Reading good writing is the first step towards improving your written output. Observe the techniques that resonate with you and incorporate them into your style. It will feel clunky at first, like any new exercise, but over time will become more fluid and seamless. Reading also builds a large vocabulary, which is essential to achieve fluid prose.
Read the best authors for the intended style, be it story-writing, critical analysis or business communication. It all depends on the style of writing you would like to master. It's theor techniques that you want to emulate and make your own.
Write to evoke an emotion. There must be a purpose to your writing. If to inform, guide the reader to an ah-ha moment. Your writing will be memorable if the reader feels something.
Cut fluff. Every word must have a purpose. Less is more.
Good writing is about refining your own voice. Write as you speak, speak as you write, and both will improve.
Ultimately, have fun with it. Experiment with different styles. Writing is an art, it requires creativity. This must be cultivated and grown. In time, over many poorly crafted drafts, a unique voice, all your own, will emerge.
A professor at Harvards entire course is dedicated to the refinement process. You start with what they call “write your best story”. Every assignment afterward is the removal of something unnecessary from the original story. Each assignment is not adding to, but subtracting. Each word and sentence must matter. Painful but rewarding.
Another important skill is being able to read your own writing as if you are different readers. Think about how much someone knows and how something will sound to someone who doesn’t know as much. What’s their mental picture as they start reading, what is it after they are one paragraph in, etc. Make sure you aren’t making leaps they can’t follow. Try this out while modeling people of various levels of familiarity with the subject so your writing isn’t tedious to someone who already knows a bit. Make sure you aren’t wasting their time. Make sure you’ve defined your terms before using them. Read it over and over trying to get yourself into other people’s shoes every time. Have empathy for every reader you’re writing for.
> Reading good writing is the first step towards improving your written output. Observe the techniques that resonate with you and incorporate them into your style.
Do you have specific authors whose writing really resonated with you? How have they changed your writing?
1. Condense. Much of good writing is simply signal/noise ratio!
First write a draft that says all you want to say. Then go over it again and again, removing/rephrasing un-needed words and syllables. 20% compression is a decent result.
2. "Rubber ducking". Imagine showing the text to someone likely to read it. I've developed an "inner stranger" I show text or code to. He doesn't have my specialized knowledge, but is reasonably smart.
Implied above is to always write a draft that you edit. Do NOT try to form a perfect text in your mind before writing!
1. Read the Elements of Style by E.B. White. It describes how to write in active voice for positive effect.
2. Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.
3. Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.
4. Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.
I truly struggled with writing for the longest time, but three practices helped tremendously. The practices are 1) writing with a piecemeal approach, 2) accumulating notes as fuel for tomorrow’s writing, and 3) rewriting with keyword outlines.
My most important shift was to start writing nonlinearly. Instead of writing a beginning, middle, and end, I instead gather together all the claims, facts, etc. and develop them individually without concern for the overall logical structure. Eventually, the pieces start fitting together and the linear structure emerges. It is so much easier to start with too much and whittle it down.
Where do these claims, facts, etc. come from? This is what your note taking system should create. As I read a text, I highlight relevant sections and then go back through to paraphrase them. These notes are organized around topics and solve the daunting blank page problem.
How should you paraphrase? Keyword outlining is the practice of picking a handful of _keywords_ from a source text, setting aside the original text, and then paraphrasing using the keyword outline and your recollection of the original text. This is a subtle shift from the typical approach of changing a few words of the source text to paraphrase it. This is also great practice for honing your sentence and paragraph writing skills.
Gene Wolfe, my favorite writer, said that the advice he gave people was to pick a short story they thought was perfect, and try to rewrite it word for word from memory.
Presumably the idea is that you run into the same challenges the original author did — how to get from one scene to the next, how to direct or misdirect the reader, etc. — and by solving those challenges you understand the mechanics of storytelling at a deeper level. Since you've got the "perfect" version of the story as a key, you aren't just guessing, and there is a right and wrong answer.
He also said that, to his knowledge, nobody had ever taken him up on this advice.
But, Wolfe was a fantastic writer, and an engineer, so I assume his approach would be a practical and useful one for anyone willing to put in the work.
I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find the source of the quote, but failed. /shrug
Stephen Fry has talked about trying to rewrite scenes from The Great Gatsby from memory, and the renewed appreciation he got for Fitzgerald's prose after that attempt.
My personal experience has led me to believe that there’s truly no substitute for reading a lot and writing a lot. But the funny thing is that you may not realize how true that is until you’ve gotten sick and tired of trying to find shortcuts and hacks. You can get burnt out on reading and watching material about how to write well but it can be helpful in moderation. The best resource I’ve found is the Belief Agency YouTube channel. They have a lot of great interviews/shows about how command of the concept of storytelling can improve your communication, written or otherwise. Brian McDonald’s books are great too—-especially Invisible Ink. One more thing I’ve found helpful is to take up a practice that has nothing to do with writing—-gardening in my case—-and see if you can learn some things that shape the way you think about the writing process. All of these things should lead you back to a regular practice of reading and writing though. It’s like an archaeological dig. Most of the time you’re just throwing dirt over your shoulder but once in a while you find treasure.
You can only ever be as good as that which you read. Read only blog post and you will sound like a blogger. Read only classics and you will sound like a scholar. If you read enough you will become your own best critic. Stop trying to write better and spend that time reading the best material you can find.
The same is true for all aspects of language. If you want to speak better, don't watch TV news or LA sitcoms. Watch classic British comedy (Blackadder) or BBC science docs (Brian Cox) that will expand your practical vocabulary and sense of proper diction.
"You can only ever be as good as that which you read." I disagree. If your statement was true, progress would never occur. Obviously writers can learn by reading the writing of other good writers, but the are not bound by what they have read. The ability to exceed is always present.
Then collect some example writings that represent the best writing style you aspire to. I prefer short stories and essays, but for larger examples (novels) you can focus on single chapters.
Every day spend about 1/2 hour copying the example writing by hand into the spiral notebook. When you are done copying about two pages into your spiral notebook review the pages and identify different writing techniques. I used this technique to learn copywriting so I identified different persuasion techniques including what’s the catch addresses or Promise.
However, you could also use this same technique to become a better novelist. So maybe you identify alliteration, irony, foreshadowing, etc.
Why does this work? This have been studies on the powerful learning effect of writing notes by hand. The technique I described follows the same principals. By copying great writing by hand you are engaging multiple senses at one time. You are feeding your conscious and subconscious mind rich example writing that will help you improve your own writing.
I am happy you found success copying others’ writing but highly doubt that rote copying is what made the difference. It’s more likely that you learned through analysis.
Learning works through synthesis of material, which is the main takeaway from the writing studies you mentioned, however when copying writing no synthesis occurs. Also these studies were recently duplicated and results did not match the original conclusion.
I've read drafts from people who truly write well and have come to the conclusion that the biggest thing they're doing that I'm not is revising. I write straight through and maybe do a single pass after to punch things up and get rid of passive voice, and so everything I write reads like an HN comment (which, don't get me wrong, is a useful local optimum for me). The good writing I've watched happen was revised a lot. Besides not having the talent, I lack the patience, which is liberating.
The other thing the very good writers I know do that I don’t is practice. That is they will write explicitly for no audience but in a form they’d want to present to a hypothetical audience for a hypothetical reason.
This allows them all the benefits of practice in other endeavors. They can experiment, get faster, build “muscle memory” etc.
I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the answer to being good at things is working at it.
What I did: (1) start a blog, (2) force yourself to write at a specific frequency at all costs, like once a month, (3) plan and schedule future writing topics and times, (4) be very intentional with each sentence and paragraph, and (5) start with an outline for each post and iterate on it before filling in with details.
#5 feels like a superpower to me. It has made writing so much easier. It forces me to really understand (and to realize what I don’t understand) about the topic.
Write -> give other people for proofreading -> rewrite -> publish -> gather feedback.
There is no other way than practice. Feedback speeds up this learning process a lot and improves the result significantly.
Everything else varies from person to person. Some write daily; some don't for months - then dive into their writing modes. Some start with an outline, and some - pour a stream of thoughts into the computer.
Nevertheless - what is your goal, and what blocks you in the process?
I'd probably substitute editing for proofreading (which for me implies copyediting). Particularly starting out you may be looking for more structural feedback than a copyeditor will often provide.
But other than that I agree. There are probably a few books worth reading but it's more about writing and getting good feedback. Past a certain point, you can probably dispense with some of that feedback depending on the nature of what you're writing. But it's essential to get started.
Read books by Gary Provost on writing. Writing Tools by Roy Peter Clark. Draft number 4 by McPhee. They contain a variety of ideas. Writing Tools is great if you want to identify and drill techniques. Provost's books cover everything and are written well.
I think much of the other advice on this page is very valid (and I'll repeat some below), but what I often find missing from advice like this is simply do the thing a lot with some sort of feedback/iteration loop. While this is true for most professions, it is specially true for writing: write a lot.
Other useful things to help:
2. Define the purpose of your writing
3. Define who your target audience is (is this a novel, article writing, marketing, etc)
4. Define who you are as the author (are you a subject matter expert, the narrator of a story, a friend)
Learn some of the basics:
- Elements of Style is a good place to start
- Use Grammarly
- Read, a lot
Having people read your writing who can give constructive criticism can be a huge help.
It can be people you know, but there are also online writing communities that will give candid feedback in a safe environment. Usually the catch is you’ll have to return the favor for someone else in the community, but that’s not a bad thing.
Set aside what you wrote for about two weeks and read it. Reading aloud what you wrote, too. Emphasis on smaller sentences-less than 10 words on average. Never more than 20 words.
> I’ve been writing for a while but I feel like I’ve stagnated for a while.
You could rewrite this to say "I have been writing for a while, but feel like I have stagnated for some time now."
Be a ruthless editor of your own writing, to begin with. Read actual printed words that have been through rigorous editing. Examples include print magazines and newspapers.
Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style and try to put it into practice in your writing. Read a variety of works, both fiction and nonfiction. Read classic writers such as Melville, Trollope, or Hemingway and pay attention to the plot devices and writing style (you will have to re-read individual pieces in isolation, again and again).
Take every opportunity to write, including in this forum or other places where you can write and have an actual conversation with like-minded, intelligent people. I'm sure there are internet forums and subreddits for aspiring writers where you will find opportunities aplenty to write, critique and hone your craft.
Read more in order to identify the types of writing you admire, enjoy and perhaps wish to emulate on some level. I like William Zinsser's books, On Writing Well is the "flagship" I guess.
If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.
Zinsser's On Writing Well was my game changer, can't recommend highly enough. And it's a fun read too.
The main takeaway is to simplify text as much as possible. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, and it doesn't mean abandoning creativity. It's just the opposite: Once you get rid of all the excess junk, the reader will hear your genuine voice.
I completely agree with the advice in this article, in a slightly different way. I write a blog, which is more or less like an online journal for me to dump my emotions into. However, I don't end up publishing all of my journal entries, and not even in the correct chronological sequence. I write a lot of shitty first drafts. *The idea is to dump all your ideas without prejudice against imperfection*. Eventually, a few weeks later I pick up those terrible first drafts again and rewrite them.
[+] [-] glitchc|3 years ago|reply
Read the best authors for the intended style, be it story-writing, critical analysis or business communication. It all depends on the style of writing you would like to master. It's theor techniques that you want to emulate and make your own.
Write to evoke an emotion. There must be a purpose to your writing. If to inform, guide the reader to an ah-ha moment. Your writing will be memorable if the reader feels something.
Cut fluff. Every word must have a purpose. Less is more.
Good writing is about refining your own voice. Write as you speak, speak as you write, and both will improve.
Ultimately, have fun with it. Experiment with different styles. Writing is an art, it requires creativity. This must be cultivated and grown. In time, over many poorly crafted drafts, a unique voice, all your own, will emerge.
Best of luck!
[+] [-] tdhz77|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hamburglar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nequo|3 years ago|reply
Do you have specific authors whose writing really resonated with you? How have they changed your writing?
[+] [-] rikies|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BurningFrog|3 years ago|reply
1. Condense. Much of good writing is simply signal/noise ratio!
First write a draft that says all you want to say. Then go over it again and again, removing/rephrasing un-needed words and syllables. 20% compression is a decent result.
2. "Rubber ducking". Imagine showing the text to someone likely to read it. I've developed an "inner stranger" I show text or code to. He doesn't have my specialized knowledge, but is reasonably smart.
Implied above is to always write a draft that you edit. Do NOT try to form a perfect text in your mind before writing!
[+] [-] tigerlily|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jason-phillips|3 years ago|reply
2. Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.
3. Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.
4. Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.
[+] [-] tdekken|3 years ago|reply
My most important shift was to start writing nonlinearly. Instead of writing a beginning, middle, and end, I instead gather together all the claims, facts, etc. and develop them individually without concern for the overall logical structure. Eventually, the pieces start fitting together and the linear structure emerges. It is so much easier to start with too much and whittle it down.
Where do these claims, facts, etc. come from? This is what your note taking system should create. As I read a text, I highlight relevant sections and then go back through to paraphrase them. These notes are organized around topics and solve the daunting blank page problem.
How should you paraphrase? Keyword outlining is the practice of picking a handful of _keywords_ from a source text, setting aside the original text, and then paraphrasing using the keyword outline and your recollection of the original text. This is a subtle shift from the typical approach of changing a few words of the source text to paraphrase it. This is also great practice for honing your sentence and paragraph writing skills.
[+] [-] karaterobot|3 years ago|reply
Presumably the idea is that you run into the same challenges the original author did — how to get from one scene to the next, how to direct or misdirect the reader, etc. — and by solving those challenges you understand the mechanics of storytelling at a deeper level. Since you've got the "perfect" version of the story as a key, you aren't just guessing, and there is a right and wrong answer.
He also said that, to his knowledge, nobody had ever taken him up on this advice.
But, Wolfe was a fantastic writer, and an engineer, so I assume his approach would be a practical and useful one for anyone willing to put in the work.
I just spent about 30 minutes trying to find the source of the quote, but failed. /shrug
[+] [-] clucas|3 years ago|reply
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oSdLfPas8dw around around 10 minutes. Good stuff!
[+] [-] RBerenguel|3 years ago|reply
PS: I'm more of a fan of Zelazny, but I enjoyed quite a lot The Book of the New Sun
[+] [-] farleykr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandworm101|3 years ago|reply
The same is true for all aspects of language. If you want to speak better, don't watch TV news or LA sitcoms. Watch classic British comedy (Blackadder) or BBC science docs (Brian Cox) that will expand your practical vocabulary and sense of proper diction.
[+] [-] 1retep|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SapporoChris|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lowken|3 years ago|reply
Get a cheep spiral notebook and a nice pen.
Then collect some example writings that represent the best writing style you aspire to. I prefer short stories and essays, but for larger examples (novels) you can focus on single chapters.
Every day spend about 1/2 hour copying the example writing by hand into the spiral notebook. When you are done copying about two pages into your spiral notebook review the pages and identify different writing techniques. I used this technique to learn copywriting so I identified different persuasion techniques including what’s the catch addresses or Promise.
However, you could also use this same technique to become a better novelist. So maybe you identify alliteration, irony, foreshadowing, etc.
Why does this work? This have been studies on the powerful learning effect of writing notes by hand. The technique I described follows the same principals. By copying great writing by hand you are engaging multiple senses at one time. You are feeding your conscious and subconscious mind rich example writing that will help you improve your own writing.
Anyway, this worked for me. Good luck.
[+] [-] thorncorona|3 years ago|reply
Learning works through synthesis of material, which is the main takeaway from the writing studies you mentioned, however when copying writing no synthesis occurs. Also these studies were recently duplicated and results did not match the original conclusion.
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
Also: this book is great: https://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-Chicago-Writing-Publish...
[+] [-] kasey_junk|3 years ago|reply
This allows them all the benefits of practice in other endeavors. They can experiment, get faster, build “muscle memory” etc.
I don’t know why I keep being surprised that the answer to being good at things is working at it.
[+] [-] azhenley|3 years ago|reply
#5 feels like a superpower to me. It has made writing so much easier. It forces me to really understand (and to realize what I don’t understand) about the topic.
[+] [-] stared|3 years ago|reply
There is no other way than practice. Feedback speeds up this learning process a lot and improves the result significantly.
Everything else varies from person to person. Some write daily; some don't for months - then dive into their writing modes. Some start with an outline, and some - pour a stream of thoughts into the computer.
Nevertheless - what is your goal, and what blocks you in the process?
[+] [-] ghaff|3 years ago|reply
But other than that I agree. There are probably a few books worth reading but it's more about writing and getting good feedback. Past a certain point, you can probably dispense with some of that feedback depending on the nature of what you're writing. But it's essential to get started.
[+] [-] selfhifive|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KerryJones|3 years ago|reply
I think much of the other advice on this page is very valid (and I'll repeat some below), but what I often find missing from advice like this is simply do the thing a lot with some sort of feedback/iteration loop. While this is true for most professions, it is specially true for writing: write a lot.
Other useful things to help: 2. Define the purpose of your writing 3. Define who your target audience is (is this a novel, article writing, marketing, etc) 4. Define who you are as the author (are you a subject matter expert, the narrator of a story, a friend)
Learn some of the basics: - Elements of Style is a good place to start - Use Grammarly - Read, a lot
[+] [-] WhitneyLand|3 years ago|reply
It can be people you know, but there are also online writing communities that will give candid feedback in a safe environment. Usually the catch is you’ll have to return the favor for someone else in the community, but that’s not a bad thing.
[+] [-] ianai|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lallysingh|3 years ago|reply
1. Read about writing. The very tactical stuff like "On Writing Well" and "Writing Tools" and "The Craft of Scientific Writing"
2. Imitate writers you like. Try reading someone else's work, then reproducing it in their style.
[+] [-] 99failures|3 years ago|reply
Writing makes you a better thinker.
Better thinking leads to better everything.
David Mamet's writings on writing are the best.
[+] [-] wellthisisgreat|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rmk|3 years ago|reply
You could rewrite this to say "I have been writing for a while, but feel like I have stagnated for some time now."
Be a ruthless editor of your own writing, to begin with. Read actual printed words that have been through rigorous editing. Examples include print magazines and newspapers.
Read Strunk and White's Elements of Style and try to put it into practice in your writing. Read a variety of works, both fiction and nonfiction. Read classic writers such as Melville, Trollope, or Hemingway and pay attention to the plot devices and writing style (you will have to re-read individual pieces in isolation, again and again).
Take every opportunity to write, including in this forum or other places where you can write and have an actual conversation with like-minded, intelligent people. I'm sure there are internet forums and subreddits for aspiring writers where you will find opportunities aplenty to write, critique and hone your craft.
[+] [-] yef|3 years ago|reply
If you're writing in public, like a blog, try giving yourself a deadline and permission for the post not to be perfect.
[+] [-] tanticen|3 years ago|reply
The main takeaway is to simplify text as much as possible. That doesn't mean dumbing it down, and it doesn't mean abandoning creativity. It's just the opposite: Once you get rid of all the excess junk, the reader will hear your genuine voice.
[+] [-] greggarious|3 years ago|reply
https://wrd.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/1-Shitty%20First%...
[+] [-] whereistejas|3 years ago|reply