The Ethos Is Your Anchor To Writing Good Quality Content
To write is to understand your madness and frankness to self-revelation
As I’m sitting with my ginger tea and freshly-baked banana muffin to draft my weekly post on a Friday morning, the phrase ‘writing ethos’ materialised unplanned and unexpected inside my brain. And, I’m not making this up even a little bit. I didn’t read or watch anything that had the words in them. Before today, I had no idea that such school of thought could exist in the world.
Turns out, in the 4th century B.C, in a document called ‘Rhetoric’, the Greek Philosopher Aristotle had coined the term ‘ethos’ to explain how persuasive speech worked. Only today, it’s not restricted to speeches. Rather, persuasion is the foundation on which every viral, semi-viral, attractive content stands strong, bold, and visible.
It all begins with your unadulterated interests: the first thing which gets marred and most people tend to get wrong (count me in) because they’re drowning in overconsumption.
The first year of my writing journey taught me —any idea that comes floating across as fascinating at the onset might not be what you think it to be. There’s a higher probability that you’d drop it off midway and find something else to engage your senses. I’ve no problem with scraping off bad choices but if that happens often and if it’s the sole reason why you’re unable to continue with your writing streak, I believe you might want to pay attention to YOUR confusing and compulsive actions.
As explained by Aristotle, ethos, pathos, logos as the three important elements that can take your writing from the foot to the pinnacle. You need all three to become eligible to speak/write to the audience on a subject matter. Although they are connected to each other, it’s the ethos that earns a writer their authority.
In the online writing community ethos is equivalent to the ‘Perceived’ and ‘Borrowed’ credibility. It’s no surprise when you see writers/creators gathering attention in no time, they have a background which acts as their alibi. They know what they are speaking, why they chose to write about a topic, and the people they would love to see gather around their work.
In short, they pay genuine respects to their delights.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a scientific philologist who nurtured an equal love if not more for both the study of languages and traditional tales. This amalgamation incited him to create his own languages based on more ancient ones of which he was intimately familiar. He followed his interests enough to create entire cultures based on these languages and then wrote stories about them which then became legends (The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit.)
Six years ago, while devouring Deception Point by Dan Brown, I was awestruck with the kind of deep knowledge he possessed about the subject the novel was based on: glaciology. My naive mind could only comprehend that he must have been a Phd. student who had researched the domain religiously. But when asked about his expertise on the subject in an interview, the writer spilled the beans about his book—he had no prior knowledge. But he had morphed into a dedicated student for a year to educate himself about the subject.
“I wrote, he says, what I wanted to know (not what he knew).”
He tells his students to write what they’re passionate about, things that really excites them.
That’s not only it. If you harbour love for creative non-fiction, you must conjoin your insights, opinion, about a subject with personal connections.
“The writers reveal something of themselves in the choice of subjects they spend years of their lives investigating, experiencing, living.” —Shelly Sperry
And here lies the sinister twist to the story: Somewhere along the way, things changed. Our capitalist minds now latches on to the ‘money factor’ at the stage where it’s sole concern should have been heeding to the calls of our uncoerced voluntary inclinations.
When I started writing on LinkedIn, I delusionally took up the wrong topic to talk about with people. My initial research informed me that the B2B sector (a burgeoning content writing niche in the 2019-2021) was winning the hearts and minds of institutions and clients worldwide. Writers were actually earning quite handsome payouts for their technical knowledge. My elementary excitement made me buy courses, books, materials on the subject only for me to figure out after a year that:
My yearning to learn about the topic was forceful
I had no genuine inclination—I was framed into believing the opposite
The imposter syndrome is devilishly real.
Again and again, everything boils down to your interests. The researching, brainstorming, search intent, or your purpose behind your content comes long after it. Without your uncontaminated curiosity, you’re faking it all. Thus, bringing down your energy and not long after start experiencing back-to-back episodes of writing blocks.
Your writing ethos is a collection of your experiences, knowledge, and keen interests that you couple with the logos and the pathos to make your work stand out from the crowd and make them stick in the brain of your readers.
All the publications I’ve been addicted to on Substack since the last one month has a crystal clear indication why I, and a crazy amount of readers love engaging, loving, and restacking their work.
Their interests
Obsession about a subject
The diligence towards the medium of art
And incorrigible surrender at the alter of the curiosity God
All these proofs led me to read and understand what the Chief Writing Officer of Substack, Hamish Mckinzie, had in mind when he decided to build and design a platform for the writers.
In one of his post dated back to December 2021, he shared his views on how Substack is different from the ‘other’ social media platforms (I wish of it to remain this way) and directly points his finger to the point I’ve been making in this post:
“On Substack, the temperature is turned down. You read in a quiet environment, removed from the thrust and flux of a social media news feed, and where a writer is encouraged to defend or explain their position at length, and where you are more willing to forgive imperfections, understanding that the discussion can play out at a slower place, that the argument is not a momentary spectacle but part of a journey.”
When it comes to writing good quality content, the secret to it is to focus on your intrigue, fascination, and concerns.
Before you’re ready to plunge into your writing strategy, posting schedule, and spending adequate amount of time and energy learning the basics of the craft, you first need to have a face-to-face confrontation with your likes and dislikes, preferably as early as possible, because your writing ethos is the foundation on which you will structure and build your special identity.
And let me tell you, it’s a lot more difficult to figure out your propensities, if you write what you don’t care about and don’t feel about a topic/topics intensely.
That’s all for this week.
—Ayantika.