It’s 3 a.m. and I’m sitting in my cramped dorm room in Perkins Hall, trying to write an opinion column about why Taylor Swift is overrated. The problem is that I don’t know much about Taylor Swift, other than that it annoys me when people treat her like a god. I struggle to find a way to start and my argument is vague and shamelessly contrarian. Still, it has to get done — I meet with my editor in nine hours. Eventually, I write the piece and it gets published, though it is not my best work.
This is a night in the life of one Brown Daily Herald opinion columnist. I’ve gone through this process 30 times (though I usually write in the daytime), covering topics such as kidney donation, affirmative action, bike helmets, land acknowledgements, mixed martial artists and using dice to make life decisions. Hopefully, I am now a skilled columnist. What I’ve learned is that all it takes to write a great column is a story, a point and a sense of humanity. Let me explain.
The best columns start with a story, not a hook. Hooks grab readers’ attention so you can transition into an argument. Stories are an embodiment of the argument in the real world. In my column about kidney donation, I argue that more people should donate a kidney to a stranger. I open with the story of Zell Kravinsky, who, after intense moral calculus, gave a kidney to a stranger dying while waiting for a transplant. Zell’s story doesn’t just introduce the idea of non-directed kidney donation like a hook would. Instead, it viscerally illustrates why donating a kidney could actually be a requirement for an ethical life. A hook tells, a story shows.
Unfortunately, it is easy to fall in love with your story and neglect the argument. Once, I wrote an introduction about Ryan Lochte, the Olympic swimmer famous for lying about being robbed in Rio. I reasoned that his drunken, sleep-deprived state caused him to truly believe in the incorrect sequence of events he told police. The column was supposed to be about the fragile nature of memory, but it ended up being a scattershot defense of Lochte, an over-the-hill, mostly-forgotten swimmer. This is why you need a point.
Before every column, you should be able to explain your argument in a sentence — maybe even in a title. Your thesis is the center of your solar system and your moons of anecdote and evidence must orbit around it. However, once you have this distilled, concrete thesis, start writing immediately. I learned this the hard way — I wrote a thesis for my land acknowledgement column but did not draft the piece right away. I forgot the intricacies of the arguments that I thought followed my thesis and the column came out weak. I successfully re-wrote it a year later, guided by my thesis as my North Star.
The most frustrating part of writing opinion columns is that even if you tell an absorbing story and make well-articulated points, your column still may just be good, not great.
I’ll explain this with a tangential anecdote, as I’m prone to do. Christopher Nolan is one of the greatest movie directors. In 2014, he made Interstellar, a beloved space film — and inspiration for the earlier solar system metaphor. Six years later, he directed Tenet, a time-travel action flick, which garnered mixed reviews. Both were original, clever and dealt with complex temporal and scientific theories. Interstellar was more acclaimed, however, because it was ultimately about an astronaut who loves his family. Tenet, in comparison, had no deeper relational message. You must make sure that your column is well-crafted and novel like both movies. If you want people to care, however, write your column like Interstellar — always connect back to some relational value.
I know this because the few pieces of mine that have caused strangers to reach out have all appealed to humanity. Two emailed me about my column on having radical empathy for strangers. Six emailed me in response to the kidney donation column. And seven emailed me about my column arguing that we should call our grandparents more often. Empathy, kidney donation and family — these are issues that deeply impact peoples’ lives. Give your column a big heart, and you can reach the hearts of your readers.
Last, all columns need a conclusion that does not feel tacked on. I try to avoid this pitfall by calling back to the introductory story and then connecting it to a larger point. In the case of this column’s introduction, I did not tell the full story: I took my half-baked Taylor Swift-is-overrated argument to my editor and she tore it apart — constructively. After addressing her edits, I received further changes from more senior editors. They completely reorganized the column, markedly improving it. Only then was it publishable. The final ingredient to a great column is editors who are not afraid to tell you when it needs work. Only one name is listed when the column is posted online, but no great column is written alone.
Ben Aizenberg ’26 can be reached at benjamin_aizenberg@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
