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Write like you talk

paulgraham.com

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Re: Write like you talk

#181

Post by visakanv »

The best part of PG's advice is actually this:

> "After writing the first draft, try explaining to a friend what you just wrote. Then replace the draft with what you said to your friend."

This is the single best thing you can do to improve your communication skills, whether it be in writing or speaking. You're forced, out of courtesy and respect for your friend, to find the heart of the matter and you make it accessible.

(I'm currently in the middle of a 1,000,000 words stream-of-consciousness writing project, where I write exactly whatever's coming to my mind with as little editing as possible. I'm approaching 500,000 words now. It's pretty enlightening.)

Re: Write like you talk

#182

Post by visakanv »

vonnik wrote: post #82

The PG headline is really the first half of a larger sentence: Write like you talk, and try to talk in concise, plain language. If you have trouble doing this, the Hemingway App might help. http://www.hemingwayapp.com/ There are a lot of problems with the way people write. Some writers are too writerly, some are trapped in journalese or legalese, most are too vague. But better than any -ese is being able to communica…

> Some writers are too writerly, some are trapped in journalese or legalese, most are too vague. But better than any -ese is being able to communicate complex ideas to intelligent outsiders in a shared, common language.

Agred. And this is something that is taught, rather than in-born. Most people pick up their writing skills in school, where big words and long sentences can give you better marks than a simple, heartfelt explanation.

It takes a long time and a lot of practice to shake this off.

Re: Write like you talk

#183

Post by visakanv »

ebt wrote: post #142

This whole idea and article leave me speechless (sic). Talking and writing are two different mediums. Never heard of Marshall MacLuhan? I curse a lot, at home, where I live alone. As soon as I step out the door I talk differently to my neighbors. I also adopt a different voice when I visit my family in another state. And then another when talking to co-workers. So which of those should I write in? Try putting "fuckin…

Bye! All the best.

Re: Write like you talk

#184

Post by charlesism »

bshimmin wrote: post #123
aWidebrant wrote: post #54

"Write like you talk" is bad advice twice: It encourages rambling, which - unlike in a conversation - the reader has no means to interrupt, and it offers no clear rules to follow while writing. Orwell's six[1] are, in my experience, much more useful: (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is p…

Orwell wrote important and influential books but his actual writing was quite pedestrian - much more like a good journalist than a great literary stylist. Thackeray, on the other hand, broke all of those rules (except perhaps the last) in almost every sentence in "Vanity Fair", and yet I know which I find the more pleasurable to read. I've also never put much stock in this notion of the evils of the passive voice - w…

I'm a big fan of Orwell, and yes he "wrote like a good journalist," since he was a journalist. Some people would say the world's best :) Gotta say, I haven't heard a whole lot of people championing the passive voice! If you have an idea to communicate, it strikes me as strange that you would want to leave out information - which is my biggest problem with the passive voice. "Is rumored to be" is a shifty way a writer can avoid telling you who started the rumor. I find it depressing to read all the comments on this post. I hoped there would be more intellectual seriousness on HN, and I have big doubts about how mature a person can be if they haven't gotten over the desire to write like a grown-up, instead of actually conveying a point in a simple way. I'm not a Paul Graham fanboy, but he couldn't be more right in this case.

Re: Write like you talk

#185

Post by jacalata »

archildress wrote: post #79

Seth Godin said something really similar, and I've drawn on it during periods of writer's block many times: >No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down. Why then, is writer's block endemic? The reason we don't get talker's block is…

No one that ever went into marketing, maybe.

Re: Write like you talk

#186

Post by qohen »

gopowerranger wrote: post #127
johnchristopher wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN really jumps the shark best when it swaps definition of words to support whatever it wants to support. Hemingway's writing style was far from being convoluted.

Who said Hemingway was convoluted? Certainly not me.

What he means is, you said this:

Don't use abbreviations, long words we may not know, pretending to be Hemingway.

But Hemingway is the poster-boy for a style that is the exact opposite [0]:

Basically, his style is simple, direct, and unadorned, probably as a result of his early newspaper training. He avoids the adjective whenever possible, but because he is a master at transmitting emotion without the flowery prose of his Victorian novelist predecessors, the effect is far more telling.

[0] http://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/f/for-whom-the-bell-to...

Re: Write like you talk

#187

Post by ckaygusu »

Generalizing: "Representation of ideas done in any form should be done in a way that impairs as little cognitive load as possible on the reader".

This principle goes in programming, as well as in writing. But not all writing is done to transmit ideas, there is also aesthetic side of it.

Re: Write like you talk

#188

Post by charlesism »

aWidebrant wrote: post #54

"Write like you talk" is bad advice twice: It encourages rambling, which - unlike in a conversation - the reader has no means to interrupt, and it offers no clear rules to follow while writing. Orwell's six[1] are, in my experience, much more useful: (i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. (ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do. (iii) If it is p…

You're being too literal. "Write uh exactly um exactly like heh you talk" is terrible advice, but nobody would ever recommend that seriously. "Write like you talk" is excellent advice, and roughly the same thing that Orwell preached in his essays on language.

Re: Write like you talk

#189

Post by qohen »

qohen wrote: post #186
gopowerranger wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said Hemingway was convoluted? Certainly not me.

What he means is, you said this: Don't use abbreviations, long words we may not know, pretending to be Hemingway. But Hemingway is the poster-boy for a style that is the exact opposite [0]: Basically, his style is simple, direct, and unadorned, probably as a result of his early newspaper training. He avoids the adjective whenever possible, but because he is a master at transmitting emotion without the flowery prose o…

By the way, for anyone who's interested, Hemingway was not only a syntactic minimalist (i.e. using simple language) but also a semantic minimalist -- he chose to leave things out of his stories, which he likened to icebergs, where only the top is visible, but whose bulk can be inferred if the writer has done his job properly -- this is his so-called "Iceberg Theory" of writing [0]:

In 1923, Hemingway conceived of the idea of a new theory of writing after finishing his short story "Out of Season". In A Moveable Feast, his posthumously published memoirs about his years as a young writer in Paris, he explains: "I omitted the real end [of "Out of Season"] which was that the old man hanged himself. This was omitted on my new theory that you could omit anything ... and the omitted part would strengthen the story." In chapter sixteen of Death in the Afternoon he compares his theory about writing to an iceberg.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceberg_Theory#Definition

Re: Write like you talk

#190

Post by charlesism »

stupidcar wrote: post #38

If you've ever read a verbatim transcript of an interview or conversation, you'll know that actual speech is anything but clear. When talking off the cuff, even the most clear minded people tend to ramble, um and ahh, double back, talk across each other, and jump between points and subjects. When listening to someone in person, our brains seem to edit what they say on the fly to make it comprehendible, focusing on th…

Somehow you managed to miss the point entirely. The point is not "use bad grammar, slang, and swear words." It's just "don't put on airs!" That's it! Not putting on airs means: don't use jargon if the meaning of your sentence doesn't call for it, and don't use awkward turns of phrase to make yourself sound smarter. That's easier said than done, but it goes a long way toward making your writing easy to understand.
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