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How to Write Like a Bad MF
"The proper manner of calligraphy is nothing other than not being careless"
CT Dool
March 18, 2025 • Read Time: 9 minutes
Whether it’s:
Your boss dumping walls of unformatted text in her email
Your friend blasting you with a novel in his text
Or 99% of blogs being painfully hard to digest (read: immediate “f*ck-that”-and-exit-outs)
Corporate bosses be like… "confirm understanding of actions included, thx - JC”
Shit writing is unfortunately abundant (and rampant).
Imagine how many terabytes of information go ignored due to terrible framing, structuring, and communicating.
Table of Contents
Writing is a skill—a sport if you will—and should be treated as such.
The Samurais of the 1600s acknowledged this—the most highly-skilled killers of the day saying things like:
“The proper manner of calligraphy is nothing other than not being careless, but in this way one’s writing will simply be sluggish and stiff.
One should go beyond this and depart from the norm. This principle applies to all things.” —Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
You want people to value—or at least read—what you say?
Great writing improves careers, relationships, and changes fuckin’ lives…
Let’s get into how to get good at writing.
Or from the homie
A Note on AI
It is painfully obvious when someone copied and pasted some shit from ChatGPT, Claude, or DeepSeek.
AI is powerful—especially as a writing assistant.
Definitely DO take advantage of it.
It’s going to rival a costly personal assistant in:
drafting articles
brainstorming ideas
crafting a text to your girl that perfectly balances assertiveness and compassion (not that I’ve done that…)
All for free and without complaining!
But EDIT that thang! Incorporating your unique voice, style, and story that AI simply cannot generate.
Rules: How to Become a Better Writer
1. Break Up Text
Not to be confused with the famous breakup text.
[But if you do write a long breakup text, you should at least break up the text, if you want shorty/dude to read it…]
Breaking up text is the most important piece.
Walls of text = immediate nope.
Look at how short each paragraph is here. You think the modern generation of TikTok babies can consume anything longer than this paragraph?
Sadly, no.
Also, use bullet points where possible, in place of long sentences with lots of commas.
Check this out—what’s easier to read:
Sentences, paragraphs, and essays with long lists, tons of commas, never-ending, all-in-one, long, winding chunks of text?
Or…
Clean lists
Bullet points
Broken up text
Clean formatting?
You decide.
2. Use Bold, Italics, and ALL CAPS
Like a savvy public speaker alternating tones, speaking volumes, and cadences to keep listeners engaged…
Humans have short attention spans, especially these days.
It’s sad, but we need a SUDDEN CHANGE to bring us back to the present when our minds wander.
Music artists leverage this—shifting octaves and varying rhythm to keep listeners tuned in.
It’s no different in writing.
Leveraging bold, italics, and all caps serves to add character and make the tone more conversational, with the reader imagining you stressing a certain word as they read.
3. Cut Filler
I was going to say “Ruthlessly Cut Filler”, but instead, I cut filler.
“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”
—George Orwell, only history’s heavy-weight champ writer…
Doesn’t mean you have to be the modern corporate powerhouse who’s too productive for grammar.
“K. There soon. Meeting in 30. Diaz coming. See soon.”
That is also shit…
We’ll get into exercises to train sharp writing, but one is:
Write something, then go back and cut the word count in half without losing meaning.
This teaches us to be ruthless with word selection and tightens our prose.
4. Read it (Aloud)
If it sounds like a mumbling jumbling pile of shit when you read it (internally or aloud), it is…
And others will have a difficult time reading it.
Which brings me to my next point…
5. Optional, and Ideal: Free Writing Tools
You’ve got some good options here, and considering their freeness (word or nah?) and ease of use, there’s no excuse to produce a heap of shit anymore.
i. Grammarly—for grammar, spelling, and generally not looking like an uneducated peasant.
ii. Hemingway—for clarity. Best for highlighting which sentences will be hard for others to read. Use selectively—sometimes, longer sentences are warranted.
iii. AI—ask for feedback and how to make your text more clear.
Of course, you don’t have to run your text messages through Hemingway…
But they’re helpful for important emails, articles, blog posts, theses, cover letters, etc.
Challenge the AI to give critical feedback and poke holes in your work.
Writing Drills Sharpen Skills
Writing is a skill and sport.
Let’s get really fucking good at it. Put on a damn clinic anytime your pen touches the page…
Just like a physical discipline—building muscle, practicing a sport, martial arts—train that hard, and get good.
Slashing Word Count by 50%
As mentioned earlier, an excellent exercise to ensure no-filler writing is:
Write something—choose a topic or simply describe your morning or current environment—with a target word count.
Let’s go for 500 words.
Then, go back and edit it down to 250 words without losing meaning.
This forces us to be ruthless about what stays, and truly question what’s necessary.
You’ll likely be surprised to find that you can maintain your message with half the words—thus saving readers time and confusion.
Speed Drills
Similar to the previous exercise, this one forces us to be decisive and concise.
Set a timer for, let’s say 5 minutes, and choose a big topic—a political conflict, personal development, how to change the fuckin’ world.
Then, stretch to write a complete essay on that topic within the allotted time.
Stretched for time, we have to hit the points hard and only the most important words can go in—allowing us to be concise, clear, and get straight to the point.
Mimic Styles
Read a piece by an author you like. Hemingway, Orwell, CT from Grow Dangerously (oops), Ryan Holiday, whoever…
Now write a piece on your own topic using a similar voice, tone, and flow as them.
This helps incorporate others’ strengths while maintaining our unique flavor.
Pretty much every music artist ever is simply a combination of the music artists they like, plus their unique style.
Daily Practice—Morning Pages and Journaling
Training daily leads to dramatic improvement.
Couple of good options here:
Morning pages approach—brain dump three pages of unfiltered thought every morning upon waking.
Nightly journaling—journaling on your day, what went well and what didn’t, any spikes in emotions—classic journaling approach here.
If you need journaling prompts, grab the free PDF full of ‘em here (sent to your inbox upon entering your email).
Reading
To know what good writing even is, we must observe that of others.
Which writers resonate with you, and which don’t?
To continue on our music analogy, great music artists tend to listen to a lot of music.
Technical Writing
Let’s get technical…
Writing is very much a skill, an important one.
Learning the technical side of it is profound if you want to be a high-performing writer.
I personally was blessed to have chosen a blow-off class of technical writing back in college, which turned out to be actually really fucking helpful.
If you’re in school and have an elective to blow… do it.
If not, there are plenty of books, videos, and free courses on technical writing.
Write Dangerously
Writing is a technical and tactical skill that is profoundly impactful in life—work, relationships, self-awareness, to name a few.
If you want to work with me on your writing game, reach out on Instagram.
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To your growth and travels,
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