I have always been told that if I want to be a better writer, I need to read more books. I definitely agree with this, but I am curious to see what else is out there.

While I'm not reading a book a day or week, I consider myself fairly well educated and well read. However, I notice that my writing style is not nearly as captivating or persuasive as I would like it to be.

Some of the men on this forum have inspired me to improve my ability.


What resources would be recommended to start my journey on becoming a better writer?

What kind of writing are you attempting to do? What have you written about in the past?

Quote: (02-03-2017 08:07 PM)John Michael Kane Wrote:  

What kind of writing are you attempting to do? What have you written about in the past?

In terms of writing in the past - throughout college I wrote for pretty much every discipline from Philosophy/English to Physics/Math. I can't recall all the subtopics but I felt like I had a somewhat decent breadth. I also use to have my own affiliate website where I would write articles about products. Outside of that, maybe some personal journal entries but those are a bit esoteric and aren't really constrained since they are personal and only for myself.

So, not so much novel writing, but more so persuasive writing styles or general story telling. Some of the posts on ROK are good examples or some of the forum posters here.

I think my weakest part of writing is stringing together a coherent writing style. I jump around a lot. It seems as though my brain moves too quickly to get all the information out in a manner which is engaging for someone else to read. A main skill I'm after is to use imagery in a stronger manner, maybe analogies as well.

Write five thousand words a day for the next two weeks. Do not take any time off for the weekend. Then come back and talk to us.

If you're journaling, you might as well be posting on a blog to build your audience, plus get feedback from your readers.

Writing is a highly energy-consuming business if you want to do it well, and do it for the long-term. The way to thrive is to pick the genre you have the most knowledge with, and focus intently on becoming an expert in that field. You have to pick something that you have passion for, otherwise it will just be a grind. When writing becomes a grind, then the results are usually poor.

Writing coherently isn't easy. That being said, it is best to get it out while you think about it, and give it literally a half-dozen passes worth of editing later. Don't lose out on great ideas. Put them in outline format first, then flesh out from there. I use Evernote for that, works great. You be all the mistakes you'll catch, or ways you can improve clarity when you go back and make editing your focus after several revisions. Don't get hung up on the perfect draft, get it down on paper and start refining from there. I always recommend outlining and story arcing before you write. You need structure to your writing, and these tools help keep you in line.

I also recommend this book: On Writing Well by Zinsser. Great book for non-fiction writing. Consider it your bible. Helped me a lot, because I suffered from the same problem of sometimes not tying the major themes together well. There's lots of meat to chew on there. I've never written fiction, so I can't comment on that process.

Writing is a craft. Like any craft, some people pick it up easier than others--they have a talent for writing--but anyone of normal intelligence can become a skilled writer the same way anyone of normal intelligence and coordination can become a skilled craftsman with enough effort.

As with any other craft, getting good is at least 90% practice. So write a lot. Preferably where people can see it.

Quote:Quote:

I have always been told that if I want to be a better writer, I need to read more books. I definitely agree with this, but I am curious to see what else is out there.

Reading is worthwhile mainly (I think) because spending a lot of time immersed in good writing lets you develop a feel for what good writing is. Even if you're not a great writer already, it's obvious whether or not someone else knows what the hell they're doing. There's plenty to learn from bad writing as well, of course, it's just mostly "what not to do".

Formal instruction and how-to material can be pretty useful if coming from the right sources but the world is full of fucking terrible advice about writing. There's a lot more bad than good out there, in my experience, though most of it isn't so much outright harmful as discouraging and scary for inexperienced writers.

Quote:Quote:

I think my weakest part of writing is stringing together a coherent writing style. I jump around a lot. It seems as though my brain moves too quickly to get all the information out in a manner which is engaging for someone else to read. A main skill I'm after is to use imagery in a stronger manner, maybe analogies as well.

Perhaps you should take a more structured approach to your writing, since it sounds like you just jump right into writing.

1. Do some brainstorming: I do this out loud with a voice recorder much of the time.
2. Narrow the topic to something coherent and trim extraneous crap.
3. Outline: Useful for making sure the piece builds logically instead of jumping around.
4. Write!
5. Read and edit for clarity if necessary: Trim anything that's confusing or tangential, add anything that needs to be added to support your case, and rearrange points if necessary. I regularly move paragraphs around wholesale to improve the logical flow of a piece.

From there you can tweak your style as necessary. Getting specific feedback is useful and even minor tweaks can really improve your style.

Quote:Quote:

While I'm not reading a book a day or week, I consider myself fairly well educated and well read. However, I notice that my writing style is not nearly as captivating or persuasive as I would like it to be.

If you're interested in persuasion Scott Adams has a whole recommended list of books you might want to check out. Studying effective rhetoric is probably worth your while too, but I have no specific recommendations there. Studying storytelling techniques--both written and oral--is useful even if you're not writing fiction because they're all about hooking and keeping your reader engaged, which are fundamentals of communication on any topic.

Speaking of fundamentals of communication, here are the basic things I keep in mind when writing or speaking to a group:

1. Tailor the message to the audience. Don't talk to high schoolers like they're PhD candidates and don't talk to graduate students like they're high school freshmen. Don't assume knowledge your audience doesn't have, and don't waste time on information you can assume they do have unless it's just to quickly establish your foundation.

2. Show the audience why they should give a shit. Don't assume they already know why they should pay attention. There are endless variations on how to do this but you should be more subtle than "this is why you should care: A; B; and C" most of the time.

3. Keep your audience engaged. This is mostly about being interesting and ensuring your presentation is palatable. You don't have to be a clown or wave shiny objects but you can't bore your audience to death or present a really dense load of information in a big wad. It's equally true for writing and speaking, but obviously the media are so different it's hard to compare them in this way.

Those concepts are easy to say and understand, but complex and difficult to master in practice. The best communicators are constantly paying attention to how effective their methods are and tweaking them to improve. There's really no point at which you'll be able to say "welp, I got my Good Writer merit badge" and rest on your laurels forever after.

Finally, don't let studying the craft become an excuse for not practicing the craft. Go write. A lot. Write fiction if you don't have any good non-fiction ideas.

Quote: (02-03-2017 08:40 PM)John Michael Kane Wrote:  

If you're journaling, you might as well be posting on a blog to build your audience, plus get feedback from your readers.

Writing is a highly energy-consuming business if you want to do it well, and do it for the long-term. The way to thrive is to pick the genre you have the most knowledge with, and focus intently on becoming an expert in that field. You have to pick something that you have passion for, otherwise it will just be a grind. When writing becomes a grind, then the results are usually poor.

Writing coherently isn't easy. That being said, it is best to get it out while you think about it, and give it literally a half-dozen passes worth of editing later. Don't lose out on great ideas. Put them in outline format first, then flesh out from there. I use Evernote for that, works great. You be all the mistakes you'll catch, or ways you can improve clarity when you go back and make editing your focus after several revisions. Don't get hung up on the perfect draft, get it down on paper and start refining from there. I always recommend outlining and story arcing before you write. You need structure to your writing, and these tools help keep you in line.

I also recommend this book: On Writing Well by Zinsser. Great book for non-fiction writing. Consider it your bible. Helped me a lot, because I suffered from the same problem of sometimes not tying the major themes together well. There's lots of meat to chew on there. I've never written fiction, so I can't comment on that process.

This was more of a handwritten journaling I was doing for some mental clarity.

As for editing and moving paragraphs around. I actually did that for this post.

I'll definitely check that book out. See, you even helped me express something I was trying to get across earlier but wasn't specific about it: tying themes together. This is especially problematic for me when I try to argue or convince someone of something.

Thank you.

Quote: (02-03-2017 08:53 PM)weambulance Wrote:  

Writing is a craft. Like any craft, some people pick it up easier than others--they have a talent for writing--but anyone of normal intelligence can become a skilled writer the same way anyone of normal intelligence and coordination can become a skilled craftsman with enough effort.

As with any other craft, getting good is at least 90% practice. So write a lot. Preferably where people can see it.

Quote:Quote:

I have always been told that if I want to be a better writer, I need to read more books. I definitely agree with this, but I am curious to see what else is out there.

Reading is worthwhile mainly (I think) because spending a lot of time immersed in good writing lets you develop a feel for what good writing is. Even if you're not a great writer already, it's obvious whether or not someone else knows what the hell they're doing. There's plenty to learn from bad writing as well, of course, it's just mostly "what not to do".

Formal instruction and how-to material can be pretty useful if coming from the right sources but the world is full of fucking terrible advice about writing. There's a lot more bad than good out there, in my experience, though most of it isn't so much outright harmful as discouraging and scary for inexperienced writers.

Quote:Quote:

I think my weakest part of writing is stringing together a coherent writing style. I jump around a lot. It seems as though my brain moves too quickly to get all the information out in a manner which is engaging for someone else to read. A main skill I'm after is to use imagery in a stronger manner, maybe analogies as well.

Perhaps you should take a more structured approach to your writing, since it sounds like you just jump right into writing.

1. Do some brainstorming: I do this out loud with a voice recorder much of the time.
2. Narrow the topic to something coherent and trim extraneous crap.
3. Outline: Useful for making sure the piece builds logically instead of jumping around.
4. Write!
5. Read and edit for clarity if necessary: Trim anything that's confusing or tangential, add anything that needs to be added to support your case, and rearrange points if necessary. I regularly move paragraphs around wholesale to improve the logical flow of a piece.

From there you can tweak your style as necessary. Getting specific feedback is useful and even minor tweaks can really improve your style.

Quote:Quote:

While I'm not reading a book a day or week, I consider myself fairly well educated and well read. However, I notice that my writing style is not nearly as captivating or persuasive as I would like it to be.

If you're interested in persuasion Scott Adams has a whole recommended list of books you might want to check out. Studying effective rhetoric is probably worth your while too, but I have no specific recommendations there. Studying storytelling techniques--both written and oral--is useful even if you're not writing fiction because they're all about hooking and keeping your reader engaged, which are fundamentals of communication on any topic.

Speaking of fundamentals of communication, here are the basic things I keep in mind when writing or speaking to a group:

1. Tailor the message to the audience. Don't talk to high schoolers like they're PhD candidates and don't talk to graduate students like they're high school freshmen. Don't assume knowledge your audience doesn't have, and don't waste time on information you can assume they do have unless it's just to quickly establish your foundation.

2. Show the audience why they should give a shit. Don't assume they already know why they should pay attention. There are endless variations on how to do this but you should be more subtle than "this is why you should care: A; B; and C" most of the time.

3. Keep your audience engaged. This is mostly about being interesting and ensuring your presentation is palatable. You don't have to be a clown or wave shiny objects but you can't bore your audience to death or present a really dense load of information in a big wad. It's equally true for writing and speaking, but obviously the media are so different it's hard to compare them in this way.

Those concepts are easy to say and understand, but complex and difficult to master in practice. The best communicators are constantly paying attention to how effective their methods are and tweaking them to improve. There's really no point at which you'll be able to say "welp, I got my Good Writer merit badge" and rest on your laurels forever after.

Finally, don't let studying the craft become an excuse for not practicing the craft. Go write. A lot. Write fiction if you don't have any good non-fiction ideas.

All excellent tips. I actually do read Scott Adam's blog and picked up the Cialdini book as well.

Something just popped into my head because of these responses and a PM I got. I believe I don't immerse myself in the reading and really let it sink in. Writing and oral story telling is indeed not just logic but emotion - if I'm only extracting the logic and information from writing, I think my brain might be bypassing what makes it a thought provocative or persuasive piece of literature.

Thanks for the advice.

I've had some short stories published by reputable literary journals. My best advice:

I'm not sure if you've got the money to burn, but there are decent websites where you can take online courses taught be legit authors. Check out litreactor.com and catapult.co. Also online workshopping can be worthwhile. Hiring a professional editor can be worthwhile, and not as expensive as you'd think (sometimes around $30-50 for a short story or essay).

Short of spending money, I'd say first you should make your reading list more focused. What authors really resonate with you? Whose work inspires you? Makes you want to read more, write more? Pick around five-to-ten of your favorite books and keep them in a stack on your desk. Go through them and highlight your favorite passages. Then type out those passages, word for word. Hunter S. Thompson used to type out The Great Gatsby, line by line, over and over, so he could develop a feel for the writing. There is a music to it, and you need to practice the notes.

I've got a wallpaper app on my laptop that cycles through picture files you load in the wallpaper file. So, I type out my favorite passages of writing, then screenshot them into the wallpaper file. So, I've always got a nice paragraph to look at on my desktop. Looks like this:

Quote: (02-03-2017 08:05 PM)fiasco360 Wrote:  

What resources would be recommended to start my journey on becoming a better writer?

Every morning, get up an hour before you have to. As you take your morning shit, read a book by your favorite writer. I recommend Charles Bukowski.

Then sit down, every day, and just make your fingers move on the keyboard. Just write the first shit that comes into your head. Don’t worry about structure or getting jokes in there or expressing any particular idea. Write this material with the idea that NO ONE is EVER going to read it. You will have a voice in your head chiming in constantly saying OMIGOD THIS FUCKING SUCKS! YOU HAVE NO TALENT! IF ANYONE EVER SAW THIS IT’D BE LIKE EVERY GIRL IN JUNIOR HIGH SEEING YOUR NAKED DICK AFTER YOU WERE SWIMMING IN ICE WATER! You will need to get past this voice. It takes about a year.

Talk about EVERYTHING. The shit you took, what you jerked off to, the millimeter of bumpy brown nipple you saw in the cashier girl’s blouse when she bent over to bag your eighty five per cent lean ground beef, how that was the highlight of your day. Everything. Your job, your mother, your porn, your stupid Xbox games. Whatever is on your mind naturally. Force nothing.

If you are being honest, you will find yourself confessing a lot of stuff. Writing a lot of horribly self-deprecating things. At first it may compound your self-hatred and make you more miserable, dwelling on shit so much. Doesn’t matter. This is the gold, but you don’t know it at first.

The trick is: shit that is painful while you’re writing it is fucking hilarious a few days later. I can’t believe I was that hung up on my job, my mother, my porn, my stupid Xbox games. I can’t believe seeing half the fucking bag girl’s tit was the best part of my fucking day. Shit that you thought was a confession you would take to the grave suddenly doesn’t seem so bad, and in fact would make a fucking funny blog entry. The more it hurts when it’s happening the funnier it is later.

Eventually you get used to this, and writing becomes a therapeutic tool to get you over shit. Things don’t feel real until you write them down. Then they don’t feel real until you share them with your audience. You will have a sense of control over the world. If something shitty happens, part of you is thinking: fuck yeah, material. Some Steven Seagal shit, turning your pain’s momentum against it.

You will worry that your words aren’t any good. They will get better, and come to you easier. You will worry that no one gives a shit about your banal life. Well, most people lead banal lives, and reading someone’s similar story makes them feel less alone in the world. Plus the fucking bugs eating chicken bones in my trash can are engaged in epic life and death struggles to eat, fuck, and live another day. Stories are everywhere and nothing is too small. Just stay honest. Say exactly what you think and to hell with what anybody else thinks.

Also, I find it helps when you say “fuck” a lot.

(From here)

Quote: (02-03-2017 10:11 PM)R_Niko Wrote:  

....I've got a wallpaper app on my laptop that cycles through picture files you load in the wallpaper file. So, I type out my favorite passages of writing, then screenshot them into the wallpaper file. So, I've always got a nice paragraph to look at on my desktop. Looks like this:

I have no idea what work that quote comes from, but it's effective: it made me curious as to what was happening and want to know more.




As for advice to the OP:

• keep a journal with you at all times - paper and longhand with a pen, not digital, because longhand forces you to compose in your head rather than through your eyes, and requires a little discipline and forethought as it isn't as easy to correct;
• in that journal, write down ideas that come to you, clever turns of phrase, observations on people and surroundings, etc.; apart from the obvious (not forgetting these things immediately), it trains you to observe your surroundings and company and to write with brevity;
• pay attention to structure, always; what helped me jumpstart my awareness of structure was having to write hundreds of five-paragraph essays in college; if you do keep a journal-journal or a blog, or just writing shitposts on FB, you may benefit from forcing yourself to use this format;
• on that topic, if you're writing fiction, Syd Field's "Screenplay" is a good way to learn basic fiction structure (primarily the three-act form);
• even in non-fiction, remember to tell a story; I've been doing a lot of technical writing lately, and have discovered that this is a huge failing in how many people write proposals...which are meant to persuade;
• read books from a century ago, fiction and nonfiction; the rules of grammar were more strictly observed, even non-literary writers were far more literate, and vocabularies were richer;
• practice brevity; minimize modifiers; avoid writing as if you're assembling sentences from the shorthand phrases and verbal legos of everyday speech;
• read your finished, polished, perfected work aloud to see how godawful it really is and where the godawfulness comes from, then fix it.
  

ETA: practice good formatting, too, so you don't have to repeatedly edit your posts for legibility.

I have a question related to writing. How much qualifying phrases should you use when writing something informational or instructional?

I have a bad habit of writing sentences like:
"I think it is usually best to X in situation Y".

The raw advice is "Do X." But I don't feel comfortable writing that without reminding people it's my opinion, and that it's not always going to hold for every given situation.

It just looks mealy-mouthed though. Should I just preface the whole book with "this is one man's advice, and all advice is typical instead of universal", and then write directly thereafter? Has anyone got examples of good direct writing?

Cheers

Quote: (02-04-2017 01:02 AM)Phoenix Wrote:  

I have a question related to writing. How much qualifying phrases should you use when writing something informational or instructional?

I have a bad habit of writing sentences like:
"I think it is usually best to X in situation Y".

The raw advice is "Do X." But I don't feel comfortable writing that without reminding people it's my opinion, and that it's not always going to hold for every given situation.

It just looks mealy-mouthed though. Should I just preface the whole book with "this is one man's advice, and all advice is typical instead of universal", and then write directly thereafter? Has anyone got examples of good direct writing?

Cheers

Drop the "I think" and similar softening phrases, because that's really what makes it sound weaker. "Generally, you should...", "With rare exceptions, if A then B", etc are much stronger while still acknowledging that a rule or guideline isn't universally applicable.

Whether you should discuss exceptions at all is another question and that depends on, for lack of a better term, what "level" your writing is meant to be. Is it an overview or meant to be comprehensive? How many exceptions are there, how common are they, and how important are they? How likely is your reader to even be able to reliably determine the difference between the general situation and the exception?

Suppose I'm writing a guide on choosing a pistol and ammo for self defense. My experience and research suggests there's little difference between 9mm, 38 Special, 40 S&W, and 45 ACP in terms of wounding potential when using premium hollowpoints. That's because as long as the hollowpoint expands, they all perform similarly. Thus, as long as a pistol is chambered in a proper service cartridge and good ammo is used, it doesn't matter which you choose. Pick the one that's most reliable in whatever gun you like best.

However, there is a key exception: in winter, in cold environments, hollowpoints may plug up with heavy clothing and fail to open. If that happens, you're a lot better off with a 45 ACP than a 9mm because it leaves a much larger wound channel. Or you need to use some kind of non-HP expanding ammo, like Federal EFMJ or Cor-bon Powr'ball.

I can throw that significant (and lone) exception in without having to get into a long discussion, and it is important. It's a simple situation to recognize as well. Cold weather and thick coats on people? Carry a larger caliber pistol if you have one, or buy the expensive-as-fuck fancy non-HP defensive ammo if you don't. Easy.

On the other hand, if I'm writing an instructional text for new EMTs, I'm not even going to mention all the various possible ailments their patients might have that will produce the same or very similar symptoms as the common stuff they're going to see 95%+ of the time. It's outside the scope of the text, it's probably just going to confuse them with too much information, and it's not their job to play doctor. EMTs are supposed to follow a script. If you observe A, B, and C, you do X, Y, and Z. Period.

A good way of thinking about the "level" of writing is by considering how science is taught. The chemistry department was very guilty of this method when I was in college. It went like this:

1st semester: Here's a basic conceptual model most people can easily understand that works for the task at hand.

2nd semester: Yeah, we lied a bit. That model is actually completely wrong, it was discredited before you were born, and things are really more like this second model. Use this one for now, because it's better suited to the more-complex stuff we're doing this semester.

3rd semester: Okay guys, we lied again. That model worked okay for last semester but it left some important stuff out. You really need to know ________ to understand the concepts we're working on this year.

And so on. It was the same in geology and physics. And it was perfectly fine because the coarser models and simpler concepts did work well enough for simple work. Why use a really fine-grained, complex, realistic model when you don't need to? It just slows everything down. In the real world where time is money, scientists and engineers aren't trying to use perfect models. They use the fast one that's just good enough to yield the information they need for the task at hand.

Writing is the same way. Write to your intended audience. Don't overload people with too much information and too many possibilities if they don't have the background knowledge already. If they need to know all the details, they're going to have to learn the basics alone first, and work up through various levels of knowledge. Nobody can absorb all the complexities of a topic at once and it just muddies the water if you try to show them all the little problems with the general rules up front.

To get back to the original question about softening phrases... If you don't want to speak as an authority about a particular point but draw solely on your own experience or point of view, that's when qualifiers like "In my experience" or "In my opinion" work well. That sort of thing should only be a small part of any informative/instructional writing--after all, if you're not at least somewhat an authority on the topic, should you be instructing or informing people?--and then only if you're taking a conversational tone. However, if you have experience you know most people don't have, pointing that experience out strengthens your statement instead of softening it.

"I think" and its variations should be reserved for clear speculation; they're not to be used while presenting information. "I feel" just sounds weak all the time in my opinion. "I feel" is wishy washy and should only be used when you're honestly not sure about something and want to make your uncertainty plain. Neither fits well with most informative/instructional unless it's very informal, like on Instructables or a blog or similar.

Quote: (02-04-2017 12:14 AM)Alsos Wrote:  

As for advice to the OP:

• keep a journal with you at all times - paper and longhand with a pen, not digital, because longhand forces you to compose in your head rather than through your eyes, and requires a little discipline and forethought as it isn't as easy to correct;
• in that journal, write down ideas that come to you, clever turns of phrase, observations on people and surroundings, etc.; apart from the obvious (not forgetting these things immediately), it trains you to observe your surroundings and company and to write with brevity;
• pay attention to structure, always; what helped me jumpstart my awareness of structure was having to write hundreds of five-paragraph essays in college; if you do keep a journal-journal or a blog, or just writing shitposts on FB, you may benefit from forcing yourself to use this format;
• on that topic, if you're writing fiction, Syd Field's "Screenplay" is a good way to learn basic fiction structure (primarily the three-act form);
• even in non-fiction, remember to tell a story; I've been doing a lot of technical writing lately, and have discovered that this is a huge failing in how many people write proposals...which are meant to persuade;
• read books from a century ago, fiction and nonfiction; the rules of grammar were more strictly observed, even non-literary writers were far more literate, and vocabularies were richer;
• practice brevity; minimize modifiers; avoid writing as if you're assembling sentences from the shorthand phrases and verbal legos of everyday speech;
• read your finished, polished, perfected work aloud to see how godawful it really is and where the godawfulness comes from, then fix it.
  

ETA: practice good formatting, too, so you don't have to repeatedly edit your posts for legibility.

This is good advice but I do have a minor quibble. Many popular writing books, like the one mentioned, are specifically tailored to writing screenplays (as the title suggests). But screenplays require many rigid rules that have little place in general fiction writing.

Television and film are pretty restrictive formats. There are strict time limits to worry about and conventions to follow. Non-screenplays don't have to worry about that so much. So, while many important elements of storytelling and structure are covered in screenplay books, a lot of the "rules" should really be taken with a big grain of salt.

The really essential rules of fiction and storytelling can be covered in no more than 25 pages of a normal book. It's frankly 9th grade English level stuff, and it does not require a whole book to explain. The rest, you learn by writing a ton and letting people read it and by reading a ton of the sort of stuff you're trying to write.

...And by reading or listening to what successful authors have to say. Half the people hawking "How to write" books are failed fiction and screenplay writers. Robert McKee, for example, is hailed as some genius, and he charges a fuckload of money for seminars... when no screenplay he wrote was actually produced. That's not to say failed writers have no good knowledge to pass on, but I'm skeptical of people who claim to be gurus who can't themselves apply what they teach. It smacks of selling treasure maps to gullible tourists.

Recommended resources:

http://monsterhunternation.com/best-of-mhn/ (The "Writing Related" section)
















Not sure how that last one will display since I'm linking a playlist, but it's a five part series.

Quote: (02-04-2017 12:14 AM)Alsos Wrote:  

Quote: (02-03-2017 10:11 PM)R_Niko Wrote:  

....I've got a wallpaper app on my laptop that cycles through picture files you load in the wallpaper file. So, I type out my favorite passages of writing, then screenshot them into the wallpaper file. So, I've always got a nice paragraph to look at on my desktop. Looks like this:

I have no idea what work that quote comes from, but it's effective: it made me curious as to what was happening and want to know more.

It's from Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. It's considered one of the best short story collections of the past generation. I find it a bit overrated but it does have its moments. You can check out one of its best stories in full here.

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Never has so much profound advice been packed into so few pages for such a low price.

Also, embrace this gem from writing expert Brian Garner: "Writers are people for whom writing is *more* difficult than for others."

Basically, we know too much. And care too much.

"Writers are people for whom writing is more difficult than for others" is faux deep nonsense.

If you allow knowledge of English to cripple your ability to write, you're simply not a fully developed writer.

There's something to be said for not knowing you "shouldn't" do something, but you're a lot better off knowing the rules and also knowing when to tell the rules to fuck off. Which, as it turns out, is quite often. Most writing rules are no more than weak guidelines that do more harm than good when your work is not being graded by rubric.

the key is to figure out the kind of writing, and learn the rules for it, because there are different kinds of writing and nonfiction writing is very different from copyrighting which is very different from fiction.

in nonfiction, you want to avoid the passive voice (the verb to be). Put your subject at the beginning of the sentence. Start your paragraphs with your conclusion.

Weambulance, not only are "faux" and "nonsense" redundant, your argument fails to persuade.

If you don't regularly return to things you published some time ago and think "I could have written that better", you're not at the level I'm discussing, and are merely either parroting another or ejaculating your own nonsense into the thread.

A master artist or craftsman of any kind cringes upon inspecting his earlier works. It was Hemingway, I think, who in his later years opined regretfully that no one under 50 should write a book. It was definitely he who stated, "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket."

WRITING has always been easy for me. Writing at a level that satisfies ME is difficult. It's a lifelong pursuit for those serious about it. Perhaps these anecdotes illuminate my previous assertion.

Hypno, I think you meant to say "The passive voice is something that should always be avoided by you."

>;-)

Quote: (02-08-2017 03:04 PM)Hoser Wrote:  

Weambulance, not only are "faux" and "nonsense" redundant, your argument fails to persuade.

If you don't regularly return to things you published some time ago and think "I could have written that better", you're not at the level I'm discussing, and are merely either parroting another or ejaculating your own nonsense into the thread.

A master artist or craftsman of any kind cringes upon inspecting his earlier works. It was Hemingway, I think, who in his later years opined regretfully that no one under 50 should write a book. It was definitely he who stated, "I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket."

WRITING has always been easy for me. Writing at a level that satisfies ME is difficult. It's a lifelong pursuit for those serious about it. Perhaps these anecdotes illuminate my previous assertion.

You certainly have a high opinion of yourself. Pretentious twaddle of the sort you push does quite a lot of harm to budding writers, but keep up the good work, I guess.

I'd never heard that particular bit of "wisdom" from Hemingway, but if that's truly what he said, against all odds my opinion of the man just dropped even more.

Bullshit. Hemingway's and Garner's kind of thinking inspires would-be writers to consider (1) how huge is the amount of skill they can acquire if they put in the effort, and (2) if they are dissatisfied with their work, they're in good company.

Some of us won't embrace mediocrity. OP implied that he's such a one. I answered him accordingly.

Your "just get out there and break some rules" argument has merit. Shooting down my "never surrender" argument has none.

I've written extensively about writing on this forum in half a dozen threads. Perhaps you should actually read what I wrote before trying to shove words in my mouth.

The idea that writing is harder for writers than other people is obvious bullshit. Anyone who practices a skill gets better at it unless they have some sort of mental disorder. When I called it bullshit, you tacked on a bunch of extraneous points that were not originally made. And all that craftsman shit you talked about? I already talked about it in my first post in this thread. Guess you couldn't be bothered to read it.

Then you brought up the incredibly overrated Hemingway, whom you said wanted people put off publishing until after fifty, as if that's at all a good idea. That's absolutely retarded and antithetical to developing real skill. Do writers get executed if they don't produce masterworks? No, of course not. It's not a big deal to produce mediocre work if it's on the way to brilliance. Use a pen name if you're that worried about it. Or are you under the impression that not getting feedback from readers is somehow a good thing?

I know exactly what kind of writer you are, and it's the kind nobody else should listen to. You're so obsessed with the language that the story is an afterthought. A clear bit of evidence is your anklebiting attempt to nitpick my phrase "faux deep nonsense" as redundant. It isn't redundant at all. Something can be nonsense without being faux deep. Something can be faux deep without being nonsense. Nice try, though, and even if I did make a minor grammatical mistake it would have nothing to do with my actual point. It's just a petty non-argument.

If you believe the shit you apparently believe, you're nothing but a grammarian with a typewriter.

Meanwhile, I'm a pulp writer so feel free to ignore everything I say and keep on keeping on with your high brow literature. Whether I'm writing fiction or non-, I care about the story or the message first. The actual language I use comes second and is dependent on both the story and the audience. Guess which of us is likely to reach more readers?

Quote: (02-08-2017 03:07 PM)Hoser Wrote:  

Hypno, I think you meant to say "The passive voice is something that should always be avoided by you."

>;-)

ugh.

What people usually write is "The passive voice is something that should be avoided." One should avoid this in nonfiction because its very imprecise. The subject is usually hidden. You added it at the end, but you had to force it in there.

If you write nonfiction, in Word spell check there is a way to search for passive verbs.

There is also a feature in Word to get the writing level of your writing. What it does is it counts the number of words and sylables in your writing. You don't want to write on a high school level. Rather, write in shorter sentences with shorter words. This makes your writing more clear. Word refers to these as the Flesch test and the Flesch-Kincaid test.

https://support.office.com/en-us/article...fc3c8b3fd2

Writing persuasively is.

Read books on copywriting and hypnotic selling.

Write at least two blog posts a week. Use visuals and metaphors. Keep your action direct.