The three most common bottlenecks in writing: mediocrity, blandness, and flatness, and the way I’ve overcome them over the years

*▲ Three bottlenecks and three breakthroughs in writing. *

After writing for so many years, I found that the problem for most people who cannot write well is not that they cannot write, but that they are stuck in three bottlenecks: mediocrity, blandness and flatness.

These three bottlenecks are what I have repeatedly observed after leading thousands of students. They are not questions of writing, but questions of thinking. In today’s article, I want to break down these three levels and share how I have overcome them over the years.

The first level: mediocrity

The subject matter is ordinary and lacks novelty.

I read many people’s articles carefully and what I saw was: “I read a book today and learned a lot”, “I’m a little tired from work recently” and “I want to share a good article with everyone.”

It’s not that these topics cannot be written about, it’s just that the people who wrote them just quoted them without thinking twice. So what the reader sees is a version repeated by five thousand people.

My own habit is: when a subject comes to mind, I will first ask myself three questions:

• Everyone can see this, but what do I see that others don’t see?
• If you take away my own perspective, what’s left of this article?
• When I look back three years later, will I feel that this article has no new ideas and is just trying to make up the word count?

As long as I can’t answer a question, I will put the subject back in my head and let it settle. The difference in subject matter never comes from the topic itself, but from whether you are willing to think for thirty minutes more before writing.

Second level: plain

The narrative is straight and lacks ups and downs.

“I woke up this morning, had breakfast, went to work, had lunch, worked in the afternoon, and came home from work.”

Well, this is textbook level blandness. The problem is not that the events are boring, but that the author is only reporting without elaborating.

Every time I write a paragraph, I force myself to ask: After reading this paragraph, will the reader want to read the next paragraph?

What makes readers want to read on is never “what happens next”, but:

• A contrast that makes people pause (I originally thought A, but it turned out to be B)
• A question that makes people want to answer the question (Have you ever had this experience?)
• A specific detail that people can’t help but want to verify (not “a long time ago”, but “it was August 2019, and it was raining heavily in Taipei”)

The rhythm of an article is often actively designed by the writer and does not happen randomly.

The third level: plane

Lack of depth, no picture.

The plane level is a headache. Because most people write all their lives without knowing that they are stuck here.

The sign of flatness is: after the reader has finished reading, no picture is left in his mind. The reasons are usually two:

1. There are too many abstract words and too few concrete nouns. “He is a very hard-working person” is abstract; “He got up at five o’clock every morning to copy a page of the Tao Te Ching for seven consecutive years” is concrete.
2. The point of view is too thin and there is no proof. “AI will change the world” is a statement; “AI changes not the content of work, but the boundaries of work: you used to do one thing alone, but now one person directs a group of agents to do ten things.” is the point of view.

I have been using the method of crossing planes for almost ten years, and there is only one sentence: I would rather write one less paragraph, but write each paragraph so that readers can see it.

From Sanping to Sanli: There are levels, ups and downs, and pictures.

Turning these three bottlenecks over, there are three goals of the article:

• Hierarchical: There are more than one layer of ideas, from phenomena, causes, to inspirations, taking readers deeper layer by layer.
• There are ups and downs: the rhythm is fast and slow, there are contrasts and resonances, readers are willing to read all the way to the end
• Pictures: Use concrete details instead of abstract descriptions to let readers play a movie in their heads

The workflow I have internalized over the past few years is actually five steps:

Observe life and accumulate materials → Think deeply and form opinions → Organize topics and structure content → Express effectively and impress readers → Continuous output and establish style

The first four steps are skills, and the fifth step is physical fitness. Skills can be learned, but physical fitness needs to be recuperated.

I write this to give you a pragmatic suggestion.

Many people are stuck in Sanping. It’s not that they don’t know these principles, but that they don’t have a stable process that can pull themselves out of mediocrity, mediocrity or flatness every time.

This is why I opened the “AI Content Production System Workshop”: to break down my writing process of more than ten years into skill modules that AI can collaborate on, so that you no longer have to start from scratch every time you write an article.

From style files, researching materials, writing first drafts, removing AI flavor, to multi-platform distribution, one material is automatically produced in six formats.

If you also want to cross the threshold of three levels and turn your writing from a gamble of inspiration into a stable output:

👉 Click here to view course details

Next show on June 28, 2026 (Sunday), limited to 16 seats.

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The difference in writing is not about talent, but about habits. Thinking for thirty minutes more before writing every time will create a significant distance between you and others after three months.

See you in class.

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