It seems like quite a few people on Less Wrong are interested in improving the quality of their writing. “Writing” obviously covers many different pursuits, and perhaps every unhappy document is unhappy in its own way, but I’d like to share my own frustrations in this area and see if this is similar to others. If it is, maybe we can do something about it.
I can write well enough to get distinctions for undergraduate-level essays, but this doesn’t seem like a very high bar. If you can comprehend an essay question, form a reasonably coherent answer to that question, and put forward this answer as a structured argument which the reader can follow, you’re pretty much set. I understand these are exactly the features an undergraduate essay is testing for, but I want to be better than that. George Orwell didn’t get his work back with “96%, Well Done”. He got tears and accolades and enduring respect. While I don’t want to be George Orwell, I’m not ashamed to admit I’d like those things.
I’ve read a few introductory-level books on subjects like written composition and rhetorical technique. It’s given me a broader vocabulary to describe what’s going on, and a selection of tips, tricks and patterns. I can say what’s good about a piece of writing I like, but I can’t fit it into an overarching coherent theory. I can steal elements of style that I like, but I don’t really know why they’re stylish.
I don’t know to what extent this is a skill you just have to work at, or a body of knowledge I don’t know where to learn. I’m lacking general support and feedback. Is anyone else in this position, and would they like to offer mutual constructive criticism? Alternatively, is anyone a secret gatekeeper of the arcane lore I seek?
I work at a small publishing house specialized in medical literature. This year we had an editor who had majored in Latin, and he urged us to bring the style of the classical humanities to our physical sciences niche. For example, he said we should follow Aristotle’s rhetorical advice (announce what you’ll say, then say it, then said what you just said), and insisted that the appeal to authority was valid because we always had to cite sources.
Eventually he left the company for his own reasons, but this made me think about the different assumptions about writing that people can have, depending on their background. This guy believed any attempt at communication was unavoidably ambiguous because that’s the way language works. I try to make my writing efficient and clear because I believe language should be transparent.
Perhaps what you already believe about language will shape what you will strive for in your writing.
I think a transparent style is what you need in medical literature. Repeating yourself certainly aids clarity, as long as you aren’t annoying your reader. Giving summaries at the beginning is great. Don’t save the “punchline” of the result for the end, that’s for literature and some journalism, not anything academic.
I don’t know that the classical humanities can lay claim to these ideas though.
Writing is hard. I know you don’t need me to tell you that, but any discussion on writing should begin with that statement. Writing is hard and studying it needs to be treated with the same seriousness as any other “hard” question. After all, not everyone has a book in them and those who do have to make the book themselves; it’s not pre-baked inside their genes.
The best statement on the difficulty of “studying” writing that I have encountered (everyone has at least one) was by Flannery O’Connor. Paraphrased: “Studying writing by discussing point of view or sentence structure or character development is like trying to describe a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.” Everyone writes and learns to write differently. Some people, like E.H. White or C.S. Lewis, thrive on the academic, the grammar, the scholarly themes and canon and dissection. Others, like Jack Kerouac and James Joyce, thrive off raw passion and blatant disregard for distraction.
Your comparison between Orwell and undergrad essays is a good one. An undergrad essay has set parameters that dictate what will be in it and how it will be decided whether it has succeeded in its task or not. Orwell’s books have no set parameters. No book is so lucky to have set parameters. Their success depends entirely on the society that accepts them.
For my part (and I am only one person in a massive field), the greatest tool for a learning writer is to write. And not write privately but write things for the consumption of others. I have tried writing privately to “perfect” the projects I work on. Doesn’t work. I just write for myself and make nothing. I’m not saying do like Stephen King and Dean Koontz and abandon quality for output. No, not at all! That’s the anathema of improving your writing ability. After all, I don’t think it’s a lack of talent that keeps Donna Tartt from publishing more than one book a decade. But do not sequester your writing away until it is “ready” or “skilled” or “perfect.” Get it in front of someone, because by coming in contact with other minds your writing will do what its suppose to: act as a tool to convey ideas and emotions. By hitting against other people, you can tell where your tool needs sharpening.
If you would like a critic, I would not mind working as a reader and giving you what I can. I really do enjoy editing quite a bit and currently have a bit of a bet going with some fellow writers so that we can each improve the other’s output. I would not mind doing the same here. Just message me. But, beyond doing the thing, I don’t know of any secret gate to pass through. There is no royal road to writing, so to speak.
Well, there is, but the toll is enormous. Worse than the Florida Sunpass.
Stephen King argues that writer’s block is a myth. Is writing still hard if you’re willing to just set pen to paper without trying to filter for good ideas? I find this kind of free writing to be almost repulsive to me, but I think it is just a weird bias that I have and a lot of people have but don’t ever move past. I know that many of my favorite writers endorse reckless first drafts and brainstorming sessions.
Maybe writing’s difficulty is overestimated by the general public, but underestimated by amateur writers? That seems compatible with both our positions.
A related anecdote: Stephen King had writer’s block while writing “The Stand.” He overcame it by detonating a bomb and killing half the main cast.
I find the bemoaning of so many writers regarding writer’s block to be a far less serious issue than they intend me to think it. I won’t say I don’t believe in writer’s block. I’ll say my evidence is inconclusive. My personal experience has been that “writer’s block” tends to stem from other, less “artsy” problems. Laziness, ennui, angst. Typically, for me, writer’s block is overcome by shutting up and writing or by admitting “this project isn’t going to work. Restore, restart, or quit.”
Thanks for this—it’s a very interesting topic. You might want to look into Pinker’s Sense of Style, which has been well-received, on this topic (I just started reading it).
I’ve read a few introductory-level books on subjects like written composition and rhetorical technique. It’s given me a broader vocabulary to describe what’s going on, and a selection of tips, tricks and patterns.
It would be great if you could give us an overview of what you’ve learnt, as a starting-point of further discussion.
Also, I think it’s important to know what sort of quality writing you’re aspiring at. Good scientific writing is very different from good literary writing, for instance.
It would be great if you could give us an overview of what you’ve learnt, as a starting-point of further discussion.
Here’s a very broad, shallow overview:
Classical rhetoric is a lot like TVTropes, except the tropes have names like “tricolon” and “synechdoche” instead of “Sean Connery is Going to Shoot You”. If you’ve ever noticed a common device that speakers and writers use, it probably has a name in Greek. They serve purposes. You might read a draft of what you’ve written and think “this sentence sounds weak and lacks impact, but [rhetorical device] is bold and punchy, so I’ll construct one and stick it on the end”.
There’s quite a lot of material available on standard essay structures and essay types for different purposes, (exposition, persuasion, etc.) mostly directed at students. My prototypical “smart person” would probably find 70% of the content in one of these “obvious”, but I imagine the missing 30% would vary from person to person.
Grammar and linguistic knowledge are a powerful rhetorical tool. A really obvious example is the idea of the passive voice sounding evasive and blame-shifting, (e.g. “mistakes were made” rather than “Colin made a mistake”). Understanding the mechanics of sentences is useful in constructing them. I’m currently waiting for a textbook to arrive on this specific subject.
Poetic metre and scansion provide a very useful framework for describing verbal aesthetics. The rhythm of spoken and written words induce emotional and attentional affect in the reader. Nice collections of words sound nice, and people will want to read them.
Informal logic seems like a no-brainer, but is still worth mentioning. If you know what an argument is, it’s a lot easier to make one.
Also, I think it’s important to know what sort of quality writing you’re aspiring at. Good scientific writing is very different from good literary writing, for instance.
I want to present ideas both clearly and attractively. As an example, even when Scott Aaronson goes over my head, he’s still a pleasure to read, and my confusion about individual points doesn’t spill over to confusion about the whole piece.
Thanks. I like the Tolstoy reference above (every unhappy document is unhappy in its own way, etc) and think that this comment highlights the mechanism behind that: that there many different ways in which you can write badly: flawed arguments, poor language, bad structure, and so on.
I think that the best way to improve is detailed feedback. You can learn a fair amount from style books, but only so much, I would guess. Lots of the time, you don’t see what mistakes you are making, and need someone else to point them out.
It’s important that this feedback is precise: that it tells you exactly what you do wrong and what you could do better, on a sentence by sentence level, as it were. General and vague feedback is not at all as useful as it doesn’t tell you what to do in order to improve. I like Christian’s proposal below of a writing group where such feedback could be given.
For what it’s worth I think you’re already a very good writer, but of course everyone could improve. Including Orwell.
Regarding rhetorics I personally prefer texts that don’t include too many rhetorical devices such as personal stories, fictive dialogues, and so on, but which instead present the heart of the matter in a precise, structured, and non-roundabout way. Tastes differ here, however.
I don’t have a good idea for my writing skill as I don’t think I haven’t written anything like an essay in the last five years, Otherwise I’m in a similar position.
How about starting a group where every week one person hand in a post and then everyone discusses what can be improved and how to improve it. Maybe the discussion process can even be live?
It’s given me a broader vocabulary to describe what’s going on, and a selection of tips, tricks and patterns. I can say what’s good about a piece of writing I like, but I can’t fit it into an overarching coherent theory.
My experience is that writing isn’t a field that would have an overarching coherent theory—instead it only has an endless selection of “tips, tricks and patterns”, as you put it. Becoming a better writer is just about constantly expanding your toolkit of tricks, by being explicitly told tricks, taking apart other writers’ work to discover theirs, and experimenting with inventing new ones. Read a lot and write a lot.
(Stein on Writing is my own favorite collection of tricks, covering both fiction and non-fiction writing.)
The best way to improve writing will vary largely by person. Here’s what worked/is working for me that I think generalizes better than average:
Get good enough that, when you read other people’s writing, you notice things they could’ve done better. Notice the first step in “how to improve at writing” is “improve at writing”; going from below baseline takes a different strategy than going from baseline to above. Importantly, until you get to the point where you’re able to make improvements to other’s writing, writing your own stuff isn’t going to help, since you’re not high level enough to improve it. That is, getting to this baseline is going to require external resources. I personally used a combination of Strunk and White and a MLP fanfic blog.
Also, getting to this level doesn’t need to take much. You can get absurd mileage out of “Omit needless words”.
Find a person other than yourself who’s writing something and would like a beta. Things that you should probably look for: intelligence, similarity in writing goals, divergence in writing style.
Act as a beta reader. Make suggestions liberally. That is, if you see a change you might make and are unsure if it will improve the writing, suggest it; your primary will either accept or reject it. The important part is you discussion points of disagreement.
You can, of course, go at this from the opposite side (as a primary who finds a beta), but my system 1 says the other way is easier. They guy I currently beta for had to put in an absolutely absurd amount of work to get to the point of taking on betas, whereas I just had to leave a review saying “this is pretty good, but you could improve x, y, and z, and you could really use a beta, and I’d be up for it because this story will be awesome if you can clean this stuff up.”
Note that although Strunk and White might have some reasonable advice on some topics, many of their recommendations are linguistically ignorant, just plain nonsensical, or violated all the time by excellent writers (including the authors themselves, sometimes on the same page they offer the advice). Here is a well-informed, highly negative review.
I very much agree with your advice about acting as a beta reader. It’s really helpful for both parties and gets you lots of brownie points too!
I came to the open thread to add a comment saying “Everyone should read Steven Pinker’s The Sense Of Style”. I didn’t know I’d have the perfect occasion.
There’s no overarching coherent theory, but there are ideas both at the detailed level of choosing words and at the higher level of structuring your writing and taking your reader on a journey. I also enjoyed reading it immensely and found it very hard to put down. Everyone here writes, so everyone here should read it!
I’ve read pretty much all of them, but have something of a complicated reaction to them. I think he takes quite an experimental approach to essay-writing, and some of those experiments pay off more than others.
The best feedback will come from seeing how people in your target audience respond to your writing. You don’t want to necessarily take on board all of their suggestions, but you do want to see how they seem to receive it in general. I mean, people are good at knowing what they like, but bad at knowing what they would like.
The standards you set for yourself depend on your goals. If your goal is to be a successful blogger or book author it makes sense to set high standards for yourself.
Freud owns a lot of his influence to good writing skills.
We probably wouldn’t speak of Darwinism if Darwin wouldn’t have written a well written book with “On the Origin of Species”. Darwin would be much more one of many different biologists if he hadn’t written a book that people enjoy to read.
The C programming language owns much of their success to a well written book.
Success is rare. I think that’s probably because it’s mostly luck but people don’t want to accept that; compare “hard” multiple-choice tests in medical/legal education.
I think I have some excellent advice for you this time.
I’ve noticed very recently that in my own writing I tend to optimize for the strength of individual sentences instead of for the strength of paragraphs or arguments as a whole. Because I write one sentence at a time, it’s tempting to have each sentence make its point as direct and powerfully as possible. But this is a little bit like playing each note of a song as loudly as possible in an attempt at maximum musical impact. A more skilled performer would play some notes softly, others louder, and use that to emphasize certain ideas over others within the work. I think writing is the same way, and some sentences or paragraphs should be softer or louder than others. The main function of some sentences should be what they do for other sentences, rather than their own arguments. Changing my writing habits in this way will be difficult, but I think eventually highly rewarding.
I don’t know whether you have a similar problem or not. But I suspect it’s a common one, and hope someone will find this advice useful even if you don’t.
It seems like quite a few people on Less Wrong are interested in improving the quality of their writing. “Writing” obviously covers many different pursuits, and perhaps every unhappy document is unhappy in its own way, but I’d like to share my own frustrations in this area and see if this is similar to others. If it is, maybe we can do something about it.
I can write well enough to get distinctions for undergraduate-level essays, but this doesn’t seem like a very high bar. If you can comprehend an essay question, form a reasonably coherent answer to that question, and put forward this answer as a structured argument which the reader can follow, you’re pretty much set. I understand these are exactly the features an undergraduate essay is testing for, but I want to be better than that. George Orwell didn’t get his work back with “96%, Well Done”. He got tears and accolades and enduring respect. While I don’t want to be George Orwell, I’m not ashamed to admit I’d like those things.
I’ve read a few introductory-level books on subjects like written composition and rhetorical technique. It’s given me a broader vocabulary to describe what’s going on, and a selection of tips, tricks and patterns. I can say what’s good about a piece of writing I like, but I can’t fit it into an overarching coherent theory. I can steal elements of style that I like, but I don’t really know why they’re stylish.
I don’t know to what extent this is a skill you just have to work at, or a body of knowledge I don’t know where to learn. I’m lacking general support and feedback. Is anyone else in this position, and would they like to offer mutual constructive criticism? Alternatively, is anyone a secret gatekeeper of the arcane lore I seek?
I work at a small publishing house specialized in medical literature. This year we had an editor who had majored in Latin, and he urged us to bring the style of the classical humanities to our physical sciences niche. For example, he said we should follow Aristotle’s rhetorical advice (announce what you’ll say, then say it, then said what you just said), and insisted that the appeal to authority was valid because we always had to cite sources.
Eventually he left the company for his own reasons, but this made me think about the different assumptions about writing that people can have, depending on their background. This guy believed any attempt at communication was unavoidably ambiguous because that’s the way language works. I try to make my writing efficient and clear because I believe language should be transparent.
Perhaps what you already believe about language will shape what you will strive for in your writing.
I think a transparent style is what you need in medical literature. Repeating yourself certainly aids clarity, as long as you aren’t annoying your reader. Giving summaries at the beginning is great. Don’t save the “punchline” of the result for the end, that’s for literature and some journalism, not anything academic.
I don’t know that the classical humanities can lay claim to these ideas though.
Writing is hard. I know you don’t need me to tell you that, but any discussion on writing should begin with that statement. Writing is hard and studying it needs to be treated with the same seriousness as any other “hard” question. After all, not everyone has a book in them and those who do have to make the book themselves; it’s not pre-baked inside their genes.
The best statement on the difficulty of “studying” writing that I have encountered (everyone has at least one) was by Flannery O’Connor. Paraphrased: “Studying writing by discussing point of view or sentence structure or character development is like trying to describe a face by saying where the eyes, nose, and mouth are.” Everyone writes and learns to write differently. Some people, like E.H. White or C.S. Lewis, thrive on the academic, the grammar, the scholarly themes and canon and dissection. Others, like Jack Kerouac and James Joyce, thrive off raw passion and blatant disregard for distraction.
Your comparison between Orwell and undergrad essays is a good one. An undergrad essay has set parameters that dictate what will be in it and how it will be decided whether it has succeeded in its task or not. Orwell’s books have no set parameters. No book is so lucky to have set parameters. Their success depends entirely on the society that accepts them.
For my part (and I am only one person in a massive field), the greatest tool for a learning writer is to write. And not write privately but write things for the consumption of others. I have tried writing privately to “perfect” the projects I work on. Doesn’t work. I just write for myself and make nothing. I’m not saying do like Stephen King and Dean Koontz and abandon quality for output. No, not at all! That’s the anathema of improving your writing ability. After all, I don’t think it’s a lack of talent that keeps Donna Tartt from publishing more than one book a decade. But do not sequester your writing away until it is “ready” or “skilled” or “perfect.” Get it in front of someone, because by coming in contact with other minds your writing will do what its suppose to: act as a tool to convey ideas and emotions. By hitting against other people, you can tell where your tool needs sharpening.
If you would like a critic, I would not mind working as a reader and giving you what I can. I really do enjoy editing quite a bit and currently have a bit of a bet going with some fellow writers so that we can each improve the other’s output. I would not mind doing the same here. Just message me. But, beyond doing the thing, I don’t know of any secret gate to pass through. There is no royal road to writing, so to speak.
Well, there is, but the toll is enormous. Worse than the Florida Sunpass.
Stephen King argues that writer’s block is a myth. Is writing still hard if you’re willing to just set pen to paper without trying to filter for good ideas? I find this kind of free writing to be almost repulsive to me, but I think it is just a weird bias that I have and a lot of people have but don’t ever move past. I know that many of my favorite writers endorse reckless first drafts and brainstorming sessions.
Maybe writing’s difficulty is overestimated by the general public, but underestimated by amateur writers? That seems compatible with both our positions.
A related anecdote: Stephen King had writer’s block while writing “The Stand.” He overcame it by detonating a bomb and killing half the main cast.
I find the bemoaning of so many writers regarding writer’s block to be a far less serious issue than they intend me to think it. I won’t say I don’t believe in writer’s block. I’ll say my evidence is inconclusive. My personal experience has been that “writer’s block” tends to stem from other, less “artsy” problems. Laziness, ennui, angst. Typically, for me, writer’s block is overcome by shutting up and writing or by admitting “this project isn’t going to work. Restore, restart, or quit.”
Thanks for this—it’s a very interesting topic. You might want to look into Pinker’s Sense of Style, which has been well-received, on this topic (I just started reading it).
It would be great if you could give us an overview of what you’ve learnt, as a starting-point of further discussion.
Also, I think it’s important to know what sort of quality writing you’re aspiring at. Good scientific writing is very different from good literary writing, for instance.
Here’s a very broad, shallow overview:
Classical rhetoric is a lot like TVTropes, except the tropes have names like “tricolon” and “synechdoche” instead of “Sean Connery is Going to Shoot You”. If you’ve ever noticed a common device that speakers and writers use, it probably has a name in Greek. They serve purposes. You might read a draft of what you’ve written and think “this sentence sounds weak and lacks impact, but [rhetorical device] is bold and punchy, so I’ll construct one and stick it on the end”.
There’s quite a lot of material available on standard essay structures and essay types for different purposes, (exposition, persuasion, etc.) mostly directed at students. My prototypical “smart person” would probably find 70% of the content in one of these “obvious”, but I imagine the missing 30% would vary from person to person.
Grammar and linguistic knowledge are a powerful rhetorical tool. A really obvious example is the idea of the passive voice sounding evasive and blame-shifting, (e.g. “mistakes were made” rather than “Colin made a mistake”). Understanding the mechanics of sentences is useful in constructing them. I’m currently waiting for a textbook to arrive on this specific subject.
Poetic metre and scansion provide a very useful framework for describing verbal aesthetics. The rhythm of spoken and written words induce emotional and attentional affect in the reader. Nice collections of words sound nice, and people will want to read them.
Informal logic seems like a no-brainer, but is still worth mentioning. If you know what an argument is, it’s a lot easier to make one.
I want to present ideas both clearly and attractively. As an example, even when Scott Aaronson goes over my head, he’s still a pleasure to read, and my confusion about individual points doesn’t spill over to confusion about the whole piece.
Thanks. I like the Tolstoy reference above (every unhappy document is unhappy in its own way, etc) and think that this comment highlights the mechanism behind that: that there many different ways in which you can write badly: flawed arguments, poor language, bad structure, and so on.
I think that the best way to improve is detailed feedback. You can learn a fair amount from style books, but only so much, I would guess. Lots of the time, you don’t see what mistakes you are making, and need someone else to point them out.
It’s important that this feedback is precise: that it tells you exactly what you do wrong and what you could do better, on a sentence by sentence level, as it were. General and vague feedback is not at all as useful as it doesn’t tell you what to do in order to improve. I like Christian’s proposal below of a writing group where such feedback could be given.
For what it’s worth I think you’re already a very good writer, but of course everyone could improve. Including Orwell.
Regarding rhetorics I personally prefer texts that don’t include too many rhetorical devices such as personal stories, fictive dialogues, and so on, but which instead present the heart of the matter in a precise, structured, and non-roundabout way. Tastes differ here, however.
Relavent: Pinker’s lecture at Google on this book.
Writing is hard.
Alright, here’s my list of writing resources (in no particular order):
Books:
Experiencing and the Creation of Meaning by Eugene Gendlin
Writing With Power by Peter Elbow
The Psychology of Written Communication by Carl Bereiter, Marlene Scardamalia
Vernacular Eloquence by Peter Elbow
Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph M. Williams
This is an excellent article about writing:
http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/shakespeares-genius-is-nonsense
Some more inspiration:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/01/11/seeking-density-in-the-gonzo-theater/ http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/05/03/rediscovering-literacy/
AI luminary Schmidhuber has written about complexity and beauty, and I’ve found his thoughts helpful:
http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/beauty.html
My blog is one, long, ungrammatical, rough-draft experiment, for reference, e.g.:
http://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/2014/09/29/what-rationality-actually-looks-like-from-the-inside-4500-words/
http://meditationstuff.wordpress.com/
I don’t have a good idea for my writing skill as I don’t think I haven’t written anything like an essay in the last five years, Otherwise I’m in a similar position.
How about starting a group where every week one person hand in a post and then everyone discusses what can be improved and how to improve it. Maybe the discussion process can even be live?
My experience is that writing isn’t a field that would have an overarching coherent theory—instead it only has an endless selection of “tips, tricks and patterns”, as you put it. Becoming a better writer is just about constantly expanding your toolkit of tricks, by being explicitly told tricks, taking apart other writers’ work to discover theirs, and experimenting with inventing new ones. Read a lot and write a lot.
(Stein on Writing is my own favorite collection of tricks, covering both fiction and non-fiction writing.)
The best way to improve writing will vary largely by person. Here’s what worked/is working for me that I think generalizes better than average:
Get good enough that, when you read other people’s writing, you notice things they could’ve done better. Notice the first step in “how to improve at writing” is “improve at writing”; going from below baseline takes a different strategy than going from baseline to above. Importantly, until you get to the point where you’re able to make improvements to other’s writing, writing your own stuff isn’t going to help, since you’re not high level enough to improve it. That is, getting to this baseline is going to require external resources. I personally used a combination of Strunk and White and a MLP fanfic blog.
Also, getting to this level doesn’t need to take much. You can get absurd mileage out of “Omit needless words”.
Find a person other than yourself who’s writing something and would like a beta. Things that you should probably look for: intelligence, similarity in writing goals, divergence in writing style.
Act as a beta reader. Make suggestions liberally. That is, if you see a change you might make and are unsure if it will improve the writing, suggest it; your primary will either accept or reject it. The important part is you discussion points of disagreement.
You can, of course, go at this from the opposite side (as a primary who finds a beta), but my system 1 says the other way is easier. They guy I currently beta for had to put in an absolutely absurd amount of work to get to the point of taking on betas, whereas I just had to leave a review saying “this is pretty good, but you could improve x, y, and z, and you could really use a beta, and I’d be up for it because this story will be awesome if you can clean this stuff up.”
Note that although Strunk and White might have some reasonable advice on some topics, many of their recommendations are linguistically ignorant, just plain nonsensical, or violated all the time by excellent writers (including the authors themselves, sometimes on the same page they offer the advice). Here is a well-informed, highly negative review.
I very much agree with your advice about acting as a beta reader. It’s really helpful for both parties and gets you lots of brownie points too!
I came to the open thread to add a comment saying “Everyone should read Steven Pinker’s The Sense Of Style”. I didn’t know I’d have the perfect occasion.
There’s no overarching coherent theory, but there are ideas both at the detailed level of choosing words and at the higher level of structuring your writing and taking your reader on a journey. I also enjoyed reading it immensely and found it very hard to put down. Everyone here writes, so everyone here should read it!
I’m a little over half way through it, and already willing to endorse it wholeheartedly.
I would recommend writing, regularly and refine the skill. Thats the only way to improve effectively.
Have you read any of Paul Graham’s essays? I’m always very impressed by the quality of his writing.
I’ve read pretty much all of them, but have something of a complicated reaction to them. I think he takes quite an experimental approach to essay-writing, and some of those experiments pay off more than others.
The best feedback will come from seeing how people in your target audience respond to your writing. You don’t want to necessarily take on board all of their suggestions, but you do want to see how they seem to receive it in general. I mean, people are good at knowing what they like, but bad at knowing what they would like.
Is writing really as hard as people here make it out to be, or is it an endeavor that makes people set absurdly high standards for themselves?
This is the third pre-submission edit of this comment, so you probably have a very good point.
The standards you set for yourself depend on your goals. If your goal is to be a successful blogger or book author it makes sense to set high standards for yourself.
Freud owns a lot of his influence to good writing skills. We probably wouldn’t speak of Darwinism if Darwin wouldn’t have written a well written book with “On the Origin of Species”. Darwin would be much more one of many different biologists if he hadn’t written a book that people enjoy to read.
The C programming language owns much of their success to a well written book.
Your examples of extreme success kind of prove my tongue-in-cheek point.
Success is rare. I think that’s probably because it’s mostly luck but people don’t want to accept that; compare “hard” multiple-choice tests in medical/legal education.
I think I have some excellent advice for you this time.
I’ve noticed very recently that in my own writing I tend to optimize for the strength of individual sentences instead of for the strength of paragraphs or arguments as a whole. Because I write one sentence at a time, it’s tempting to have each sentence make its point as direct and powerfully as possible. But this is a little bit like playing each note of a song as loudly as possible in an attempt at maximum musical impact. A more skilled performer would play some notes softly, others louder, and use that to emphasize certain ideas over others within the work. I think writing is the same way, and some sentences or paragraphs should be softer or louder than others. The main function of some sentences should be what they do for other sentences, rather than their own arguments. Changing my writing habits in this way will be difficult, but I think eventually highly rewarding.
I don’t know whether you have a similar problem or not. But I suspect it’s a common one, and hope someone will find this advice useful even if you don’t.