True Stories, Told with Craft

Write about a cultural phenomenon, technology, or social norm that has become so ubiquitous that we've stopped questioning it: algorithmic recommendation, tipping culture, the 40-hour work week, wedding traditions, the way we use "busy" as a status symbol. Defamiliarize it. Make the reader see something they look at every day as if for the first time.

Write a critique of the industry you know best from the inside. What does your industry consistently get wrong — about its customers, its workers, its own purpose, its approach to innovation? What do insiders know that outsiders don't? What uncomfortable truth would your industry rather not discuss publicly?

Choose something people are nostalgic about — a decade, a technology, a social norm, a type of community — and write about what the nostalgia conveniently forgets. Not to dismiss the nostalgia but to complicate it. What was actually lost? What was gained? Who benefits from romanticizing the past?

Identify a widely-acknowledged problem — in your industry, your city, your country, your daily life — that everyone agrees exists but no one seems to be fixing. Write about why. Is it a lack of solutions, a lack of will, misaligned incentives, or the fact that the problem benefits someone powerful enough to prevent change? Name the actual obstacle.

Write about how the language around a specific topic shapes our thinking about it: "human resources" (people as corporate assets), "collateral damage" (civilian deaths), "content" (art and information), "self-care" (structural problems individualized). Pick one piece of language and unpack everything it reveals about power, values, and what we're trying to obscure.

Choose something everyone uses but few understand: the electrical grid, a credit score, the food supply chain, how a search engine ranks results, how rent prices are set, how a hospital bill is calculated. Research and write an explanation that makes the invisible machinery visible. Make a reader feel smarter for having read your piece.

Choose an industry, institution, or cultural phenomenon and trace where the money goes. Who profits? Who pays? What's the markup at each stage? Where do the economics diverge from the public narrative? Write an essay that follows a dollar from the consumer to the final beneficiary and reveals every hand it passes through.

Write an immersive "day in the life" profile of someone whose daily reality most people never see: a 911 dispatcher, a long-haul trucker, a public defender, a content moderator, a hospice nurse, a garbage collector. Spend real time observing or interviewing. Write with the specificity that only firsthand reporting can provide.

Write about a historical event, person, or movement that was significant but is absent from mainstream education. Why was it omitted? Who would benefit from knowing this history? What does its absence reveal about how we decide what counts as "important" history?

Research and write about a policy, technology, or social movement that produced a significant unintended consequence — a drug meant for one condition that treats another, a law designed to help that ended up harming, a technology built for one purpose that transformed an entirely different field. Tell the story of the surprise.

Write an essay defending an opinion you genuinely hold that most people in your social circle would disagree with. Not a contrarian position for its own sake — a real belief you've arrived at through experience or reasoning that puts you at odds with your tribe. State the opinion clearly in the first paragraph, then build the strongest possible case. Anticipate the strongest counterargument and address it directly.

Write an open letter to the industry you work in. Be honest about what's broken: the practices everyone knows are wrong but continues anyway, the gap between stated values and actual behavior, the way newcomers are treated, the systemic problems masked by individual success stories. Write it as someone who loves the industry enough to demand that it be better.

Identify a piece of widely-accepted advice that you believe is wrong — "follow your passion," "just be yourself," "the customer is always right," "everything happens for a reason." Write a thorough, evidence-based takedown. Not just "I disagree" but "here's why this advice is actively harmful, here's who it fails, and here's what would actually help instead."

Write about a significant belief, position, or worldview you've changed your mind about — and how the change happened. Not a sudden conversion but a gradual erosion and reconstruction. What evidence, experience, or argument tipped you? What did it cost to admit you were wrong? What do you know now about the process of changing your mind that you'd want to teach others?

Identify a moral question that your community, industry, or society avoids because every honest answer is uncomfortable. Is it ethical to have children in a climate crisis? Should billionaires fund public education? Is meritocracy a myth? Pick the question that makes people change the subject and stay with it. Explore all sides without settling for easy answers.

Choose an everyday experience — falling asleep, tasting food, feeling nervous, getting goosebumps, seeing a sunset — and write a lyrical explanation of the science behind it. Not a textbook explanation but a narrative that makes the reader see the ordinary miracle: the specific wavelengths that make a sunset red, the neurotransmitter cascade that creates nervousness, the evolutionary purpose of goosebumps. Make science feel like poetry.

Write a profile of a species — animal, plant, fungus, or microorganism — that most people have never heard of but that is remarkable, essential, or threatened. Write it as you would a human profile: with personality, narrative, and stakes. Why does this species matter? What does it do that nothing else can? What would change if it disappeared?

Write about the landscape you know most intimately — not a famous natural wonder but the specific terrain of your daily life. The creek behind your neighborhood, the park you run through, the sky you see from your window, the seasonal changes you've tracked for years. Write with the detailed observation of a naturalist and the emotional depth of a poet. What does this place hold for you?

Write a personal climate essay — not about data or policy (though those can be included) but about your specific, felt relationship with climate change. Where do you see it? What has it changed in your daily life, your plans, your fears, your relationship to the future? How do you hold the enormity of the crisis alongside the ordinariness of making dinner and going to work? Write the essay from your body, not your head.

Write about a personal experiment — a deliberate change you made to your life to test a hypothesis. A month without social media. A week eating only what you could grow or find locally. A year of saying yes to everything (or no to everything). Document the hypothesis, the methodology, the results, and what you learned. Self-experimentation is nonfiction's most intimate form of science writing.