike the more passive method most writers use to improve their work (reading a lot), this exercise forced Franklin to pay attention to the tiny details that made the difference between decent writing and great writing: --- > “” --- When he says a “tolerable English writer,” he’s being humble. In a trivial amount of time, teenage Franklin became one of the best writers in New England, and shortly after that, a prodigious publisher. I love this story because I unwittingly did something very similar when I started training to become a journalist—and again when I embarked on writing [my book](http://sha.ne/Smartcuts). Driven by insecurity in my novice writing ability, I sat down and studied my favorite writers, people like Jon Ronson and Oscar Wilde and J.K. Rowling whose work does what one of my favorite editors always told me is the hallmark of a great writing: _speeds you along_. And instead of simply reading their work, I studied their sentences and made neurotic spreadsheets about them. In my early days as a journalist, I studied New York _Times_ stories line by line: lengths, varieties, parts of speech, ledes, kickers. I would sit down with a newspaper and a pad of paper and recreate the story by hand. When I started writing my book—my first real work of significant length—I pulled out my favorite books and made spreadsheets of how the authors opened their chapters, set up tension between scenes, incorporated research and dialogue, used diction, and so on. I pulled apart my favorite feature stories by Gene Weingarten sentence by sentence, noting his use of adjectives (or lack thereof), which types of words with which he ended sentences and scenes. Then, I would write sentences or paragraphs in different styles, trying to recreate my heroes. “How would Rowling write this paragraph?” I’d write it. Then, “How would Gene write it?” I’m no Oscar Wilde; but through these exercises (and a lot of bad writing of my own) I’ve gotten to the point where I’m a tolerable enough English writer to make a career of doing what I love. But more importantly, like Franklin, being a better writer, and a student of good writing, has helped me become a better student of _everything_. Good reading and writing ability helps you to be more persuasive, learn other disciplines, and apply critical feedback more effectively to any kind of work. When hiring for [my company](http://contently.com/), my first impression of a candidate is dramatically impacted by the clarity of their emails. After building his writing muscles through his Spectator exercises, Franklin reports that he was able to finally teach himself mathematics: --- > “” --- Perhaps Ben’s little secret for learning to write isn’t so dissimilar from what MIT professor Seymour Papert teaches about [Constructionism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism%5F%28learning%5Ftheory%29): that children learn more effectively by building with LEGOs than they do by listening to architecture lectures. Research shows that this tends to be the case, that it’s not just the study of tiny details that accelerates learning; the act of assembling those details yourself is what makes the difference. _This_ [_article_](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140820222906-7374576-ben-franklin-s-secret-to-becoming-a-better-writer) _originally appeared on_ [_LinkedIn_](http://www.linkedin.com) ## Transcript [00:00] [ MUSIC ] The Nantucket Project. Every year, The [00:00] Nantucket Project invites leaders from business, sports, [00:00] academia, government and the arts to give The Talk of [00:01] Their Lives. Before the weekend ends, our audience [00:01] singles out one talk from the dozens they're heard as the [00:16] highest [00:22] impact. I'm a total junkie for story. I read and write and live [00:25] by them and every couple of years, I write some down and [00:28] then I go city to city and read from my books. And over all [00:32] these years trafficking in story, I've noticed a little problem [00:35] which is the standard pieces of good story, at least judging [00:39] by what we teach and also by what we reward most [00:43] handsomely, can get in the way of reaching of what I [00:46] consider to be the Mount Everest of human emotions which [00:49] is to say the very hardest place to get to. But also where the [00:52] views are sort of life- changing, choose acceptance. And [00:56] by accept, I mean, when we acknowledge the nature of [01:00] the beast, and the beast's nature. So, another way to get at [01:04] it is to look at the antonyms for accept, which are reject, [01:08] spurn, deny. Another way to get at it [01:12] is to talk about Temple Grandin, the famous gifted artistic [01:15] woman who knew early on as did everyone whoever met [01:19] her that her mind work differently and rather than deny or [01:22] reject that or try to fix it, she said this is how my mind works [01:26] and I'm going to work with what I have got. And, as you [01:29] probably know, she totally revolutionized the way we treat [01:31] cattle in this country. So I posted, to get sort of real world [01:35] on this, I posted on my Facebook page what have you had [01:38] to accept over your lifetime and what happened after you [01:41] accepted it. And then about ten minutes I got a [01:45] master's degree in higher order processing. My friends [01:49] have had to accept multiple sclerosis, brain damage, stage [01:53] IV ovarian cancer, four types of addiction, losing [01:57] a father to murder, a mother to suicide. Everything [02:02] to a fire, a son who has Rett syndrome, a daughter [02:06] with diabetes, a son who wants to become a daughter. And [02:10] all manner of ****. [ LAUGH ] Boss, [02:15] stepfather, ex. Here's a short list of things that [02:19] we are all invited to accept, over a lifetime. Our childhoods, [02:23] which include the flaws of our mothers and fathers. And the [02:26] cruelties of the neighborhood kid, and the prom date. And [02:29] the coach we thought had our back. Our children and their [02:33] mysterious insecurities and tattoos and scars and lost [02:37] potential. And choice in mates. Our spouses [02:41] and the many thing they do different from us. Ourselves. [02:46] The deadly sins, all seven of them. The weather, [02:49] inconvenient or ruthless. And the irreversible trajectory of [02:53] all human bodies. So clearly acceptance, arduous [02:57] though it is, is going to be required of us. Thankfully [03:01] acceptance gives back. In every single response on [03:04] Facebook the person said that once they actually crossed [03:07] over. They set loose an internal freedom what they've [03:10] never known and that created a possibility for a [03:14] qualitatively different kind of happiness and productivity. I [03:18] got going on this whole acceptance thing about four or five [03:21] years ago when I started working on this book, Glitter and [03:23] Glue, which I thought was going to be about being a nanny [03:26] but it turned out to be about my mother. Who like to say [03:30] your father's the glitter but I'm the glue. [ LAUGH ] [03:31] [ LAUGH ] My [03:39] mother and I have virtually nothing in common. I am a [03:43] dance on the table until midnight extrovert. effusive, [03:47] affectionate, second- guessing, self- doubting woman who [03:50] like nothing better than a long hug and a good cry. And my [03:54] mother, do you watch Downtown Abbey? [ LAUGH ] My [03:59] mother's Maggie Smith. She is an old [04:04] school opinionated woman who like nothing better than [04:06] what she calls a party for one. [ INAUDIBLE ] [ LAUGH ] [04:11] Which sounds a lot more interesting than it is, I assure you. [04:13] [ LAUGH ] [04:15] It's when you pour a nice glad of chardonnay over ice. And [04:18] you take off your bra, and you grab your library book, and [04:21] go somewhere no one can find. Now, I have [04:25] a lot of stories about my mom, and I've been telling them [04:29] my whole life. Like, for instance, she's a chronic regifter. [04:34] And by regifting, she takes it to a whole new level. Which is [04:37] to say, if you were to give her anything, like the bag of [04:40] goodies I got upon arrival, she would open them very [04:43] gingerly. And then she would write in pencil on the bottom [04:46] what it was. And then she would take it home and put it in [04:49] her closet, her gift closet. And then right before Christmas, [04:52] she sets up what she calls the store. [ LAUGH ] Which is in [04:56] the upstairs bedroom that's empty. She lays out all the [05:00] things she's been given over the course of the year. The [05:02] lotions and the candles and the strange scarves. And, [05:07] then puts a little price tag on them and she sells them to her [05:10] children. [ LAUGH ]. [05:13] [ LAUGH ] [05:16] So that we can give them to our aunts and uncles and [05:19] godparents who we've forgotten to buy a gift for. [ LAUGH ] [05:27] And I asked her if she minded me telling you that and she [05:30] said, Betty Moran told me re- gifting is green. [ LAUGH ]. [05:39] But strangely, in the process of thinking her through it takes [05:43] years to write a book. There's so many rewrites and [05:46] conversations. I finally stopped trying to change her. To [05:50] make her more liberal or spendy or outgoing or even to just [05:55] to get her switch from Folger's coffee crystals to brewed [05:58] coffee. [ LAUGH ] [06:00] I understood for the first time that her way of being in the [06:05] world is the right way for her. And sometimes, [06:09] when I'm accepting her, it spills over into my ability to [06:12] embrace the reality of my own children. And even [06:17] occassionally, my husband. Though not when [06:21] he packs the dishwasher because in that case, he does it [06:24] wrong. [ LAUGH ] [06:27] Life Mount Everest, acceptance is a really hard place to [06:30] stay. The air is thin. And I find that I keep falling back into [06:34] the fight for things to conform to how they should and [06:37] should not be. And I think those expectations are [06:40] established. by the conscious and subconscious and [06:44] sometimes totally unconscious pull to narrative. It's [06:48] glorious arcs and it's promising, reassuring internal logics [06:52] that, like it or not, life refuses to [06:56] replicate. So if you think about it, we learn in elementary [06:59] school and then again in middle school and again in high [07:01] school, to look for the five part dramatic structure that's [07:05] underneath all the stories we're consuming. Exposition, [07:08] rising action, climax, falling action, best of all, denouement, [07:13] which is a French word that means untie. But my [07:16] daughter's teacher defined it as the catharsis following, a [07:19] return to normality. Doesn't that sound fabulous? [07:22] [ LAUGH ] Then we graduate into the world and we [07:27] consume and, and produce all kinds of content, literary and [07:30] cinematic and lyrical. And the world says, you want a [07:33] winning story. Give me a character I can root for, take him [07:37] on a journey, and give me a resolution. This goes [07:41] way back, of course, to Homer and Shakespeare, where [07:44] certain appetites were created, or maybe just reinforced. [07:48] For instance, the heroes we love to love are the reluctant [07:51] nominees like Odysseus. The villains we love to hate are [07:54] the unseemly power grabbers like Lady Macbeth, which is [07:58] fine for fiction. The problem is when we start wanting [08:02] and even expecting real regular people to [08:07] behave like the archetypal characters we know from our [08:10] favorite stories. So for a tiny example of narratives [08:14] influence, in politics the reluctant hero thing goes, if [08:19] you really want me to run, I will. Nobody [08:24] ever says I've wanted to be president since I was in [08:27] kindergarten. In my world, the world of writing, it goes, [08:32] I didn't hunt down an agent or corner the editor at the party. [08:36] I was discovered. [ LAUGH ] We lean towards stories of [08:40] destiny. An organic rise confers authenticity. [08:45] And that is established or reinforced, or some unholy cycle [08:49] of the two ,. By story and that might be making it harder [08:53] to set partners and candidates and colleagues who are [08:57] staying in this tiny case, a complex mix of ambition and [09:02] good luck. Speaking of spurning complect, complexity, [09:06] I was watching cable news in the airport and there were [09:08] stories about Hillary Clinton and their doctor who [09:11] performed Joan Rivers' last procedure. And, of course, [09:14] Roger Goodell. Depending on what channel you watch, [09:17] they're idiots or prodigies, schemers or innocents. [09:22] Nobody, it seems, can resist the pull to narrative and [09:26] that's making for a whole lot of anger and intolerance [09:31] this isn't much different of course, than the leaders of [09:33] startups who continually edit their narrative until it seems [09:37] like one predestined step after another. It's all [09:41] totally understandable. But these sorts of legendary rises [09:46] can be fatally dangerous to fledgling inventors and [09:50] entrepreneurs, who were planning to get to the Holy Land [09:53] by surface streets instead of rocket ships. Speaking [09:57] of fatally discouraging, every high school kid I know has [10:00] bought into this powerful myth. Hero works hard. Hero goes [10:04] to Yale. Hero has great life, which leaves the community [10:08] college kids and the kids who worked very hard but got [10:11] rejected anyway agonizing over the unthinkable fate [10:15] that awaits them. And God help the heroes who went to [10:18] Yale and are not having a great life. Most dangerously, [10:22] though, spontaneous narrative structuring happens, and it [10:26] happens all the time, between friends. Journalists talk [10:30] about this thing. It's a tension between truth- telling and [10:33] something they refer broadly, refer to broadly as [10:37] civic uplift. Which is sort of shaping the story to give the [10:41] public what the public needs, especially during times of [10:43] crisis. I think we might all be participating [10:47] in casual civic uplifting. It's hyper apparent now, [10:52] as we all become micro medio, media outlets on Facebook [10:56] and Instagram and Twitter. Presenting thin- sliced versions [10:59] of our lives, mastering the art of the interpersonal headline. [11:03] It's harmless, or maybe this is why teen depression and [11:07] anxiety are at record levels. Because their lives are publicly [11:12] and quantitatively less populated and eventful [11:16] than @ jennygogo's. And Ryan and his 764 [11:21] Instagram friends who follow him everywhere. Where long [11:25] form nuanced interaction is concerned. We're so out [11:29] of practice, we almost don't know how. I was recently in a [11:32] room of adults. And a kid was behind us on the floor, [11:34] making this crazy collage that made no sense. And while [11:38] some of us are sorta awkwardly struggling to get a [11:41] conversation going with her, her basketball playing brother [11:44] came home and everyone spun around and said, did you [11:47] win? What was the score? The team lost it turns out, [11:51] because the refs were blind. And voila, we had a villain. [11:56] Here was a plot we all knew how to discuss. All the while, [11:59] the already kid noodled on the floor behind us with her [12:02] amorphous project that nobody knew how to talk about. [12:05] Speaking of things people don't know how to talk about, I [12:08] had cancer in my 30s, and it was kind of stunning how [12:12] many conversations that year included. Was it in your [12:15] family? You're so brave and what a wake up [12:20] call. I totally appreciate that it is unbearable [12:25] for bad things to just happen unbidden. I feel the same way [12:29] all the time. But the truth is, that after every one of those [12:33] conversations I felt a little heavy hearted. Like I couldn't [12:37] give them the civic uplift they were asking for. I don't have [12:41] the genetic predisposition which would have been a nice [12:43] first chapter of my story. There's not one heroic thing about [12:47] me, and though it would have been nice to claim that [12:50] cancer reprioritized my life, I didn't need a wake up call. I [12:54] already knew that I was lucky. We do this for [12:58] a lot of reasons besides the biggie which is our kind of old [13:02] as time caveman craving for order and reason. One [13:06] reason is to establish consistency. So we want to feel [13:09] integrated across the stages and compartments of our [13:12] lives. I call it the interview effect or the first date effect, [13:16] which is when you're. Job as Class Secretary in tenth [13:19] grade led to your Organizational Development Degree at [13:21] Stanford which led to consulting for the Fortune 500 which [13:24] led to the creation of your firm. And [13:31] then you know, look at the pain that's caused by perceived [13:34] inconsistencies, like gay christians or libertarian artists [13:38] or philanthropic dopers. Another reason we do it [13:42] is to suspend reality. I mean who really wants to face an [13:46] impending financial reckoning? Or deal with a souring [13:50] marriage? Who wants to say their candidate blew it? Or [13:54] that some problems cannot be straightened out just by [13:57] cleaning house? And sometimes we artificially flavor as a [14:01] means to invention, so we articulate this vision using all [14:05] the heartening beats of narrative. And it's an essential step [14:09] in creating something new. We tell our investors and our [14:12] job candidates and our early adopters the story of how our [14:16] essential whatever. Emerged organically from a latent [14:20] need only we could see. But the [14:24] simplified narratives that we're creating and projecting and [14:28] consuming, tempt us into forgetting that family, more than [14:32] the milestone birthdays, is a dicey damn business. And [14:37] marriage has hardly a thing to do with anniversary dinners. [14:41] Products often fail and policies usually come up short one [14:44] way or another. All the Photoshopping, literally [14:49] and metaphorically, is leaving us feeling ripped off when [14:52] our heroes have colossal blind spots. When our most [14:55] important relationships go in circles. And when catharsis, [15:00] followed by a return to normalcy, is nowhere to be found. I [15:04] do know a few people who seem to live with a kind of [15:08] radical honesty, who rarely negate or reject that [15:12] which makes them uncomfortable. One is my cousin Kathy [15:16] who lost her 19 year old, the great, but not perfect [15:21] Aaron Zentgraf in a car accident. She told me once that for [15:25] many years she asked herself why did this happen and [15:29] she finally figured it out. It happened because it can. [15:35] Cars can flip, glass can break, metal can pierce. [15:40] Seeing that clearly, accepting the unadulterated [15:44] reality, set her free. So here's [15:48] a few things that we can do. Check in daily with complex [15:52] content. Long- form journalist, journalism. I still love [15:56] The New Yorker but I'm also reading everyday on [15:59] medium. com. Literary fiction. HBO. Have you seen [16:03] The Leftovers? [ APPLAUSE ] Yeah! My one person. But [16:07] that's really com, that is really complex storytelling. [16:13] To be on guard for the cognitive moment. When people [16:17] become characters, when a series of events becomes a [16:20] plot, when endings become tidy. I know that I'm [16:24] tacking on a [ UNKNOWN ] when I hear myself invoke [16:27] destiny with lines like, I could have told you from day one, [16:31] and absolutisms like always, only, everyone. [16:36] Catharsis is created, not found. Which [16:40] means, all resolutions, and this is such great news, is of [16:44] our making. And maybe our best defense [16:48] against narrative creep, and the unnecessary, and [16:52] sometimes, even crippling dissatisfaction it can generate. Is [16:56] to keep at least one confidant on all matters. [17:00] A real friend, with whom we trade the unadorned truth of [17:04] our lives. Non- conforming, inconsistent, notably deficient [17:08] in many areas. That's the shared reality we're being asked [17:12] to accept and that's the mountain I hope to summit before [17:14] it's all over. Maybe I'll see you there. 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