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Identify Your Blogging Villain

By Jared Dees

Steven Pressfield started a series on his blog titled “Start with the Villain.” I haven’t written any fiction yet, but it sounds like great advice.

It got me thinking this morning.

“Start with the villain” is great advice for non-fiction writing, too.

In fact, Pressfield is well known for his incredible work of non-fiction in The War of Art. In that book identified and defined the Resistance, an unrecognized enemy that artists and entrepreneurs struggle to overcome to create their work.

If you are a blogger, for example, your posts should offer the tools and training your audience needs to defeat the villain. The readers are the heroes and you are the guide.

Who is their villain? What are you helping them overcome?

A food blogger’s villain, for example, might be boring meals. Depending on the focus of the blog, it might be processed food or meals with meat.

A travel blogger’s villain could be the 9-5 work culture or expensive living.

A successful personal finance blogger has to identify the conventional advice that keeps people from financial success as their enemy.

When I think about the villain I’m helping my audience of religion teachers defeat, it is boredom–students being unengaged and uninterested in class.

So, what is your villain?

What are you helping your audience overcome?

Identifying the villain gives your audience something to believe in and something to rally together and help one another to defeat.

November 16, 2017 Filed Under: Author Tips, On Writing Tagged With: blogging

About Jared Dees

Jared Dees is passionate about sharing practical resources to teach faith. He is best known for his website The Religion Teacher and is the author of many books including 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, To Heal, Proclaim, and Teach, Praying the Angelus, Christ in the Classroom, and Beatitales: 80 Fables about the Beatitudes for Children.

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Jared Dees is passionate about sharing practical resources to teach faith. He is best known for his website The Religion Teacher and is the author of many books including 31 Days to Becoming a Better Religious Educator, To Heal, Proclaim, and Teach, Praying the Angelus, Christ in the Classroom, and Beatitales: 80 Fables about the Beatitudes for Children. See all of Jared's Books →

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