Like a personal journal, the Army’s journals are intended to capture insights, experiences, or ideas and then reflect on them, improving us collectively as a service.
However, contributing these experiences or insights can be intimidating for several reasons. Over the last year, I have learned much about writing by reading almost everything the Army’s journals have published—the good and the bad. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet and learn from some phenomenal writers and editors whose advice I have collected and want to share to help soldiers with great ideas who may simply need another perspective on writing to get started.
I recently spent three weeks traveling the Army, talking about professional discourse and the importance of the Army’s journals. At least once a day, someone would say, “Not all of us have a writing background or a degree like you do. It’s not that easy to just get started.” Well, let me enlighten you on my academic background. I barely passed high school, failed junior English twice, and lied or cheated my way out of any writing assignment I ever had in school because I hated its rigidity and subjectivity. My teachers only passed me because they didn’t want to deal with me for another year. Incoming cliché—if I can do it, anyone can. If you’re like me and struggle with conforming your ideas to what you were told all writing should look like, this different approach to formatting may help.
The traditional five-paragraph essay we all learned in school has a place, but the Army’s journals aren’t always it. Besides, the only person who has an incentive to read your stuffy academic essay is your teacher—they’re getting paid to do it. A journal article—especially an article for the Army’s professional journals—doesn’t necessarily have the same rules, requirements, or intent as other types of writing. You wouldn’t write a unit SOP or the way your high school English teacher taught you to write for class assignments. Why write a journal article that way? Form should follow function, and a journal article should aim to capture your idea, experience, lesson learned, or insight with a relatable feeling and the intent to drive action. Instead of an introduction, three-body, and conclusion format, I recommend we look at our journal articles as hook, message, and call to action.
By adopting this format, you can, as Dr. Trent Lythgoe once encouraged me, “start from a point of no constraints.” The first draft doesn’t need to be perfect; it just needs to have a structure that presents your ideas. The Harding Fellows and journal editors are there to help you polish your work.
The Hook
The editor-in-chief at the Modern War Institute, John Amble, often reminds readers that your hook is your opportunity to grab readers by the lapels, shake them, and tell them they need to listen to you for the next ten minutes. The book Smart Brevity also tells us we have twenty-six seconds to capture our audience’s attention. If you live in modern society, this sentiment will be intuitive and you will have witnessed ever dwindling attention spans as content is served to information consumers in shorter and shorter bursts. If we take this claim as truth and apply it to our writing, your first twenty-six seconds (including the title) is your hook and must all but literally grab the reader. It has to compel the reader to want more and address why they are reading the article.
On a practical level, two considerations stand out when it comes to crafting an effective hook. First, the hook must answer one question: Why does the reader care? Remember, your audience is not getting paid to read your work. You must demonstrate to them that they should want to read it—quickly.
Second, similar to fishing, we can dress a hook to further appeal to a specific audience. Make it intriguing, start with a question or a puzzle to be solved (the Army has plenty), or paint an applicable picture that makes the article’s purpose even more enticing.
The following is an excellent example of a hook that lures the reader with a well-painted picture from. It is the opening two paragraphs of an article written by two junior officers, Iain Herring and Gavin Berke, exploring the requirement for a light, maneuverable platform to defend against unmanned aircraft systems. Consider the way these two paragraphs draw in the article’s audience with purpose.
Imagine you are an infantry platoon leader, moving with your soldiers in a tactical formation toward your objective. Suddenly, indirect fire is raining down on your position. You have a plan to react to indirect fire, and you order your formation to execute the plan. Your soldiers are well trained and well led by their capable squad leaders, and they start to move, immediately and rapidly, from the impact area. But as you move, you realize the indirect fire is walking with you—your soldiers can’t escape it. What you haven’t realized is that there is a small unmanned aircraft system (UAS) observing your movement, allowing the indirect fire to follow you and your soldiers through the woods.
Now imagine the same scenario, except this time you have a mobile counter-UAS (C-UAS) system that can track and shoot UAS on the move. Once again, your platoon is engaged with indirect fire. And once again, your platoon has a plan and executes it on your order. Your light, maneuverable C-UAS vehicle can move with you, detect the UAS observing your platoon’s movement, and neutralize it. Within a matter of seconds, the indirect fire ceases. Your platoon can safely regroup and continue mission.
The Message
What are you telling the audience? Is it a concept you want to share, a lesson you learned, or a unique experience others can benefit from? The message is the pertinent details of your article and, like the hook, is not restricted to a particular framework or prescribed paragraph count. Here are some examples of journal articles that showcase different ways to convey a message:
Concept — Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell Payne’s article in Armor, “Bullets or Weapons: Rethinking Army’s Approach to SUAS Integration,” is an excellent example of sharing a conceptual idea on how the Army should reframe the way the Army views drones.
Lesson Learned — Major David Ellington’s article “Division Sustainment at NTC Rotation 24-03” from Army Sustainment captures valuable lessons learned about deploying and sustaining a division.
Experience — “The Fighting Platoon Sergeant Concept: Leveraging the Experience of a Platoon’s Senior NCO to Control the Assault Element,” by Captain Curtis Garner in Infantry is a great example of capturing an experience others can benefit from.
(Pro tip from Major Ryan Van Wie: Select some of the most impactful domains from the DOTMLPF-P solutions to frame your article. Major Van Wie’s advice can help guide and shape your article and tees up the call to action very nicely. Sergeant Major Shane Short’s article “Enabling Maneuver in Large Scale Combat Operations,” from Army Communicator, demonstrates this very well.)
The Call to Action
The call to action is the biggest separator between a traditional essay and a journal article—and arguably the most important one. This section of the article must answer the question: Who do you want to do what? Answering this question in an article truly drives change—especially the more well thought out and researched it is. The call to action can almost always be written directly and plainly if an article is shaped around the elements of the DOTMLPF-P framework. One blatant but good example is then-Master Sergeant Eric Tysinger’s “Force Management and Organizational Capability in Joint Base Religious Support” from the May 2024 issue of the Chaplain Journal.
For example, if you think a unit would benefit from integrating a particular piece of equipment, describing what it can do for the organization in the message and why it would be important can be easier than writing the call to action. It’s easy to say, “And in conclusion, my unit should have EUDs with ATAK software because it will provide operational advantages to adjacent forces and ultimately increase lethality.” The call to action needs to answer how the Army can implement this change and provide a course of action for the reader. Where is the money coming from, and how much will it cost? What changes to the MTOE need to be made? Is there a training plan required? How does this impact other parts of the organization? Is there a policy that needs to be changed to facilitate implementation?
Even if an article is written about a unique experience regarding something intellectual, there should still be a call to action. What do you want people to do with the information you just shared? Always make your journal article as actionable as possible. I recommend a brief conclusion to quickly summarize your points and lead to a solid and explicit call to action.
General Tips
Never write solely to say you were published. At best, it’s cringy, and people can read right through it. Write because you care about improving the organization or helping others.
There is no prescribed number of sentences per paragraph or paragraphs per subsection or article. Whatever rules are in the way of getting your ideas out there, either forget them or break them.
When I met Chago Zapata, the editor-in-chief of the NCO Journal, he gave me some great advice regarding the length and word count of our work: “A journal article should only be as long as it needs to be.” Say what you need to say and keep the reader engaged—no more, no less. To improve brevity, I recommend following Dr. Lythgoe, an instructor at the Command and General Staff College, on LinkedIn, where he provides a thankless public service to help writers be more concise in their work. Command Sergeant Major Vincent Simonetti’s article at MWI on achieving training proficiency with drones is also a good example of a straightforward and to-the-point article.
(Pro tip from Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Griffiths: You should be able to read the first sentence of each paragraph and generally understand what the article is about. This advice is great to remember before, during, and after writing to help structure your piece, ensure alignment as it evolves, and conduct final quality checks on coherency when you’re done.
I advise any author to ensure your work is adequately researched (this need not be a daunting task, most of all if you write on subjects you have deep experience with), appropriately rooted in doctrine, and written with your personality and passion. No one who actively reads the Army’s journals or similar publications gets paid to do so—make sure it has your voice and doesn’t read like a textbook. There is nothing more boring than reading an article that seems as if the author was clearly bored while writing it. Make it a goal to ensure your journal article is never read with the voice of Ben Stein from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as a narrator—give it your personality.
Want To Win the Next War?
Writing is a learned skill, like throwing grenades, shooting tanks, or fixing those pesky S3 shop printers. Anyone can do it, and we all get better with repetition. This is why Army University Press and the Combined Arms Center of the Training and Doctrine Command have just published a special issue of Military Review, “Professional Military Writing.” It is available online now, with eighteen thousand hard copies about to be sent out across the entire Army—approximately five per battalion.
This guide to professional writing is packed with practical advice and tools to help individuals improve their writing skills and get published. It also guides leaders in fostering professional discourse and generating military thought within their formations. The Harding Project guide to professional writing is a resource that provides practical advice and tools to help individuals improve their writing skills.
The Army’s journals, such as MWI, Military Review, MIPB, Field Artillery, Special Warfare, and others stimulate and disseminate military thought that facilitates rapid Army-wide adaptation of competition-winning ideas and insights.
So, grab a copy of the Harding Project guide and get started.
Sgt. 1st Class Leyton Summerlin is a special assistant to the chief of staff of the Army and a platoon sergeant in the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Summerlin has also served in the 2nd Infantry Division, where he deployed to the Zabul Province in Afghanistan with 3rd Brigade; at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center with 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment (OPFOR); and as a drill sergeant at the Maneuver Center of Excellence (MCoE), where, in 2021, he was named MCoE drill sergeant of the year.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
Excellent points. If there is a way to make something better, why not put that inspiring thought on paper? Better to get your idea out there than to settle for the status quo.