Writing, Briefly (2005)

http://www.paulgraham.com/writing44.html

by lihaciudaniel • 6 years ago

41 23 6 years ago

ivan_ah• 6 years ago

+1 about the need for rewriting. There's a really good quote about that:

    “There is no such thing as good writing,
     only good rewriting.”
                                — Robert Graves

Unfortunately most of the writing we tend to do in the day-to-day is throwaway one-off stuff like emails, which are not worth polishing that much. As soon as you have a 1+ audience though, and especially for marketing and webcopy, investing the time to cleanup the message becomes super worth it.

chrisseldo• 6 years ago

A great book that helped me was "On Writing" by Stephen King.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft...

lemonberry2• 6 years ago

One of my philosophy professors told me once, "Remember: you can't edit nothing, but you can edit shit". Advice that's valuable beyond writing.

dlo2• 6 years ago

This is an excellent quote. I'd like to attribute it properly -- would you mind naming this professor?

lemonberry2• 6 years ago

Out of respect for his privacy I'll reach out to him and ask.

pedalpete• 6 years ago

I have a friend who is an excellent software engineer, and he has a very similar philosophy to his coding. Get something down and then fix it and improve it.

He also says something along the lines of "if you look back on something you wrote a year later, and you don't feel compelled to change it, you haven't learned/thought/grown enough".

throwanem4• 6 years ago

Among the rules for good writing should also be, don't use four thousand semicolons to weld your entire essay into a heaving sea of words which offers the reader not even the life ring of a majuscule here and there.

saagarjha• 6 years ago

I'm not sure I can agree; semicolons can come in handy occasionally.

throwanem4• 6 years ago

Oh, sure! Occasionally. In moderation and with care. Not, in other words, the way they're used in the linked farrago.

0_gravitas• 6 years ago

The semicolons did not hinder my reading experience, they just changed the voice and pace of it. I certainly prefer an overabundance of semicolons to an overabundance of commas, and more still to an overabundance of full-stops that makes me feel like I'm reading some soulless middle-school essay.

HOWEVER I also strongly maintain that if something can be best expressed in a bullet list, do that. I feel that would have made reading this essay easier.

dang• 6 years ago

A thread from 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=188385.

carapace2• 6 years ago

(Re)read Strunk & White every few years.

zimpenfish• 6 years ago

Although perhaps bear in mind that professional linguists and grammarians consider S&W to be garbage advice.

e.g. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15509

Strunk's dreadful little book of drivel.
Virtually nothing useful about English grammar can be learned from Strunk.
the grammatical claims Strunk makes are foolish assertions

You can find many more examples with a quick search.

carapace2• 6 years ago

I'd find it more convincing if the writing there was better.

I don't say that S&W is or should be the end-all-be-all of English; by all means, pick and choose.

jasonshen• 6 years ago

The tips in bullet form:

- Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can

- rewrite it over and over

- cut out everything unnecessary

- write in a conversational tone

- develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours

- imitate writers you like

- if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said

- expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong

- be confident enough to cut

- have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag

- don't (always) make detailed outlines

- mull ideas over for a few days before writing

- carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you

- start writing when you think of the first sentence

- if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important sentence first

- write about stuff you like

- don't try to sound impressive

- don't hesitate to change the topic on the fly

- use footnotes to contain digressions

- use anaphora to knit sentences together

- read your essays out loud to see (a) where you stumble over awkward phrases and (b) which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading)

- try to tell the reader something new and useful

- work in fairly big quanta of time

- when you restart, begin by rereading what you have so far

- when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with

- accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file

- don't feel obliged to cover any of them

- write for a reader who won't read the essay as carefully as you do, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios

- if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately

- ask friends which sentence you'll regret most

- go back and tone down harsh remarks

- publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas

- print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen

- use simple, germanic words

- learn to distinguish surprises from digressions

- learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.

gurkendoktor• 6 years ago

I think a numbered list works even better for rules. The German translation of this article looks so much more satisfying to me.

Writing, Briefly (2005)

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