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Richard Feynman’s 5 Secret Principles for Seamless Logical Writing
Richard Feynman is renowned both for his genius in theoretical physics and for his knack for making complex topics easy-to-understand.
The latter comes in large part from his mastery of clear, logical writing.
His books feel pleasant to read, easy to grasp, and incredibly persuasive. In the few instances he offers opinions instead of facts, his clarity of thought leaves little doubt that his perspective is, well, probably correct.
His writing is so singular that I decided to analyze his approach in 6 Easy Pieces to spot principles that all online writers could learn from to craft buttery-smooth articles.
Here are the 7 principles I found:
1. The most foundational concept comes first
This was my key takeaway.
Every chapter, every paragraph, every train of thought begins with the underlying foundation.
That means, the most important idea comes first.
He outlines this when he explains why he started 6 Easy Pieces with describing the atom:
If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures…
