LESSON 2 OF 6
Find the angle
BY THE END OF THIS LESSON
Turn a topic everyone covers into something only you would say.
Topic is not angle
"Productivity" is a topic. "Most productivity advice assumes you control your calendar, and if you work in support you do not" is an angle.
A topic tells the reader what the piece is about. An angle gives them a reason to read it rather than the two hundred other pieces on the same topic.
Four reliable angles
The contradiction. Something widely believed that your experience says is wrong.
The specific number. A real result, with the messy detail attached.
The failure. What you got wrong, and what it cost. Consistently the most-read thing most people publish.
The unexpected audience. Standard advice, applied to a group everyone else ignores.
The test
Read your angle and ask: could a competitor publish this exact sentence? If yes, it is not an angle yet — it is a topic wearing a hat.
A real angle is slightly uncomfortable to publish. If it is completely safe, nobody disagrees with it, and nobody remembers it.
WORKED EXAMPLE
TOPIC
"The benefits of using AI for customer support."
ANGLE
"We put AI on customer support and our response time got worse for six weeks. The tool was fine. The problem was that our macros encoded twelve years of shortcuts nobody had written down, and the AI followed what we had documented rather than what we actually did."
The first could be published by any of two hundred companies this week. The second could only be published by someone who lived it, contains a concrete failure, and makes a reader who is about to do the same thing stop and pay attention.
YOUR TURN
Generate angles, then filter them hard.
RUN THIS
My topic is: [your topic]. My relevant experience: [two or three sentences]. Give me eight possible angles. For each, use one of these types: a contradiction, a specific number, a failure, or an unexpected audience. Then apply this test to each one: could a direct competitor publish this exact sentence? Mark each yes or no. Show me only the ones marked no, ranked by how uncomfortable they would be to publish.
What a good result looks like
The top-ranked one should make you slightly nervous. That is usually the one worth writing.
KNOWLEDGE CHECK
Answer all 3 correctly to complete this lesson.
1. What is the difference between a topic and an angle?
2. Which angle type tends to get read most?
3. How do you test whether you have a real angle?
REMEMBER THIS
If a competitor could publish your sentence unchanged, you do not have an angle yet.