The Best Essay (Paul Graham)

Very nice!

This doesn't touch on one of the mistakes I see most often from newer LW writers:

https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1668446030814146563

My summary: don't assume a reader wants to read your whole piece just because they've started it. Tell them at the start what you're promising to deliver. This increases the number that do read it and are glad they did, and decreases the number that wish they hadn't and now resent and downvote the piece.

I personally feel this is best done for LW in two stages, with a very brief summary followed by a brief summary that gives the core logic, and then the full in-depth piece that addresses all of the caveats and gives more background. I think creating those two levels of summary also improve the clarity of the thinking and make the reading easier. Many of the best writers on LW seem to follow this format in one way or another.

This is particularly important when neither your name or your publication platform is adequate for the reader to know whether they want to spend their time on your piece, as is the case for me and most LW writers.

Thinking about this a little more and rereading the piece: What is meant by "the best essay" is underdefined. Refining the definition of what type of best you're going for might be useful. Are you shooting for the most impact on the most people's thinking? Helping solve a specific problem? A large impact on the thinking of a small set of people (maybe ones interested in one of your specialized interests)?

If you just think of it as "the best", I'm afraid you'll wind up writing to impress people instead of to add value. Which is fine, as long as you don't take it to the extremes of most internet essays, that try to impress an ingroup instead of add value to the world.