Starter Writing skill
Blog post
Write and publish one blog post on something the person knows.
Help someone publish their first blog post, or their first good one. They write every sentence; you supply structure, questions, and honest reactions. The post ships today — a draft that sits in a folder teaches nothing.
Find the post they can actually write
The only posts worth writing are ones where they know something the reader does not. Ask what they have done lately that took real effort: a project built, a problem debugged, a thing learned the hard way, a process figured out. "What I learned building X" and "How I fixed Y" are honest first posts. Talk them out of topic essays on things they have only read about — the internet has those already, written by people who were there.
Get the one-sentence version before any drafting: "This post tells _who_ _what_." If they cannot fill that in, keep talking.
Draft at speed
- Outline together: 4–6 beats, each a plain sentence of what that section says. This scaffolding you may type — it is structure, not prose.
- They draft each section in their own words, fast, ugly is fine. If they stall, ask them to tell you the section in chat, then write down what they said. Do not draft it for them.
- Specifics in: the actual error message, the actual number, the actual link, the actual screenshot. Posts earn trust through checkable details, and theirs are the only ones they can supply.
- First line check: would a stranger keep reading after sentence one? "In this post I will..." is a delete. Start where it gets interesting.
Edit pass
One pass, together, out loud. Cut every sentence that adds no information. Flag the machine-writing tells — rhythmic triple lists, "it's not just X, it's Y" constructions, words like truly and seamless — and have them rewrite in the words they would use telling a friend. Titles: plain and searchable beats clever. "How I built a bus tracker with no budget" outranks wordplay.
Publish now
Publishing is part of this skill, not a follow-up.
- If they have a personal site (see build-website), the post goes there — their domain, their archive.
- Otherwise free and fine: Bearblog, GitHub Pages with plain HTML or a simple generator, or dev.to for technical posts. Avoid anything that demands a paywall or a phone number.
- Ship checklist: title, date, their name, working links, readable on a phone.
--- name: blog-post category: write description: Write and publish one blog post on something the person knows. Their words, workshopped, live at a URL by the end of the sitting. Use when they say "I want to start a blog", "help me write a post", or have a project worth writing up. --- # blog-post Help someone publish their first blog post, or their first good one. They write every sentence; you supply structure, questions, and honest reactions. The post ships today — a draft that sits in a folder teaches nothing. ## Find the post they can actually write The only posts worth writing are ones where they know something the reader does not. Ask what they have done lately that took real effort: a project built, a problem debugged, a thing learned the hard way, a process figured out. "What I learned building X" and "How I fixed Y" are honest first posts. Talk them out of topic essays on things they have only read about — the internet has those already, written by people who were there. Get the one-sentence version before any drafting: "This post tells _who_ _what_." If they cannot fill that in, keep talking. ## Draft at speed 1. Outline together: 4–6 beats, each a plain sentence of what that section says. This scaffolding you may type — it is structure, not prose. 2. They draft each section in their own words, fast, ugly is fine. If they stall, ask them to tell you the section in chat, then write down what they said. Do not draft it for them. 3. Specifics in: the actual error message, the actual number, the actual link, the actual screenshot. Posts earn trust through checkable details, and theirs are the only ones they can supply. 4. First line check: would a stranger keep reading after sentence one? "In this post I will..." is a delete. Start where it gets interesting. ## Edit pass One pass, together, out loud. Cut every sentence that adds no information. Flag the machine-writing tells — rhythmic triple lists, "it's not just X, it's Y" constructions, words like truly and seamless — and have them rewrite in the words they would use telling a friend. Titles: plain and searchable beats clever. "How I built a bus tracker with no budget" outranks wordplay. ## Publish now Publishing is part of this skill, not a follow-up. - If they have a personal site (see build-website), the post goes there — their domain, their archive. - Otherwise free and fine: Bearblog, GitHub Pages with plain HTML or a simple generator, or dev.to for technical posts. Avoid anything that demands a paywall or a phone number. - Ship checklist: title, date, their name, working links, readable on a phone. ## Done - The post is live at a URL they can put in a bio or resume. - Every claim in it is true and every example is theirs. - They send the link to one real person who would care. - Ask what the next post would be — one is a post, three is a blog. Write the next title down where they will see it.