Writing Less Will Be a Marker of Human Writing Soon

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AI can already churn out 1,000 words about a single topic. Ask it to write about writing, and within seconds it produces an article that would normally take an experienced human writer with knowledge about the theory of writing an hour.

This development will flood the internet with long-form blog posts produced at scale. Quantity will no longer be a signal of effort, skill, or insight in the era of AI.

To distinguish yourself from AI-generated content, writing less may be the better strategy.

  • Start with a clear idea.
  • Collect your thoughts around it.
  • Freely write your article about these thoughts.
  • Then compress it all into as few words as possible.

Focus on the density of meaning rather than word count. In an era where AI can generate endless text, clarity and minimalism may become the strongest signals of human authorship.

A Lesson from Wake Up Dead Man

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I watched the third installment of the Knives Out franchise yesterday—and I liked it. It’s a good movie, and even one of the better films of the year. It’s obvious that everyone involved had a lot of fun making it, and that Rian Johnson is a smart writer.

Yes, he messed up Star Wars—but only because Kathleen Kennedy allowed him to. Johnson’s filmography proves time and again that he can write clever, original stories. Wake Up Dead Man is a great example of his ability to deliver smart, well-constructed plotlines.

That said, the one thing that almost made me give up on the movie was the first act. It’s simply too long. More than half an hour passes before we get the first murder victim. After that, the movie really picks up steam and keeps you on the edge of your seat. At times, it’s downright brilliant—just like the first two Knives Out films. But I can imagine some viewers dropping out during the first act because it drags a bit.

The best way to get people interested in your story is to start with a bang. Throw the audience straight into the action—just like Tom Cruise does in every Mission: Impossible movie.

Of course, you need to develop the plot and characters at some point, or you won’t have a story at all. But first, you have to capture the audience’s attention before they’re willing to invest in your character and plot development.

As great as Wake Up Dead Man is, I would have started with the murder and then used flashbacks to convey the plot and character development that’s crammed into the first act.

Still, I liked the movie—a lot—and I highly recommend watching it.

Animal Farm by George Orwell (Books to Read #9)

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Another milestone from the master. George Orwell understood the true nature of socialist virtue-signalers like no one else. 1984 dissected their rhetorical games, while Animal Farm exposed the moral games played by statists to coerce people into compliance.

It’s a short read, giving it the feel of a fairy tale not only in style but also in scope. I remember reading it for the first time in a single sitting, finishing it within a couple of hours. When I turned the last page, it felt as though the world suddenly made sense.

If you’ve grown up in the West and have only been exposed to public education and mainstream media, this book is an eye-opener to how the real world works.

It’s absolutely genius in the way it breaks down a complex concept like mass manipulation into a simple parable: All animals are equal… but some animals are more equal than others. There may be no better sentence to describe the mind-bending games played on us daily by the system under the veil of tolerance, multiculturalism, and liberalism—and Orwell wrote it almost 100 years ago. It makes you wonder: for how long have these games been played on humanity?

If you haven’t read it yet, you can read Animal Farm for free here.

Or at least watch one of the free film versions available:

SEO Basics: Are Meta Keywords Still Important?

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In WordPress, there’s an option to add meta keywords to an article or page. Naturally, I thought it would be important to include a specific keyword in everything I publish.

However, it seems this isn’t necessary—at least not since 2009, when Google officially announced that it no longer uses meta keywords for ranking. Early SEO practitioners had abused the system by stuffing keywords into low-quality content. Once Google realized that people were exploiting this for quick gains, it began ignoring meta keywords entirely.

Some experts now even suggest that you shouldn’t add meta keywords at all. They offer no SEO benefit and may reveal your keyword strategy to competitors.

The only real reason to use them today is for internal site searches. For example, I’ve added a search bar to my Archives page, and the plugin I’m using can search articles more effectively when meta keywords are present.

So, while adding meta keywords can make your content more accessible for on-site searches, it provides no advantage for SEO.