Things that aren’t typically suggested that worked for me and may generalize:
I. Read mediocre writing. If you only read good writing, you can’t tell what makes it good; it just looks like all writing is good. By comparing good writing to mediocre (or bad) writing, you can see what the good writers did that the mediocre writers didn’t (or, as is often the case, what the mediocre writers did that the good writers didn’t). My writing only started improving after getting out of English class and replacing cultured reading with mediocre fanfiction.
You want to spend time in the position of the reader, thinking to yourself “I wish that the author had written this part differently,” so when you’re doing your own writing, you notice when you do the same mediocre thing, you change it.
Good, professional writing is what you seek to emulate, so reading it is valuable. However, it covers up the drafting process, which is how you actually get there. This is somewhat analogous to math, where you want your proofs to look like the ones in the textbook, but the way you generate such proofs is much messier.
(EDIT: As has been discussed below, reading mediocre writing is, by itself, probably a bad idea. The value comes when you deliberately train yourself to recognize bad things and how to make them good.)
II. Spend time in writing communities. I’ve gleaned a lot of value by reading a blog that reviews MLP fanfic, mostly from getting three doses of “this writer did this and this, but it didn’t work for these reasons” a week. More recently, I joined a proofreading team, where one of my co-betas yelled at the rest of us about hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, resulting in me finally using them correctly (and learning how to type them, which depends on your system).
III. SICP. Computer programs are complex. Only reason we can write them is that we’ve developed some sophisticated complexity-controlling techniques, which SICP covers. These techniques generalize to other areas, like math, physics, and, most importantly, writing. I spent years unable to write anything coherent longer than 500 words until Dr. Abelson started talking to me about wishful thinking and black-box abstraction.
IV. Learn to type. You will (1) type faster, (2) use better technique, thereby reducing injury potential, (3) hit the wrong key less often, reducing the base rate of typos and unnecessary keystrokes, (4) be able to look at the screen, which means you (a) will notice more of the typos that get through, (b) can see what you’ve written, and (c) have better ergonomics, and (5) you’ll achieve automaticity, which will free up cognitive resources for other things. This, I think, is another area where programmers are ahead of writers, even though they should be doing essentially the same thing.
Standard recommendations that bear repeating: read Strunk and White and, if you don’t have any writing of your own to work on, beta read somebody else’s writing.
Humans make a lot of their choices via the availability heuristic. Being exposed to bad writing can make those trains of thought more available in your mind. I would be wary of it.
When I switched schools I got into an English class with a lot of people who were bad at it. I noticed that I copied some of their mistakes.
This produces interesting results in music: musically talented people who take a mediocre form and turn out something really good from it. c.f. the fans of terrible hardcore punk in the ’80s who turned into the grunge scene, Nirvana and cohorts.
Doesn’t anyone who spends a decent amount of time on the internet these days have a lot of contact with mediocre writing?
Yes. I question the merit of that advice too. “Read a lot, the best books possible” as a strategy will still result in reading far more mediocre writing than optimal.
You know how bad the worst released stuff is? That’s still the good stuff—the bottom of the barrel is at least in the barrel. The slush pile has horrors. Worst is the stuff that’s just … not good. Being able to identify why helps you learn from others.
Not to mention, style recommendations dreamed up based on spurious nonsense about what is and is not grammatical and which are noticeably not followed by any good writer.
My writing only started improving after getting out of English class and replacing cultured reading with mediocre fanfiction.
Same thing in music—I’d do stuff in my own terrible demos, then hear other people’s terrible demos and go ”… ah, that’s why good music doesn’t do that.” It’s like there’s a whole heap of bad ideas that people try out, and mediocre works are where you’ll find the mistakes of others to learn from.
(It used to be a lot harder to find terrible demos before the Internet. The slush pile at the local community radio station helped, for example. Even the bottom 10% of a review pile—my previous sample of the bottom of the barrel—was at least in the barrel.)
Things that aren’t typically suggested that worked for me and may generalize:
I. Read mediocre writing. If you only read good writing, you can’t tell what makes it good; it just looks like all writing is good. By comparing good writing to mediocre (or bad) writing, you can see what the good writers did that the mediocre writers didn’t (or, as is often the case, what the mediocre writers did that the good writers didn’t). My writing only started improving after getting out of English class and replacing cultured reading with mediocre fanfiction.
You want to spend time in the position of the reader, thinking to yourself “I wish that the author had written this part differently,” so when you’re doing your own writing, you notice when you do the same mediocre thing, you change it.
Good, professional writing is what you seek to emulate, so reading it is valuable. However, it covers up the drafting process, which is how you actually get there. This is somewhat analogous to math, where you want your proofs to look like the ones in the textbook, but the way you generate such proofs is much messier.
(EDIT: As has been discussed below, reading mediocre writing is, by itself, probably a bad idea. The value comes when you deliberately train yourself to recognize bad things and how to make them good.)
II. Spend time in writing communities. I’ve gleaned a lot of value by reading a blog that reviews MLP fanfic, mostly from getting three doses of “this writer did this and this, but it didn’t work for these reasons” a week. More recently, I joined a proofreading team, where one of my co-betas yelled at the rest of us about hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes, resulting in me finally using them correctly (and learning how to type them, which depends on your system).
III. SICP. Computer programs are complex. Only reason we can write them is that we’ve developed some sophisticated complexity-controlling techniques, which SICP covers. These techniques generalize to other areas, like math, physics, and, most importantly, writing. I spent years unable to write anything coherent longer than 500 words until Dr. Abelson started talking to me about wishful thinking and black-box abstraction.
IV. Learn to type. You will (1) type faster, (2) use better technique, thereby reducing injury potential, (3) hit the wrong key less often, reducing the base rate of typos and unnecessary keystrokes, (4) be able to look at the screen, which means you (a) will notice more of the typos that get through, (b) can see what you’ve written, and (c) have better ergonomics, and (5) you’ll achieve automaticity, which will free up cognitive resources for other things. This, I think, is another area where programmers are ahead of writers, even though they should be doing essentially the same thing.
Standard recommendations that bear repeating: read Strunk and White and, if you don’t have any writing of your own to work on, beta read somebody else’s writing.
Doesn’t anyone who spends a decent amount of time on the internet these days have a lot of contact with mediocre writing?
I think it works for fanfic. Certainly does for music. Some ideas, you don’t realise how bad they can be without seeing.
It’s the same with teaching: You never know in how many ways an argument can be wrong until you grade 25 assignments in a row.
Humans make a lot of their choices via the availability heuristic. Being exposed to bad writing can make those trains of thought more available in your mind. I would be wary of it.
When I switched schools I got into an English class with a lot of people who were bad at it. I noticed that I copied some of their mistakes.
This produces interesting results in music: musically talented people who take a mediocre form and turn out something really good from it. c.f. the fans of terrible hardcore punk in the ’80s who turned into the grunge scene, Nirvana and cohorts.
Yes. I question the merit of that advice too. “Read a lot, the best books possible” as a strategy will still result in reading far more mediocre writing than optimal.
You know how bad the worst released stuff is? That’s still the good stuff—the bottom of the barrel is at least in the barrel. The slush pile has horrors. Worst is the stuff that’s just … not good. Being able to identify why helps you learn from others.
Read Strunk and White with a sharp critical eye. Most of their book gives style recommendations, not normative grammar.
Not to mention, style recommendations dreamed up based on spurious nonsense about what is and is not grammatical and which are noticeably not followed by any good writer.
Same thing in music—I’d do stuff in my own terrible demos, then hear other people’s terrible demos and go ”… ah, that’s why good music doesn’t do that.” It’s like there’s a whole heap of bad ideas that people try out, and mediocre works are where you’ll find the mistakes of others to learn from.
(It used to be a lot harder to find terrible demos before the Internet. The slush pile at the local community radio station helped, for example. Even the bottom 10% of a review pile—my previous sample of the bottom of the barrel—was at least in the barrel.)