How do you get to write so well in HN?

There's a fallacy here, and interestingly it's also at play on facebook.

You know when you look through your feed on facebook, and every single day you see that at least one of your friends has done something amazing, commendable or just interesting? That makes you feel that you aren't doing anything with your life, and that all your friends seem to be living more interesting and happier lives.

But stop and think for a moment. Approach it from the other side. If you have 365 friends, and you post one interesting post a year you are faring as well as the average of your friends. It just seems that everyone is doing more interesting things than you because you only notice the interesting things your friends post. You only see the highlights. Nobody posts a "today was boring - I did absolutely nothing" status.

HN is the same. Think a bit about it.

If 10.000 people see a comment thread then statistically someone will be knowledgeable about the subject, whether its the French Revolution or the finer nuances of L2 caching. The most knowledgeable ones will feel they have something to contribute and write a comment. The vast majority won't. On top of that the top comment is (supposedly) the most well-written, eloquent and knowledgeable, and can thus be argued to be the best 10.000 people can come up with.

If I were to start commenting on threads about L2 caches I would make an absolute fool of myself, and prove to everyone that I have no clue what I'm talking about. So I don't.

Great question. I think it's on more people's minds than you think. I have friends that have brought this feeling up with me. HN brings a lot of great minds together, including your own. It can create feelings of inadequacy in many readers, but it shouldn't. Everyone is always growing. You can write well too.

As with any skill, there are specific quick hacks you can apply to get a lot of gain really fast, and there are well-worn paths that you should travel to maximize gains and minimize time spent. Regardless, the best way to learn any skill is through sheer practice.

My methodology for posting comments on HN or any social news site is based on my values. I value production over consumption, and so to curb my consumption and increase my production I created a rule for myself: If I read a post on social media(HN, reddit, etc), I have to leave a comment on it. No ifs ands or buts. I almost never actually want to comment, but by the time I'm done commenting I'm always glad I did.

This is amazing for becoming a better writer and researcher, and forces you to dive into things that you normally would only attain a surface-level understanding of.

Every time I decide to go to a social media site, I have to be very conscious of the titles I click on to read. I understand that the moment I begin reading an article, I am committed to adding something of value to the discussion. Sometimes I wind up clicking on an article that is way out of my domain-knowledge, and so I have to read WAY more about it before I can even try to add to the discussion. I end up learning far more and also upping my ability to explain and present myself in situations where I'm uncomfortable with the domain.

So while I encourage you to practice your writing, I also encourage you to limit your consumption, strongly link your consumption with your practice, and most importantly, step out of your domain knowledge and never be afraid to learn something new.

>The level of discourse on HN is step beyond any other site I frequent.

I agree. HN has recently (in the past 6 months) re-gained a lot of the high-level discourse that drew me in I first started lurking 4-5 years ago.

Well-done, dang et al.! Not that it was in a hole, but you've succeeded in bringing the site's discourse up a level.

I actually wrote an article on the topic, funnily enough...

http://swombat.com/2010/12/6/get-better-at-writing

I'm going to give some advice that I think is essential to improving your writing, but I haven't yet seen in the comments here:

Work with an editor.

Almost every great writer you can think of in recent history has had a good editor, at the beginning of a career, or in many cases throughout their entire career.

If you were a professional writer, you'd have a professional editor. Since it sounds like you're not, you'll need to find your editor some other way. Here are some ideas.

- Take a writing class, ideally in person. Your editors will be the class instructor, and depending on the class structure, your fellow students. One advantage of this approach is that you are given assignments to write about.

- Find a writing tutor. This will require either you or your tutor to invent assignments to review and work on. One possible way to do this would be to review your comments on HN, and read the rest of the comments in that thread. Work with your tutor to find the comments you think are better, and think about why that is, and how you could improve your own writing.

- Find a writing club or group or workshop. These are typically groups of people who get together informally on a regular basis to review and edit each others' writing. They are often focused on specific formats--a group of poets, for example, or a people who enjoy writing short stories.