It takes me less than an hour to write blog posts. Most of my posts are around 1000 words. Usually they make sense. This is how I structure and write them – I create elephants.
The Elephant Within
My post are elephants. Yep, big grey ones with trunks and floppy ears.
I treat my blog posts very much as an elephant because there are five major stages I go through when writing them: These stages are the Heart, Skeleton, Flesh, Skin and Polish stages. It is a very effective system for writing well structured, informative blog posts with the minimal amount of time expense.
My blogs usually take me less than an hour to write and I split this time up into two time boxes of 25 minutes each with a 5 minute break after each one. I use a countdown timer to keep me focussed.
Here is how I build my elephants to act as a guide for building your own.
The Heart
The heart of your post, like the heart of the elephant is critical to it’s survival. Without a heart the elephant dies and without a heart your post too will die. Try not to cry, there are ways to prevent it, your post will be fine.
The heart of your post is the title. Have A strong title and you will have a strong post. The structure of your post will flow from the heart and it is core to forming the strong message of your post.
Personally I tend to come up with good titles for posts at odd times of the day when I am out and about and so I save them to my ipod for writing at a letter date. I then have a section called “Pipeline Elephants” where I setup page documents with simply the Heart, (the title) of each elephant (post) on it.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BUILD AN ELEPHANT WITHOUT A GOOD HEART.
You cannot perform an open heart transplant on a elephant after it is being created without leaving brutal scars than run though it.
The Skeleton – 5 Minutes
Once you have a good heart, your elephant is going to need a strong skeleton to support the massive weight of your message. This is usually the largest section of creating your elephant.
The skeleton should only take about 5 minutes to build but creates the foundation and structure on which you will build the rest of the elephant around and so is critical.
In creating the skeleton you need to create the major bones of your elephant and you need to get them in the right order and ensure the flow of the post is clear and understandable. For example the skeleton of this post looked like
Writing The Perfect Blog Post: Heart, Skeleton, Flesh, Skin and Polish Your Elephant
The Elephant Within
The Heart
The Skeleton
The Flesh
The Skin
The Polish
The Parade
Sometimes something as simple as this is all you need, other times more detail might be needed.
Imagine if your were building the skeleton of an elephant, you need to get it in the right order and built sturdily so you don’t end up with the head coming out the ass. The skeleton will always flow from and around the heart. The heart is your core message and the skeleton is the structure for taking that message to your readers.
Flesh – 20 Minutes
Once you have a secure skeleton build around your strong heart it is time to flesh things out. This is where you add the bulk to your elephant – the content to your post.
The trick I find here is to start bulking out the major section around your skeleton without rereading what you have written. Basically brain dump everything you are thinking onto the page, ignoring bad grammar, spelling mistakes and anything else that stops you from concentrating. All this can be corrected and improved int he subsequent sections.
The idea is to have your skeleton and fleshing out section complete within the first 25 minute time box. This might sound like a huge challenge but with practice it becomes easier and easier as your mind gets used to focussing on the time boxes you have in place. I rarely check my work count and timer when fleshing out but more often than not it always comes close to around 1000 words and within the 25 minute deadline.
Don not underestimate the power of the subconscious. In this time is is best to be in a place where you are less likely to be distracted or have to have your attention divided.
Remember, you have a limited amount of time to build your elephant and you don’t want to leave it half complete. That would be horrendous and probably scare small children.
Skin – 15 Minutes
So you have a strong heart, a solid skeleton and some meaty flesh around the bones. It resembles the shape of an elephant but it still looks pretty bloody.NOw is the time to skin the elephant and give it it’s distinctive look.
The skinning stage should take about 15 minutes and is the time to re-read over your bulking sections making your corrections to the way it flows and changing any content to make it flow better and ensure you message is getting across.
Throughout the fleshing stages, no doubt new ideas have come to mind on better ways to get your message across and these can now be implemented at this skinning stage. The skinning stage help ensure that everything is kept in place, just like the skin of a real elephant does.
Polish – 10 Minutes
Now now you have a good looking elephant on display with about 10 minutes to spare. Best to spit shine that bad boy and get it looking good for your readers. Perhaps put a bow on it or something, whatever floats your boat.
Use the last 10 minutes to check grammar, correct spelling, give your elephant a quick final once over to make sure you hare happy with it and then give it a quick, playful slap on the ass and it is ready to go out the door.
The Parade
Now as it happens I like to work in batches so I tend to write batches of up to 10 posts over a few days and then set them up to automatically to be posted over the next few weeks.
This help free my time and also is required when traveling and I cannot be confident of internet access so I parade a whole load of my elephants at once. You may be different, do whatever works for your.
I have just finished the fleshing section of my post current word count is 1,0002 and time is exactly 25 minutes. Without looking, I promise. It gets easier with proactive.
*As it happens I am now skinning the elephant and the word count is 1165 but I finished with 8 minutes to spare so total work time is 45 minutes.
Love this post man! Usually, I write in a different way. I’d work on the skeleton for quiet a long time and then go on with the meat. The elephant would be at that stage for a day and then I’d add the skin. But your elephant and the way you make your elephant, both of them are way better. And since this takes just an hour to complete, I’m going with this from now on!
Hi Ajay,
Great to hear and I hope it helps. As it happens I have now got my posts down to less than 45 minute average for a fully polished 1000 word elephant.
But this elephant is not well polished – I found like 3 or more typos
.
Not that it has something to do with the fact, that the idea is brilliant.
Lol, hi Pavel and welcome to the site. You have a keen eye, sometimes my elephants do have a little bit of dirt on them but I think they get the job done .
Ahh, time boxing.
I do the same. Writing my posts usually doesn’t take me very long, but editing them does. I have a new rule (as of a few months ago) that I edit out all the fluff until I get to the core of the message. That means most of my articles are now cut down from over 1,000 words to 500 or so. It sometimes takes hours to do that. 
I also do the Parade. It’s a must when traveling.
Hi Karol and welcome to the site. Good looking blog you have, where abouts in India are you? I am currently heading over to Cochin and as it happens I am in the proccess of setting up another parade of elephants fr the coming weeks. Look forward to following your work.
Thanks Jonny. I’m in Goa until the end of March. Then planning on going to Kolkata.
Jonny
Great post, man.
Writing, like many other subject matters DO have a process. Now, that doesnt mean that everyone should follow the SAME process – God forbid, the blogging world would be a little boring if we did.
The fact that this is the way that YOU write your posts, is great.
I also take around an hour, per post. So, we have that in common. And I strongly believe that although you can polish something to DEATH – its better, sometimes, to get it out there instead of going through it with a fine-toothed comb for hours and hours.
Plus, what would the world wide web be without a few spelling errors and the odd typo, anyway, right!?
Great insight into how JOHNNY puts the content together for his site.
Thanks, bud.
Chris
Hi Chris, great to have to comments here as I have been following your blog for a few weeks now and am impressed. Very nicely laid out and great content.
Thanks for the kudos on the blog, Jonny. I’m working hard at it, as they say!
If you fancy swapping some Guest Posts, I’d love to do something for your readers. Let me know, bud.
Mate that sounds like a plan, i’ll let you know.
I wasn’t aware that there were Elephants in Poland. Badum splash! (bad joke, great post!)
Lol, that comment made me laugh.
Hi Jonny,
Your model is so much more colorful than the regular “Intro, main part, conclusion.”
Hopefully it will help me cut down the ridiculous amount of time I still need for finishing a blog post.
Hi Marko, thanks for the great feedback man, it always makes me feel good when the time I put into my content is actually really helping people. I hope from now on you have great success in writing your own elephants.
Writing in batches is the best way to write. You have to write when you’re hot. I always write this way. Plus, it’s always a great feeling to know for the next week you don’t have to write, just upload. That way you can concentrate more on marketing and networking. Great blog. I like how you break it all down into bite sized chunks!
Hi pal, thanks for visiting and thanks for the comment. You ever hear of GCSE Revision Bitesize? – I nicked the idea off them. Shush, don’t tell anyone.
i guess you have been with elephants this week. interesting thoughts.
Actually no, have been staying away from elephants. We did those in Thailand my friend, there are other things to worry about in the South of India – like the heat and the damn mosquitoes.
I usually set the topic I want to write the evening before, then I go to sleep and when I wake up I write everything that comes to mind. But when I have to write something specific, I use a structure similar to the one you described, because it helps to break down the article. Great article Jonny!
Oscar I have no doubt your do, your posts are always well written have have very good structure.
Pavel’s comment speaks my mind at the moment, so no need to repeat.
Good post, I agree, and I used to do this, but I genrally find that now I have more passion and longer posts if I just write straight from passion without having to worry about all the other areas.
it reminded me wayyy to much of English class. I love writing, but hate all the “rules”.
I’ve either gotten them ingrained in me now so I don’t have to worry as much, or just say f**k it, and straight passion write it.
Nice to have the passion my friend and every so often I follow suit. i just find this way is the most effective use of my time and gives the most structured and easy to read post for the readers. Some of my “passion” posts are pretty difficult to understand once I re-read them. Great to write though.
Do you think that this cms is good for first website ?
Confused by this message. I presume CMS stands for content management system in this context. If you send me an email to clarify i’ll let you know.
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