The primacy of good ideas

Most writing and editing processes are focused on things that are necessary but not sufficient for creating quality content. Grammar and spelling. Article structure. Search optimization. Reading experience.

The absence of these can ruin a good post—but they alone can’t create quality.

I think about this as “primacy of good ideas.” A good idea can survive bad writing, but good writing can’t make up for a bad idea.

If energy is to be expended anywhere in writing, it needs to be expended in ideation. Is this idea credible? Is there a more persuasive articulation? Is there an existing real-world concept we can anchor our argument in? What data can do we need to validate this viewpoint?

All of my favourite blogs are long, meandering messes written by in-the-trenches experts. The writing, grammar, search optimization, and user experience are all hideous—and I don’t care. I read every single sloppy word because the ideas these articles convey are so good. They share novel interesting perspectives. They solve genuinely hard problems. They bring new data to the table.

And yet, many writers and editors have this topsy-turvy worldview where they virtually ignore ideation, chalking it up as a nebulous creative process exempt from interrogation and refinement. We have over-indexed on the simple, discrete processes in content marketing at the expense of the messy, hard ones.