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Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#71

Post by zedshaw »

aprescott wrote: post #65
zedshaw wrote: post #63

Try this out: 1. Get the book "Adios Strunk And White". Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice, and tries to make English a proscriptive language rather than dynamic like it is. The Adios book basically breaks you out of the S&W mode of thinking and gets you thinking about different forms a…

3. Blog something every day. Doesn't matter what it is but spend at least 30 minutes writing about something. Do you suggest it be a publicly readable "something" that gets blogged, or does it not matter if it's only for yourself, in your view?

I think blogging publicly will get you over the fear of being judged, and doing it in your real name helps even more.

But, that can be a tall order for some people. You don't have to publish everything you write. You could totally write 10 crap articles and publish 1 good one.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#72

Post by zedshaw »

jpeterson wrote: post #66
zedshaw wrote: post #63

Try this out: 1. Get the book "Adios Strunk And White". Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice, and tries to make English a proscriptive language rather than dynamic like it is. The Adios book basically breaks you out of the S&W mode of thinking and gets you thinking about different forms a…

Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice Can you give some examples?

I'll leave that to someone more qualified than me, Geoffrey K. Pullum:

http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/2549...

He "is head of linguistics and English language at the University of Edinburgh and co-author (with Rodney Huddleston) of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language".

But, go ahead and write like Strunk if you want to sound like a stiff 1890s dandy.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#73

Post by aprescott »

zedshaw wrote: post #71
aprescott wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. Blog something every day. Doesn't matter what it is but spend at least 30 minutes writing about something. Do you suggest it be a publicly readable "something" that gets blogged, or does it not matter if it's only for yourself, in your view?

I think blogging publicly will get you over the fear of being judged, and doing it in your real name helps even more. But, that can be a tall order for some people. You don't have to publish everything you write. You could totally write 10 crap articles and publish 1 good one.

I think I'd agree with you.

One aspect that I think can sometimes be troubling, is whether it's fine to just have a blog that is a miscellaneous collection of stuff covering a variety of topics, versus a blog that is about X, Y or Z at the outset. I guess this is just "the blogger trap" ( http://www.marco.org/2009/04/05/avoiding-the-blogger-trap ), but I get the impression that a blog for a specific subject would have a better reception, versus "I'm just going to write about whatever" which might have less reliability, in a sense.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#74

Post by verdverm »

verdverm wrote: post #14

The article "The Science of Scientific Writing" (www.unc.edu/~haipeng/teaching/sci.pdf) forever change my writing. It's writing for the unconscious psychology of the reader's expectations. It also has a great list of points to keep in mind while writing. 1. Follow a grammatical subject as soon as possible with its verb. 2. Place in the stress position the "new information" you want the reader to emphasize. 3. Place t…

I also have four modes of writing:

writing from scratch in a tex file

editing in the tex file

reading pdf and making notes in the tex file

reading and making notes to pdf on tablet

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#75

Post by ph0rcyas » 

  Give up pursuing eloquence, unless
  You can speak as you feel! One's very heart
  Must pour it out, with primal powers address
  One's hearers and compel them with an art
  Deeper than words. Clip and compile, and brew
  From the leavings of others your ragout
  Of rhetoric, pump from your embers
  A few poor sparks that nobody remembers!

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#76

Post by brudgers »

Short answer, I usually don't.

Longer answer, the more I write on HN the better my writing probably becomes because I get feedback from "my" audience in the form of comments and votes.

Over the past week, I read And So It Goes, a biography of Kurt Vonnegut. He spent fifteen years as a full time writer before Slaughterhouse Five was published. He had been writing press releases for GE before that. He had written for his campus newspaper while in college. He had worked for news bureau. It didn't come overnight.

I don't know much about writing well, but writing better is hard work. I suspect that the 10,000 hour rule applies. When reading PG's latest essay, keep in mind that he has been a published author for nearly twenty years.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#77

Post by SatvikBeri »

firebones wrote: post #62
austingunter wrote: post #38

As a person whose core skillset is writing, not programming, I feel more qualified to comment on this particular HN thread than most others which I prefer to demure on. I love the question about how to write well. It's the craft I've dedicated my life to, and I'm grateful to see a group of really smart people investing time in the skill. It validates the effort I've poured into becoming the writer I am today. Particu…

You temporarily lost me at the first line with "...prefer to demure on". (Goes to dictionary, discovers that you may have meant the slightly more coherent "demur on" which means "take exception to" or "hesitate, delay" rather than "demure on" which isn't grammatically correct as far as I can tell, since demure isn't an intransitive verb.) Good points otherwise.

I love how all these replies are proving OP's points about HNers being extremely detail-oriented.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#78

Post by teeja »

A couple of non-fiction ideas I recall from my (very enjoyable) freshman writing class. Consider as rules-of-thumb.

* Write about what you enjoy writing about. If you're bored it'll probably rub off on readers.

* Begin with a summary of where you're going. (Here's where your hooks go.) This is where you remind yourself what you aim to say ... and, coincidentally, your readers.

* Begin each paragraph with a topic sentence. Readers can then scan for interests. We've all got too much to read.

* Memorize Strunk and White. Clear, concise, to the point. Cut out the fat and cut to the chase.

* Notice which writers capture your attention and leave you glad you read them. Learn by tearing apart how they did it. Notice which writers are gasbags ... and tear apart what they're doing wrong.

* When you're done, stop.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#79

Post by QuantumGood »

An argument must be coherent to the writer too! That often means getting clear on what your most compelling point is.

So it's worth knowing about this phenomenon:

Typically, once a writer warms to their topic, they make their most compelling point. You need to find that point and move it to the beginning of your writing, usually the headline.

For newer writers, it often occurs somewhere around the third paragraph. (Some writing coaches will simply have you delete everything you wrote before that, and open with it.)

For more emotional writers, or folks who are worked up about their topic, it often occurs very near the end.

For experienced writers failing to put their main point in the headline it's in the first sentence or paragraph.

Some writers get used to this phenomenon, write freely, and then simply remove most of what they've written once they realize they're onto their most compelling point.

Read a lot of blog posts, and you'll be amazed how many writers make this oversight, usually consistently in the same way. Learn your own pattern, and you'll learn to find your most compelling point.

Re: Ask HN: How do you write great sentences, paragraphs, or articles?

#80

Post by nostradamnit »

zedshaw wrote: post #63

Try this out: 1. Get the book "Adios Strunk And White". Strunk And White is a horrible book to learn how to actually write English well. It's full of contradictions, has some bad grammar in it, doesn't follow its own advice, and tries to make English a proscriptive language rather than dynamic like it is. The Adios book basically breaks you out of the S&W mode of thinking and gets you thinking about different forms a…

11. Write drunk; edit sober. - Ernest Hemingway
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