Some thoughts on writing

by janvdberg • 5 years ago

150 60 5 years ago

benhoyt4• 5 years ago

I kind of understand why HN strips the "How" prefix off titles, but I think this one needs it: "How I think about writing" is very different from "I think about writing".

SLWW• 5 years ago

I can't see it. There are so many "How ..." statements that it doesn't make sense.

ibraheemdev• 5 years ago

I believe if you resubmit with "How" re-added, it keeps it.

benhoyt4• 5 years ago

Yeah, I believe so -- the OP would need to do this, though (and it's probably outside of the edit window now).

dang2• 5 years ago

I'm not sure they're so different, and in any case (unless the article was changed, which is possible) it's not what the article actually says.

I've updated the title now.

da39a3ee2• 5 years ago

If this article is giving writing advice I find that somewhat ironic, since it does nothing whatsoever in the early sentences to make me want to read it or indeed have the faintest idea what its subject or aims are.

spekcular3• 5 years ago

Also: This website desperately needs to limit the number of characters per line instead of just going to the side of the screen and wrapping. It's an abomination on a widescreen monitor.

benhoyt4• 5 years ago

I agree that it'd be easier to read with wrapping, though "abomination" is rather too strong. You can just click "reader mode" in your browser, or size the window down to something readable.

foxbarrington• 5 years ago

Agreed. I love many of the articles, but I always have to use Firefox's reader view.

lmm2• 5 years ago

No it doesn't. I like having my text be wide thank you very much. If you want it to be narrow, can't you just make your browser narrow?

mountaineer• 5 years ago

For some context, the likely reason that this is on the front page is that most of his essays, which are many, do very well on HN[1]. If you consider that body of work, this may be a more interesting insight into writing to explore.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=danluu.com

mattowen_uk• 5 years ago

My other comment here is flagged. Really?!

If you don't agree with what I say, be polite and state why. If that's still to much of a bother, vote me down and move on... But flagging?! c'mon.

benhoyt4• 5 years ago

That's odd: personally, I was drawn in. And the first two paragraphs convey its subject and aims pretty explicitly, don't they?

da39a3ee2• 5 years ago

Seems like several others here felt the same way as me, and this isn't a long comment thread:

This might be the most boring thing ever written about writing.
The problem is (imo) that he's writing for himself and not an audience. It reads like a stream-of-consciousness journal entry, not a thoughtful attempt at relaying information to another mind. A good start would be learning to self-edit; the length could be cut significantly with no real loss of content.
There isn't much more to this article than an author clarifying for himself how he thinks about things. He succeeds at that, sure, and is better off for it, but it's dreary for the rest of us!

Swizec• 5 years ago

The best way to learn about writing is to:

1. Read a copy of On Writing by Stephen King

2. Write a lot

3. No, more than that

And always get feedback from your target audience. Publish, share, see what happens, adapt.

sweuder• 5 years ago

On Writing I found to be very specialized for the fiction writer (not surprisingly given King's body of work). Not incredibly relevant to the non-fiction blogger IMO.

Still a good book overall though, don't get my wrong.

twobitshifter• 5 years ago

I haven’t read the King book, but On Writing Well by Zinser is generally recommended for a non fiction audience, and I find it really helpful. It’s short enough that it can be reread and it puts me in the right headspace for technical writing.

petecooper• 5 years ago

For anyone (like me) looking: On Writing Well by William Zinsser.

jean_valje4n• 5 years ago

4. Read a lot.

I've found reading lots, especially from revered authors from all nationalities, Steinbeck and Doestovsky I hold in great esteem, has had a great impact on my writing style.

I suppose we all try to emulate those we hold in esteem, and I think reading a lot from authors we like, can have a great influence in our ability to convey meaning through words.

pkrumins• 5 years ago

Dan Luu's blog is great and we all love it BUT CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TEACH THIS MAN CSS?

chamakits• 5 years ago

I completely understand this reaction, as I also feel... weird at first whenever I see his site. Specifically I always feel I'd like to have space on the sides.

Having said that.... I frequently read his posts, and don't find his lack of space on the sides (or any other lack of style) prevents me from reading his blog posts.

Is there any specific reason why we feel this 'weirdness' from the lack of style beyond a built in expectation we all have about styling that we've seen in other sites?

Archelaos• 5 years ago

Use Firefox in reading mode [F9] and everything is fine. No CSS necessary.

Shared404• 5 years ago

Honestly, I find this a lot easier to read then most websites.

The mf'ing website, though crude, makes some good points. I personally would far prefer if more sites looked like this.

Also, before someone comments. Yes I'm allowed to cuss on the internet. No I don't care if you cuss. Yes I'm allowed to not cuss on the internet.

halostatue• 5 years ago

https://danluu.com/look-stupid/

- The styling and content on this website: I regularly get design folks and typographers telling me how stupid the design is, frequently in ways that become condescending very quickly if I engage with them

- - But, when I tested out switching to the current design from the generally highly lauded Octopress design, this one got much better engagement when a user landed on the site and also appeared to get passed around a lot more as well

- - When I've compared my traffic numbers to major coprorate blogs, my blog completely dominates most < $100B companies (e.g., it gets an order of magnitude more traffic than my employer's blog and my employer is a $50B company)

- - When I started my blog (and this is still true today), writing advice for programming blogs was to keep it short, maybe 500 to 1000 words. Most of my blog posts are 5000 to 10000 words.

What I’ve done with all of his posts is used reader mode in Safari.

bee_rider• 5 years ago

Huh, I like his page just fine in normal view, but reader view works really well there.

I'm glad he uses minimal styling. Designs which look bad in normal view are usually fixed by reader view. Designs which look bad in reader view are probably completely unsalvagable.

coldtea• 5 years ago

Nah, we just need to get you to learn to adjust your browser window size and/or font size.

johnisgood2• 5 years ago

Wait... why? What is wrong with content without bullshit? It is black on white text, and just that. I see no problem with it. I would rather have this than one giant word per line in the middle (absurd spacing and absurd font sizes are trendy nowadays).

fastball• 5 years ago

My main issue is that text that goes across the entire screen is less readable. It's much easier to lose your place in the text like this.

dang2• 5 years ago

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

clavicat• 5 years ago

This might be the most boring thing ever written about writing. The English language is a linguistic miracle, a beautiful acrobatic freakshow--and this is what you do with it? If I wanted more of this prose, I would just read Wikipedia. There's no daring, irony, or personality in it. Like the website itself, it's austere to the point of sterility.

The "improve writing" goal is because I found my writing annoyingly awkward and wanted to fix that. I frequently wrote sentences or paragraphs that seemed clunky to me, like when you misspell a word and it looks wrong no matter how you try re-spelling it.

That's because your writing is so pedantically subdued that it doesn't resemble the ways that humans actually communicate.

spekcular3• 5 years ago

The problem is (imo) that he's writing for himself and not an audience. It reads like a stream-of-consciousness journal entry, not a thoughtful attempt at relaying information to another mind. A good start would be learning to self-edit; the length could be cut significantly with no real loss of content.

What's particularly aggravating is that he knows, more or less, what clear, concise writing is (cf. his discussion of "classic style") and goes out of his way to not write like that. Yes, I read his justification. No, it's not good.

Someone is going to chime in by saying that I must be wrong because his articles frequently reach the HN frontpage. But correlation is not causation. The actual information content is generally really good – that's why they're popular. But they'd be even better with more attention to the mechanics of writing.

paulpauper3• 5 years ago

Concise writing does not go viral like long writing does. I have observed that longer articles have more success even if few people read them in their entirety. Slate Star Codex articles are often long and go viral.

olau2• 5 years ago

Concise writing sometimes cut away important information that cannot be conveyed in a concise manner.

It's like a sonata where we have a favourite part. Why don't we just play that part?

This is not an argument against editing or improving the information density.

phuff• 5 years ago

Having read some of Dan Luu's other prose I think this is a bit unfair. The sort of meta analysis of writing always comes off a bit navel gazy I suppose, but I don't think you have put his post in context with some of the other things he's written. In those entries of his blog I always find the prose flows quite nicely.

jldugger• 5 years ago

Perhaps submitters need to consider that not every single post of dan's merits an HN post? or the voters or what ever else drives the front page algorithm

bachmeier• 5 years ago

Or perhaps others disagree with that view? It's not complicated - some people liked the content enough to upvote it.

paulpauper3• 5 years ago

That is partly why it was a success. Good writing does not need to be exciting or catchy. Journalists are always trying to set up the reader's expectations with charged language and then the article fails to meet those expectations.

AlexCoventry• 5 years ago

I don't go there for the writing style, I go there for the stories and the interesting perspectives on things I care about.

uwagar• 5 years ago

its actually typing, not writing anymore.

paulpauper3• 5 years ago

I have tried every tip/advice under the sun and cannot say any of them have worked. Writing is subjective. What works for one author will not work for another. I think the audience and name recognition matters more than specific tips or strategies..

ketzo• 5 years ago

This is essentially the entire point of the linked post.

hardwaregeek• 5 years ago

It's interesting, I wouldn't have described Dan's writing vs Paul Graham's writing in that manner. Dan tends to be rather affect-less, with a very neutral, almost scientific tone. I agree that PG is more authoritative but there's also this contrarian, almost Pauline Kael-esque quality to his writing. Phrases like "Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery." aren't just authoritative, they're provocative and almost purposefully insulting.

I'm a little surprised that Dan wrote this otherwise very nice post on writing and didn't mention the counterbalance to writing: reading. If you want to write, read a lot. My writing owes a lot to writers such as James Baldwin, Robert Caro, Calvin Trillin, etc. Specifically, read published works. I love reading a blog post as much as anyone else but there is a marked difference in quality between a blog post and a book or a high quality newspaper article.

One could argue that reading leads to aping but I disagree that aping is necessarily bad. Experts do not always have good ideas on how to teach because they understand the deep, universal theory and therefore think that everybody should learn from the deep, universal theory. In truth, beginners can't and won't learn deep theory. You have to start with imitating your tennis instructor's serve and then move onto the underlying concept of how a serve works. Complaining that beginners don't know the underlying theory and are just imitating is essentially complaining that beginners are beginners. Plus mimicry is a good way to learn. When I fenced, I remember that some fencers would mimic famous fencers as a joke. But it really did help them find their own style by letting them play with the different styles and think outside their own conventions.

Thus my advice: read a lot of books; imitate as much as you like; and write a lot.

hellbannedguy• 5 years ago

"Thus my advice: read a lot of books; imitate as much as you like; and write a lot."

Live life too. Experience how the others live. Always write from the heart.

In all honestly, I don't feel wealthy men can write well. Strike that last sentance. They can churn out sentences, but they are not interesting.

We suffer through their writing becacuse they are wealthy.

We feel they must have something inciteful to say because we equate wealth with talent.

I think every wealthy writer knows their best work was done when they were comming up, and almost always when they were poor, and struggling.

I can honestly say the only perk of being poor is you will be a good writer of you take the time to write something, or better than the wealthy man on his best day.

(I don't feel like a debate. It's just my opinion. And I'm sure you will find good writers that are financially well off, but they wern't always wealthy.)

ainiriand2• 5 years ago

They probably should get some advice on styling though. This site is hard to read in a wide screen and I have to resize the viewport. Not extremely problematic but definitely something to consider when having these 'ultra bare-bones' sites with no clear style.

olau2• 5 years ago

Dan, if you're reading this - you could try something like

body { margin: 0 auto; max-width: 50em; }

Although I must confess that I'm personally enjoying the quirky long lines in your writing.

331c8c71• 5 years ago

Looks perfect on mobile though (to me).

Ma8ee2• 5 years ago

The advantage is that I can easily choose how long lines I want, while the window doesn't take up any unnecessary real estate.

ainiriand2• 5 years ago

How do you do that? Resizing the window?

If I have to resize the window then it will resize other tabs. If I need to put this in a different tab then it is kind of a hassle for a site that does not look that welcoming to me.

Probably there are some middle ground here.

crackercrews• 5 years ago

Do people who write immerse themselves in other authors' work immediately prior to writing? I've thought this would be a good way to get in a rhythm. I've also wondered if writers have lists of nifty words or phrases that they want to use. Or do these words just occur to them midstream?

theguppydream• 5 years ago

The story goes that Hunter S Thompson typed out the Great Gatsby to get the flow of the writing. Quite a different approach to his infamous daily routine.

dhosek• 5 years ago

It varies. I have some writer friends (successful as in multiple books of fiction published, creative writing university teaching gigs, etc.) who don't read at all while they're writing others who do the opposite. I, personally, am always writing something and always reading something. I do need to be careful at times because there are writers with really strong voices who can overpower mine if I'm not conscientious (Kurt Vonnegut and J. D. Salinger have had that effect in the past).

I do keep lists of words and phrases, largely things that it occurs to me that this is the way to describe something I've been having trouble describing, but most of the time I'll keep working at a sentence until it says what I want the way I want it to.

But reading is absolutely essential, and reading to really understand the mechanics of how something works. Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer is a good introduction to how to do this.

fullstackchris• 5 years ago

All this analysis and commentary and he can't see the forest from the trees. He breaks one of the most important rules in writing: when using an uncommon acronym, in this case "RC", one should _always_ provide the full name for it first before using the acronym, i.e. in this case writing "Recourse (RC)", then one can continue to use the acronym. I shouldn't have to click RC to figure out what it is. Infuriating.

gnubison• 5 years ago

Is this really your only takeaway? I agree, defining the acronym would be nice, but certainly it’s not infuriating.

LordAtlas• 5 years ago

I would have tried to read this but the 1994 styling of the page made it impossible. Long lines on my laptop, no margins, tiny font size. All of which can be fixed with a few lines of CSS.

throwaway3b03• 5 years ago

Resize the window to obtain shorter lines, you can adjust text size from within the browser (ctrl & '+'), or edit the css yourself with the developer tools.

I personally find the presentation clean and simple. Perfect for focusing on the content. Much better than most of the css&js loaded sites out there that restrict you a lot more.

Some thoughts on writing

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