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How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Write Usefully

#171

Post by TimPC »

injb wrote: post #125
osdiab wrote: post #12

While the internet is full of garbage writing, I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act. Like learning a language, if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn. And separately,…

" if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn" If you're afraid to say your idea because you know (or suspect) that it's wrong, then you have already learned the hardest part of the lesson. Of course, it still remains to find out what the right idea is, but voicing one that you know to be wrong is hardly going to help with that.

Robert Morris's solution is wrong for most of us about casual conversation because it's valuable to be wrong sometimes. But in terms of deciding which essays you publish it seems quite valuable. Out of all the media I produce from conversation, to video, to casual writing, to essays, essays are the ones I least want to be wrong in. Also, the process of refining an idea is a valid one. Barring topics on which you are an ideologue, seldom are you so wrong about an idea that you think it's perfectly correct and nothing bothers you or makes you question it through many edits.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#172

Post by TimPC »

xvector wrote: post #2

My English teachers rewarded flowery, verbose writing. Over time I found this unwieldy and now I find myself re-reading my sentences to see what I can delete. It's satisfying, like deleting unused code in a messy codebase. I envy writers who manage to densely pack information in sentences that are beautiful to read.

I experienced this too. I'm trying my best to unlearn it because I'm writing a novel. I'm not so adept with flowery prose as to write literary fiction, so I want to have more practical sentences that have better pacing.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#173

Post by philwelch »

darkerside wrote: post #71
anon4242 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Within a group, it might send the conversation off in a delightfully unanticipated direction. Or a not so delightfully unanticipated direction. Too many times I've realized too late that I was in a "hostile" group, so I say something stupid thinking I'm among friends and it's like switching a button on the group mood.

Then you've discovered something extremely valuable about that group

Eh, I think it depends. I wouldn’t go out of my way to socialize with people who are uptight and easily offended or upset by dumb shit that I might say in a casual social setting, but most of us get roped into those situations from time to time, and being able to manage them without causing offense is worthwhile, even if you can only do that by being quiet.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#174

Post by atomack »

randcraw wrote: post #102
keiferski wrote: post #13

As a counterpoint, I'd argue that the "mathematical" approach to good writing is inherently flawed. That is, trying to arrive at the formula for the "best" essay via dialectic (argument) is to miss the forest for the trees. Writing is an art, not a science. Formal logic was developed to display arguments, so if you are trying to be as precise and mathematical as possible, use that instead. Instead, I'd suggest readin…

> Writing is an art, not a science. Writing fiction may be an art, but writing nonfiction is a craft. And essays are nonfiction. The creator of art seeks somehow to offer fresh insight, often employing some form of novelty, be it technique, medium, context, perspective, etc. Craft, however, isn't about novelty; it's about engineering a clear convincing message effectively, efficiently, and ideally... memorably and wi…

I'm not sure I quite share your view of what art aims to do. Iris Murdoch had a line that tyrants fear art because art forces them to confront the truth.

If one believes, as Murdoch suggests, that art aims to express a truth as clearly as possible then the qualities of good technical writing and good fiction are entirely compatible. I'd suggest the distinction lies more in the extent to which the sensibilities of the author are present in the writing.

For instance, Vonnegut's guidelines on good writing (summarised here: https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/01/14/how-to-write-with-s...) could equally be applied to technical writing as fiction, I think.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#175

Post by friendlybus »

ahsans wrote: post #59

I've always found PG's essays to be incredibly intriguing. I'm working in a startup, and everything he says is just very insightful about running one. I hope that PG shares more about growing a company that's running on an experimental business model. This is one of his other masterpieces. There is a certain art of communicating and he's sharing that with the world for everyone to learn. Not many people share their e…

Masterpeice?

Re: How to Write Usefully

#177

Post by TimPC »

friendlybus wrote: post #163
daxaxelrod wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. In my opinion, great writing has to be within the context of the time. A lot of us speak in a manner similar to how PG writes. You wouldn't consider great writing from 1890 with the same set of rules as you would something written in 2020.

Roald Dahl's work is some of the most delightfully readable and engaging writing out there in my humble opinion and that was written nearly one hundred years ago in the 1930s and 1940s. Good writing is timeless, I may suggest that adding hyperlinks under a new word you introduced inside your essay that requires clicking on and reading a wholly different story to understand the current story you are reading, is a terr…

I think there is plenty of good and great writing that isn't timeless. Especially when it comes to essays, where the nature of what we know and care about changes so dramatically. An essay written to convince a slaver of the moral errors of slavery may seem so obvious to the modern reader as to be condescending, but, effective in it's time period, it was great writing.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#178

Post by mrandish »

jarnagin wrote: post #137
metalliqaz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drop us a link my man.

Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22372005

Good call. That's an excellent example of Paul's idea in action.

In calling that OP's style rude, respondents are really equivocating on the OP's central point. The OP is demonstrating Paul's 'Strength' concept by boldly asserting "all encrypted email is not fit for purpose" in an unequivocal way. The respondents seem to agree in part but disagree at the edges and want the OP to accept qualifiers.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#179

Post by TimPC »

friendlybus wrote: post #170
AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The model of precision and correctness being opposing forces that increase in strength the more you hone in on one is useful for me and something that I had never put into words before.

It simply isn't true though, they are rarely required together. His example of the location of a city could have been replaced with gps co-ordinates in the place of a descriptive phrase. NASA deals with strength and precision together all the time, it's rare that they are both needed on the same task at the same level. The requirements for precision and strength to be shared in an essay is to construct sentences that…

Reading random GPS coordinates in an essay without a map in a has high precision but terrible understanding. While it's highly accurate, it's almost useless to the typical reader who would have difficulty knowing that the GPS coordinate is within Colorado. GPS coordinates are for maps not essays.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#180

Post by soneca »

contingencies wrote: post #160
soneca wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't these quotes about fiction writing? Do you think they apply to essay writing as well? I don't think I got your point with this selection of quotes, if you don't mind explaining.

The article, nominally on 'good (essay format) writing', was an example of #1. We here illustrate #2 wonderfully (a quip on both communicative fallacy and the human condition). #3 is aspirational, but also puts purely functional writing (without art) in its place. #4 concerns perhaps pathfinding as purpose, in creative intellectual work. #5 suggests monodimensionality as a defining quality of poor writers. #6 ties al…

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I think I do understand it now, but I do disagree. I don't think #1 is talking about the same type of writing that the OP, I don't think it applies at all actually. #3 seems to imply that there functional and art are competing types of writing, which I also disagree. They are different things, for different purposes, for different reading experiences, created differently. The same with the general idea of your comment.
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