How to Write (Like an Egyptian)

Imagine yourself a scribe in 16^th century B.C.E. Egypt, given the task of inscribing sacred texts on the walls of pharaoh’s new chapel at Karnak in Thebes. Mind that your words will literally be carved in stone and read by not only the priests and the king, but by the gods themselves.

Nervous? Not likely. What you wrote would be pretty formulaic with stylistic flourishes appropriate to the time. Those were religious texts written to laud the king and appease the gods, and were not literary texts.

Ancient Egyptian literary pieces, like The Tale of Two Brothers and The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, do have something to teach us about how to write. They’re fanciful, dramatic, full of magical happenings, and imbued with great meaning for the Egyptians.

Next time writer’s block has you stuck for a subject, follow these steps and then write like an Egyptian.

Note — How To articles are an exception to the following rules. While it’s nice when they’re amusing or interesting, usually it’s enough that they help the reader accomplish a task.

Step 1 – Empty your head

With pen and paper, spend ten minutes listing everything you’re interested in. Don’t censor anything. Write everything that comes to mind. For example:

1. What is the origin of the country name, “Egypt?” (It’s not Egyptian.)
2. How to make perfect toast
3. The best place to put the cat box
4. Writing historical novels
5. How to polish the spokes on my Harley
6. I love the cowboy boots I bought 25 years ago

This is a very short list. Any one of those topics could be interesting. An article about avocado puppets could be interesting if you can incorporate two elements: your own interest and some meaning that your audience can relate to in story form.

Step 2 – Close your eyes and choose

Choose a subject from your list at random. Don’t think about this too much. Just do it.

Step 3 – Know who you’re writing to

Decide who your audience is. Write to a specific person if you know someone who is part of that audience. Hear their voice asking you questions.

If your article on avocado puppets is for an audience of network server engineers, you need to understand what would engage them. Could you write a humorous story using the puppets as characters? Is there something about the way avocados grow from which you could draw an analogy to network server problems? I have no idea, but I could find out.

Since ancient Egyptians were mostly illiterate, the written tales were often laid down for the elite or used in scribal practice. The audience was clear and their goal was to hear a tale that illuminated certain beliefs, values, and goals the Egyptians held dear. Your story must appeal to beliefs, values, or goals as well.

Step 4

Do some keyword research at http://adwords.google.com. How would your audience search for topics like yours? How many searches are done monthly for those keywords? What other keyword phrases does the Google tool return? Incorporate the best keywords into your headline and the body of your text in a natural way (don’t stuff keywords!).

“How to write” gets hundreds of thousands of search queries every month. The volume isn’t necessarily a good thing because there are over 7,000,000 web sites with “how to write” in the title tag of the page. Tough competition. HubPages, however, has only about 1,000 articles with that term in the title and the readers who search for that are looking for something very specific.

The keyword phrase, “like an Egyptian” gets searched over 200,000 times a month. There are only 111,000 web sites with that in the title, mostly for the Bangle’s hit song. The phrase is used in only 61 HubPages articles. So I can compete pretty well for that phrase, on HubPages at least.

Step 5 – Find the meaning

Meaning can only be based on what we value. When we communicate well, it’s because we elicit an emotion from someone else based on something that has value to them: love, fear, courage, and selfishness, are all human traits that arise from the pursuit of a value.

You and I share an interest in writing or we wouldn’t both be looking at this page. We each write for many different reasons. I even have more than one reason for writing this article. We value writing as a form of communication.

I wrote this and posted it in part because I want you to have found something of value. Either I made you laugh or piqued your interest or provided at least one idea about writing that you can crib for your own writing.

Writing on the web is a conversation, not a monologue to the gods. This gives impetus to our writing and should make us strive to provide something of value. If you find anything of value in this article, leave a comment and let us know what you do when you’re stuck in front of your monitor, alone and struggling to communicate.