Hm, let me think if I can come up with advice for you. What kind of problems do you run into when you start trying to express these things? (Or if more applicable, what’s wrong with the finished product?)
I’ve written so many drafts of this, so this may end up making no sense.
Frequently when someone responds to something I’ve posted online I do not feel they understood me because their responses feel to me like reading mail intended for someone else. This sensation is heightened if I ask a question—people seem to use my questions as launching points for questions they’ve hallucinated. This leads me to believe I’m a terrible writer since this pattern is so pervasive. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing an essay, or asking a specific question with plenty of context, people seem to not be interested and reply with their own tangentially related topic.
As far as I can see there is nothing wrong with the final product. I can’t see why my writing is terrible but it must be because people don’t respond to it as I intended. Evidently, they see something that my biased eyes are missing.
One frequent feedback I get about my writing is “it’s too all over the place” or if they’re being nice they might say “there’s a lot of points which are dispensed with too quickly, and I would have like you to explore them each in more depth”.
When I sit down to write, I’m frequently frustrated that my writing lacks my “voice” which should be slightly silly and sardonic, with lots of visual descriptions or metaphors that glimmer and glint. I really struggle at being concise, I’m too longwinded in case you didn’t notice. Structure too is a big one, I struggle to find organic flows and arrangements. I also have an annoying tick of using the pronoun “we” whenever I make a sweeping generalization about ‘normal human behavior’ - even if it is something I don’t do myself.
Struggling with structure is not restricted to writing, I experience it when I’m editing non-verbal videos very often. It’s like trying to make a mosaic. I must be good at it though, in film school I was always told I had a “good grasp of structure.” I cannot explain why it is such a struggle for me to implement, maybe I had more organized source material?
Okay, hm, interesting. (If I do write a “how to write good” post it’ll probably be more general + kind of aimed at people with different problems than yours, like not writing enough, so I’ll give this a shot now.)
Obviously I don’t know what you’ve tried already and it seems like you have tried some things (I looked up Dionysian Imitatio and was like “I think this person already knows more about writing methods than me”, haha), so apologies if these ideas are completely off the mark -
Questions and people misinterpreting you
In addition to asking the question, add a sentence or two of why you’re asking (or what you’ll do with the answer). This might help people give you more relevant info.
If people don’t know the answer to your question, they might just say Some Stuff in hopes it helps, so maybe give an explicit out in the form of “It’s okay if you don’t know” or something in case this is the issue. (Also, ask yourself if they’re likely to know the answer to the thing you’re asking them about. If you don’t think they will, you can still ask, but expect a worse or more irrelevant result.)
In case you don’t do this already: for shorter feedback loops, write in low-stakes forms where people can and will read it—lesswrong or other forums, social media posts, chats, fanfic, comics, whatever; calibrate on people’s response to that. (Obviously the style of writing might not be what you’re ultimately aiming for, but maybe there are consistent ways you’re not coming across clearly, in which case this will help you find those and workshop correcting for them.)
Conciseness
HUGE mood re: being concise, haha. Rounds of editing helps. You might try “challenge rounds” of editing where you try to make the thing absolutely as short as possible, or go in with the intent of writing the thing very directly. (And then you can add more back in if you like, but getting it there can be a good exercise.)
Voice
I think a lot of people struggle with writing voice, and there are guides out there on this. I don’t run into this problem with nonfiction so much, but I do think about it with fiction, so maybe some of this will help:
Play around with it, try out leaning into extremes. Write something in a style that is maximally silly, or that is poetic to the point of being esoteric, etc. (Writing things that you don’t “need to” write—things that are interesting to you but don’t feel crucial to communicate—can help here, just in terms of giving you mental wiggle room.)
I find that my metaphors and like use of language change after reading or writing stuff with strong voice—so you might try, I don’t know, reading authors that have voices you like, or writing fiction or poetry that is metaphor-heavy, etc, to develop the taste for that.
If you can’t write with the voice you want in the first place, schlockily edited-in is fine. Like, write a full draft. Maybe you go “this is bad, this doesn’t have as much description as I’d like.” Bold at least 5 spots throughout the piece where you think you could add some visual description. Write em in. Reread it and see if you like that better.
Structure
Think about the reader experience.
Think about the process you want the reader to go through. FOR INSTANCE:
News article style: start with the most important thing, add more stuff in descending order of importance
Make some points of reasoning step by step. Lay out several facts/assumptions and then arrive at a conclusion.
Explain that you will be offering a list of unconnected ideas, then do that.
A story told in temporal order, giving more details in the most interesting or relevant parts.
...Or something else, a combination, etc, etc. The point is, go in with a strategy.
In most writing, the default is that people won’t read a thing. So you want to hook them and make something that’s nice to read.
Some things that help with this: on an interesting topic, phrased in an interesting way, starts with something surprising, easy-to-follow reasoning, has jokes, is short.
Also, don’t assume the reader will read to the end.
Making an outline and expanding out from it can help a lot to keep you on track, I do this especially with longer form stuff
Thank you so much, I can see you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into this reply. I’m going to come back to this later and try and internalize as much as I can.
I do like your advice about low-stakes platforms to calibrate with, ‘challenge rounds’ of editing, and leaning into extremes of a voice. Those all feel very actionable but not things I think I’ve tried yet.
“Also, don’t assume the reader will read to the end.”
That’s a good heuristic! Front load, like you say, like a newspaper article—inverted pyramid or whatever they call it.
Hm, let me think if I can come up with advice for you. What kind of problems do you run into when you start trying to express these things? (Or if more applicable, what’s wrong with the finished product?)
I’ve written so many drafts of this, so this may end up making no sense.
Frequently when someone responds to something I’ve posted online I do not feel they understood me because their responses feel to me like reading mail intended for someone else. This sensation is heightened if I ask a question—people seem to use my questions as launching points for questions they’ve hallucinated. This leads me to believe I’m a terrible writer since this pattern is so pervasive. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing an essay, or asking a specific question with plenty of context, people seem to not be interested and reply with their own tangentially related topic.
As far as I can see there is nothing wrong with the final product. I can’t see why my writing is terrible but it must be because people don’t respond to it as I intended. Evidently, they see something that my biased eyes are missing.
One frequent feedback I get about my writing is “it’s too all over the place” or if they’re being nice they might say “there’s a lot of points which are dispensed with too quickly, and I would have like you to explore them each in more depth”.
When I sit down to write, I’m frequently frustrated that my writing lacks my “voice” which should be slightly silly and sardonic, with lots of visual descriptions or metaphors that glimmer and glint. I really struggle at being concise, I’m too longwinded in case you didn’t notice. Structure too is a big one, I struggle to find organic flows and arrangements. I also have an annoying tick of using the pronoun “we” whenever I make a sweeping generalization about ‘normal human behavior’ - even if it is something I don’t do myself.
Struggling with structure is not restricted to writing, I experience it when I’m editing non-verbal videos very often. It’s like trying to make a mosaic. I must be good at it though, in film school I was always told I had a “good grasp of structure.” I cannot explain why it is such a struggle for me to implement, maybe I had more organized source material?
Okay, hm, interesting. (If I do write a “how to write good” post it’ll probably be more general + kind of aimed at people with different problems than yours, like not writing enough, so I’ll give this a shot now.)
Obviously I don’t know what you’ve tried already and it seems like you have tried some things (I looked up Dionysian Imitatio and was like “I think this person already knows more about writing methods than me”, haha), so apologies if these ideas are completely off the mark -
Questions and people misinterpreting you
In addition to asking the question, add a sentence or two of why you’re asking (or what you’ll do with the answer). This might help people give you more relevant info.
If people don’t know the answer to your question, they might just say Some Stuff in hopes it helps, so maybe give an explicit out in the form of “It’s okay if you don’t know” or something in case this is the issue. (Also, ask yourself if they’re likely to know the answer to the thing you’re asking them about. If you don’t think they will, you can still ask, but expect a worse or more irrelevant result.)
In case you don’t do this already: for shorter feedback loops, write in low-stakes forms where people can and will read it—lesswrong or other forums, social media posts, chats, fanfic, comics, whatever; calibrate on people’s response to that. (Obviously the style of writing might not be what you’re ultimately aiming for, but maybe there are consistent ways you’re not coming across clearly, in which case this will help you find those and workshop correcting for them.)
Conciseness
HUGE mood re: being concise, haha. Rounds of editing helps. You might try “challenge rounds” of editing where you try to make the thing absolutely as short as possible, or go in with the intent of writing the thing very directly. (And then you can add more back in if you like, but getting it there can be a good exercise.)
Voice
I think a lot of people struggle with writing voice, and there are guides out there on this. I don’t run into this problem with nonfiction so much, but I do think about it with fiction, so maybe some of this will help:
Play around with it, try out leaning into extremes. Write something in a style that is maximally silly, or that is poetic to the point of being esoteric, etc. (Writing things that you don’t “need to” write—things that are interesting to you but don’t feel crucial to communicate—can help here, just in terms of giving you mental wiggle room.)
I find that my metaphors and like use of language change after reading or writing stuff with strong voice—so you might try, I don’t know, reading authors that have voices you like, or writing fiction or poetry that is metaphor-heavy, etc, to develop the taste for that.
If you can’t write with the voice you want in the first place, schlockily edited-in is fine. Like, write a full draft. Maybe you go “this is bad, this doesn’t have as much description as I’d like.” Bold at least 5 spots throughout the piece where you think you could add some visual description. Write em in. Reread it and see if you like that better.
Structure
Think about the reader experience.
Think about the process you want the reader to go through. FOR INSTANCE:
News article style: start with the most important thing, add more stuff in descending order of importance
Make some points of reasoning step by step. Lay out several facts/assumptions and then arrive at a conclusion.
Explain that you will be offering a list of unconnected ideas, then do that.
A story told in temporal order, giving more details in the most interesting or relevant parts.
...Or something else, a combination, etc, etc. The point is, go in with a strategy.
In most writing, the default is that people won’t read a thing. So you want to hook them and make something that’s nice to read.
Some things that help with this: on an interesting topic, phrased in an interesting way, starts with something surprising, easy-to-follow reasoning, has jokes, is short.
Also, don’t assume the reader will read to the end.
Making an outline and expanding out from it can help a lot to keep you on track, I do this especially with longer form stuff
Thank you so much, I can see you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into this reply. I’m going to come back to this later and try and internalize as much as I can.
I do like your advice about low-stakes platforms to calibrate with, ‘challenge rounds’ of editing, and leaning into extremes of a voice. Those all feel very actionable but not things I think I’ve tried yet.
That’s a good heuristic! Front load, like you say, like a newspaper article—inverted pyramid or whatever they call it.