Writing is never about you. It is about whether you can use words to change the world—even if it’s just a small corner of the minds of a few key people. This may sound cold, but it is the most authentic rule of academic writing.

Your teachers are not your real readers; they read your work out of obligation. The real-world reader owes you nothing. Similarly, the clichéd goal of “filling a knowledge gap” pales in comparison to the reality of infinite knowledge expansion. What truly matters is solving the “expensive” problems that readers actually care about. This is precisely why interdisciplinary writing is so fraught: if you cannot define “who the reader is,” writing becomes like shooting blindly in the dark.

Writing: A Game of Power It is bluntly stated (by scholars like McInerney): Writing is, in essence, a game of academic power. It is not about self-expression but about understanding and responding to power structures—finding those who control the discourse and giving them what they truly value. This may seem like a compromise, but it is, in fact, a sharp survival tactic.

Writing is for re-establishing the logic of your thought. For an article to be read, it must have practical value. You must emphasize its importance. But why is it important? Or rather, what is important?

Knowledge is important. So, what is knowledge? Knowledge is the consensus about knowledge as defined by the community. It is not proposed and defined by an individual.

Change the Reader, Don’t Just Transmit Professional writing is not about transmitting your ideas to the reader; it is about changing the reader’s ideas.

There is a rule in Western academia: nothing is accepted as knowledge or understanding until it has been challenged by those competent to challenge it. Your readers have a professional duty to challenge your claims.

How do these people get to define knowledge? The professor’s (speaker’s) answer is blunt: “Because I know. That’s just how it is.”

Academic Dialogue: A Process of Excreting Fallacies The professor tends to view academic dialogue as a process of constantly filtering and “excreting” fallacies.

The “accumulation model” assumes all knowledge is correct. The professor, however, believes many current ideas are wrong; we just don’t know which ones. We don’t know what the better standard is, but we desperately want to find it. To achieve this, we must confront our accepted knowledge system. This process can be uncomfortable, but those are the rules.

Advice for Improving Writing Spend 15 minutes a week: Select articles from your field, print them out, and meticulously circle every word or phrase that “creates value” for the reader.

Accomplish two things: First, train yourself to recognize the rules of value creation. Second, record these keywords to build an invaluable “value vocabulary list” for your field.

Every field has its own linguistic rules. The circle you want to enter has its own conventions, a system of language that signals value. You must learn the rules of your circle.

If you don’t understand the people in your circle, you cannot create value, and you cannot be persuasive. Because persuasion depends on the other person’s doubts. Simply knowing your subject matter is not enough (though it is a prerequisite).

The professor instructs students: “Find the gatekeepers in your circle and give them what they want.” (This method of teaching is considered unethical in the Western academic context.)

The True Function of Writing The purpose of writing a book is to advance the academic conversation, not to be locked in a drawer. The task of writing is to keep the dialogue going, not to preserve everything forever. Some of what you write will eventually be discarded, and that is not a bad thing.

Writing is a way for the author to clarify their own ideas and concepts.

Is your writing a way to interact with the world by expressing personal feelings?

Yes, but not by expressing personal emotions or opinions. It is by changing how other people think. That is how you interact with the world.

Writing is a way for the author to exercise their thinking and organizational skills. Is this view too one-sided for students? (Perhaps.) It is also a way for the author to enjoy the thrill of thinking and the satisfaction of conveying personal ideas and emotions.

The Externalization and Commodification of Knowledge We can foresee that knowledge will be completely externalized. For the knower, regardless of their position in the knowledge process, the ancient principle of knowledge acquisition—that it is inseparable from mental cultivation, or even the ideal of personal growth—is becoming obsolete.

As Lyotard proposed: Knowledge no longer resides inside individual minds but exists in the external space between them.

The relationship between the supplier and the user of knowledge is increasingly taking on the form of the relationship between the producer and consumer of commodities. Your relationship with your own knowledge is like that of a farmer to their wheat or a miner to their coal. It is a relationship of “value form.”

The Technique of “The Problem”: Creating Instability Now, let’s discuss specific vocabulary:

Anomaly

Inconsistent

But

However

Although

These words share a common feature: they create Tension, Challenge, and Contradiction. They are Red Flags.

This is Instability, and it is a universal, high-level mode of discussion.

Some real-world issues are the core problems readers care about (though they may not be problems the reader personally experiences). You must pinpoint the problem for a specific group of readers, which is completely different from a vague background introduction or conceptual definition. Then, you must propose a solution.

The Two Features of a “Problem” The professor argues that a good “problem” has two main features:

The situation must be unstable. You need to use words like but, however, inconsistent, anomaly to create this atmosphere. People are accustomed to using language that emphasizes continuity and consistency. But, paradoxically, readers are actually looking for expressions full of instability, contradiction, and tension. If you use too much continuity language, you are disrupting their reading flow. They get confused and frustrated. They might give up after two paragraphs.

A Cost/Benefit Statement. You must use specific language to show the reader that this “instability” costs them something (it’s their problem, not your problem); or, that resolving this instability will bring them a tangible benefit.

We are moving forward in Instability, not Stability. The difference is huge.

Case Study 1: Defining the Academic Camps “Since the time of Herodotus, historians have recorded events. Major events have always been central to narrative history.”

Is this background? No. This is framing the problem. The difference between the two is night and day.

“However, despite the importance of events in historical narrative, the event itself has rarely been examined as an ethical category.”

Does this constitute a problem? The professor argues that no one has ever deeply investigated the true meaning of “the event.” This is clearly a cognitive blind spot. In some academic circles, it’s a severe problem when scholars don’t even understand the core concepts they use. (Note: The professor did not clarify the “true meaning” of “the event” here either.)

So, what will the author discuss next?

“Traditional narrative historians, infatuated with the contingency and uniqueness of events, generally refuse, as a matter of principle, to engage in explicit theory-building.”

“Meanwhile, historical sociologists and a minority of historians, turning to the social sciences to escape the hegemony of political narrative, generally disdain the study of mere events, seeking instead the universal causal laws behind historical change.”

What is the author doing? He is defining the academic communities; he is drawing the battle lines. With just these two sentences, he has defined the two academic camps that have the problem.

(Want a more detailed example? Read the introduction to Edward Said’s Orientalism, where he delineates nine different academic factions.)

Case Study 2: Interdisciplinary Writing Interdisciplinary research has a difficult problem: Who is the audience?

Imagine forming a review committee with three experts from different fields. Get the right people? It’s perfect. Get the wrong people? The writing process is a nightmare.

Bill’s approach was smart. He knew he was writing for two specific audiences and stated it explicitly at the beginning. This is a first-class practical writing skill. The key is to understand the utility of writing, not its superficial form.

Case Study 3: The Incorrect Chart One of the best examples of problem-framing the professor ever saw: A few economists wrote a long introduction that built the problem frame layer by layer.

They included a chart in the introduction. You don’t usually see charts in an introduction.

And do you know what? The chart was wrong.

That was the problem. Using an incorrect chart to frame the problem? Brilliant. And note how humbly and tactfully they handled it. A truly outstanding piece of writing.

Case Study 4: The Introduction as a “Challenge” The first paragraph of The Mexican Wars for Independence states that the 1810 Hidalgo revolt marked the beginning of the conflict that ultimately led to Mexico’s independence in 1920 and sparked a series of revolutionary changes…

What does this mean? Anyone would read this and say it’s just background.

Wrong.

Look at the opening of the next paragraph. That seemingly background explanation actually poses a challenge—it challenges a deeply entrenched understanding of Mexican history.

The author, John Tutino, is established enough in his field to say it plainly: “My colleagues, you are all wrong.” He details why they are wrong in the second paragraph. In the opening of the third paragraph, he writes: “This article proposes a different interpretation…”

His rhetorical strategy:

State the existing (seemingly consensus) historical understanding.

Show that this view “challenges” the common understanding (clarifying the controversy in the footnotes).

Finally, state his thesis: “I am going to argue that…”

So what is the core research question? Where is it located?

It’s in the very first sentence. This is the key difference between the traditional method and the new one.

Conclusion: Thinking for the Reader When you are immersed in your writing process, when you hand your work to the reader, your self-indulgent writing style is highly likely to interfere with their reading experience.

You must state your core problem explicitly. You must complete your thinking through the writing process. The more you can learn to adjust your writing style to serve the reader, the more successful you will be, and the less painful the writing process will be for you.

Writing can be extraordinarily difficult. It can be brutal.