Would it be fair to summarize that as “it makes you update your beliefs insofar as it’s made explicit that your character has new goals, and helps you practice changing your mind?”
The most powerful method I know for improving clarity and brevity is to write, scrap, and rewrite. An even more powerful version of this is to write, scrap, sleep on it, and rewrite.
Writing concisely is often a time-consuming process, and I don’t always take the time.
You weren’t too bad, you did a lot to explain the game mechanics to people who didn’t click through and read the link, even when said explanation didn’t directly contribute to the point you were trying to make.
Being concise is difficult in that you’re trying to efficiently explain something, while also not leaving out important details necessary for you to be understood (i.e. keeping the inferential distance short).
Knowing what the audience knows often helps in terms of what can be left out.
What I generally do is write something, then revise it to make it shorter, which typically involves:
trimming out unneeded grammatical constructions (like “you did a lot towards the goal of” → “you”)
rearranging syntax to make the statement more clear (in general, the subject of the sentence should come first, as well as the inferentially closer parts of the statement)
general futzing about with the words until you think they’re arranged better
Knowing a specific term for something also makes it easier to express without needing to reexplain all of it every time you use it.
Ah.
Would it be fair to summarize that as “it makes you update your beliefs insofar as it’s made explicit that your character has new goals, and helps you practice changing your mind?”
Yes, that would be fair. Are you aware of any good methods for learning and practicing to be more concise?
Get a Twitter account?
The most powerful method I know for improving clarity and brevity is to write, scrap, and rewrite. An even more powerful version of this is to write, scrap, sleep on it, and rewrite.
Writing concisely is often a time-consuming process, and I don’t always take the time.
Hmm, interesting question.
You weren’t too bad, you did a lot to explain the game mechanics to people who didn’t click through and read the link, even when said explanation didn’t directly contribute to the point you were trying to make.
Being concise is difficult in that you’re trying to efficiently explain something, while also not leaving out important details necessary for you to be understood (i.e. keeping the inferential distance short).
Knowing what the audience knows often helps in terms of what can be left out.
What I generally do is write something, then revise it to make it shorter, which typically involves:
trimming out unneeded grammatical constructions (like “you did a lot towards the goal of” → “you”)
rearranging syntax to make the statement more clear (in general, the subject of the sentence should come first, as well as the inferentially closer parts of the statement)
general futzing about with the words until you think they’re arranged better
Knowing a specific term for something also makes it easier to express without needing to reexplain all of it every time you use it.