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To become a better writer, read as much as you can

nappertime.com

171–180 of 280 posts

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#171

I have an even better golden rule: to become a better writer, actually write as much as you can. A real example. I read A TON, since I was a kid (I'm close to 50 years old now). I used to write a lot. I even wrote two semi-decent novels, among other things. I haven't written much in the last 10-12 years. Now I want to start a little side project, in which I will write a letter to about one hundred people, print it an…

I agree, learning by doing. Like cook food to get better, do not just read recipes.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - he's popular for a reason, not pop, but that he deserves popularity. I wonder about being highbrow... in that yes you're right, that's how he's viewed, and he's well-known and it's fantasy and it's comedic and therefore cannot be highbrow (awful how we judge these things) but he has some very insightful ideas or ethics he wants to communicate. If, to me, lowbrow vs highbrow is about depth or insight, or long-la…

His stories are beautiful. The language is very ordinary. (Not a criticism.) I would absolutely call him a landmark writer, but I wouldn't call him lit fic in the publishing sense.

A bit too reductive, methinks. Even if you're only speaking in the literature professor sense, the vocabulary and sentence structures are a bit more varied and exercised than in a "very ordinary" style, words I'd reserve for mainstream best-sellers like Harry Potter and other YA fodder.

I'll be honest: my (for now quite small) experience with the /lit/ canon has been very hit-or-miss for now. It feels like Literature with a capital L is something only ivory tower academics and New-Yorker or Parisian critics have the right to stick to works and they decided that comedy cannot be part of it. They're also very quick to ignore small and larger crossings into purple prose territory when it pleases them.

Similar in a sense to the music world, where the crowd that decides what is Serious Work^tm is enshrining contemporary classical, post-modernism and performance art instead of sifting through the (admittedly lackluster) popular music world that has produced genuine pearls often rivaling, sometimes eclipsing their dominion.

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End of rant, sincerly sorry.

tl;dr: yes, Pratchett isn't literature in any sense of the word (nobody claimed so, anyway) but your scale may be a bit too logarithmic, putting him and much worse stuff in the same basket.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#173
I see so many solo indie game developers who don't really play games and almost all of them fail to make their game actually fun. I'm not at all surprised to learn the same concept applies to writing.

I think the most intuitive case might be music. We would all be skeptical if someone said they were going to compose a soundtrack but hadn't really listened to many soundtracks or much music at all.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The point about LLMs makes even less sense than drawing conclusions from "in mice" studies Nah I disagree. Humans learn via patterns so do LLMs. They are not human, they don't actually possess intellect - but there are some isomorphisms that can do cleanly translate. I think this one does. Also, if in mice studies didn't work - we wouldn't use mice for studies - so your example kinda proves my point.

Studies in mice aren't used to confirm something relevant for humans, they're exploratory. "Learn via patterns" is hopelessly vague. Archival algorithms learn via patterns too.

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Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#176
Reading this article is like a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, I have to work with generative AI on daily basis and I have this terrible feeling of losing my ability to read and write - and think.

The claude generated text has something that I cannot clearly pin-point, that my brain detects somehow and immediately makes me feel bored. I can't keep up with the reading of a long ai generated answer ("reasoning") - it really hurts.

The same goes for writing - I always wanted to write both text and code.

The whole experience of getting into "the flow" was rewarding - endless nights (when I was younger) spent in that state, to reach something, learn something.

Now instead, the act of delegating thinking, writing, coding, and reading mainly AI generated text, makes me feel disoriented and more and more bored.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#177
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you publish, and I hope you tell that story. And I hope people read it. There's a sobering article recently published in The Atlantic[1][2] about the end of reading and how we're in a postliterate age. We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus that the original author talks about be…

> We're reading more words than ever, but instead of coming from books, they're coming from digital media. We're losing that same muscle for long-form reading and deep focus (...) Yes, true, but that's also very much a thing you can do something about by, well: reading books. It's a technique we must preserve for the good of our culture, but, also, in a society full of people who have forgotten how to, an individual…

That offers no solution to the masses, only the individual. The former its a much more difficult and demanding discussion.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#178
post #145

> Why be a writer if you don’t love reading? Why devote your intellectual and emotional energy to creating a book, when it’s a form you’re not invested in? Why write, when you aren’t steeped in wonder of storytelling? This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. I recently finished a novel (now shopping around for agents, wh…

I was quite fortunate to have an AP English teacher my senior year of high school that understood this advice, and expounded on it often. I recall that he boiled it down to one simple line: Garbage in, garbage out. What he meant by that was that it's not enough to simply read. You have to read high quality literature if you want to become a writer. You can't expect to read nothing but news, comic books, National Lamp…

Do you think the masses have a taste for anything but 'junk food' writing at this point?

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#179

> Why be a writer if you don’t love reading? Why devote your intellectual and emotional energy to creating a book, when it’s a form you’re not invested in? Why write, when you aren’t steeped in wonder of storytelling? This is the key point, I think. I've seen the same as the author: people who want to be writers but rarely read books. And I don't get it. I recently finished a novel (now shopping around for agents, wh…

Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point. I'm tired of hearing about the usual greats and also booker prize ones because they have good characters and good story content or shocking emotionally but are quite bland on the language front because they assume their readers have grade 5 level capacity so the sentences a…

How far are you willing to go? If you want a novel that really emphasizes language over plot and character, read Ulysses.

Re: To become a better writer, read as much as you can

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please please suggest me some books where language and style of speaking sentences takes the crown rather than the story being the selling point. I'm tired of hearing about the usual greats and also booker prize ones because they have good characters and good story content or shocking emotionally but are quite bland on the language front because they assume their readers have grade 5 level capacity so the sentences a…

Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian especially. His style won't be to everyone's tastes, but you certainly can't describe it as bland.

I second this, CM is an incredible storyteller. Blood Meridian is one of my favorite novels & made me want to write.
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