I think this is a tremendous piece and there’s at least 3-4 very remarkable insights in here… I wonder if it could be a transcendent piece with a bit more editing for tightness?
EX — if the piece had cut most of the preliminary and opened with “When you walk into an improv scene, you usually have no idea what role you’re playing. All you have is some initial prompt — something like:” — it would have grabbed attention faster. Then the core point from the improv scene could have been made 30% shorter/tighter before transitioning into the very powerful “I suspect that improv works because we’re doing something a lot like it pretty much all the time” with the family example.
After that, you explored from maybe a half-dozen angles… I wonder if perhaps instead choosing 3 tight, fast-written examples would have made the piece more lucid and more accessible to general readers?
When I run a word count, you’re around 3600 words — now, you could fairly call me a hypocrite, since my essays regularly clock in around 4000-6000 and I’d be be a better writer if I spent more time editing down to 30-50% less words.
The two main reasons I don’t edit enough — (1) perception of lack of time, (2) not wanting to delete correct-but-less-striking-true-stuff.
If it’s #1, editing is of course taxing and time-consuming. I understand. It’s the main reason why I don’t edit enough.
But I find #2 to be pernicious and I catch myself doing it all the time. In writing, generally speaking, readers seem to average the quality of a piece rather than sum it. If you have three “A+” exceptional level insights/anecdotes, and mix in a few “B” level ideas and even the occasional “C+”… often readers seem to feel like, “Oh, that was pretty good” instead of “Wow, my mind is blown.”
If you’re writing just for the LW audience, people here have unusually long attention spans for engaging with complex pieces with different premises and branches of thought… certainly though, I think the tightest-edited version of this could help a lot of people beyond the LW community and I wonder there might be a more accessible version that led with the most striking points and moved maybe 25% faster through each of them?
Just a thought — I wouldn’t have commented as such if I didn’t feel like you were doing something absolutely marvelous here.
Could I offer a thought on style?
I think this is a tremendous piece and there’s at least 3-4 very remarkable insights in here… I wonder if it could be a transcendent piece with a bit more editing for tightness?
EX — if the piece had cut most of the preliminary and opened with “When you walk into an improv scene, you usually have no idea what role you’re playing. All you have is some initial prompt — something like:” — it would have grabbed attention faster. Then the core point from the improv scene could have been made 30% shorter/tighter before transitioning into the very powerful “I suspect that improv works because we’re doing something a lot like it pretty much all the time” with the family example.
After that, you explored from maybe a half-dozen angles… I wonder if perhaps instead choosing 3 tight, fast-written examples would have made the piece more lucid and more accessible to general readers?
When I run a word count, you’re around 3600 words — now, you could fairly call me a hypocrite, since my essays regularly clock in around 4000-6000 and I’d be be a better writer if I spent more time editing down to 30-50% less words.
The two main reasons I don’t edit enough — (1) perception of lack of time, (2) not wanting to delete correct-but-less-striking-true-stuff.
If it’s #1, editing is of course taxing and time-consuming. I understand. It’s the main reason why I don’t edit enough.
But I find #2 to be pernicious and I catch myself doing it all the time. In writing, generally speaking, readers seem to average the quality of a piece rather than sum it. If you have three “A+” exceptional level insights/anecdotes, and mix in a few “B” level ideas and even the occasional “C+”… often readers seem to feel like, “Oh, that was pretty good” instead of “Wow, my mind is blown.”
If you’re writing just for the LW audience, people here have unusually long attention spans for engaging with complex pieces with different premises and branches of thought… certainly though, I think the tightest-edited version of this could help a lot of people beyond the LW community and I wonder there might be a more accessible version that led with the most striking points and moved maybe 25% faster through each of them?
Just a thought — I wouldn’t have commented as such if I didn’t feel like you were doing something absolutely marvelous here.