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Writing and Speaking

paulgraham.com

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Re: Writing and Speaking

#121

Post by shahan »

akg wrote: post #89

In general I agree with the premise that talks are more about conveying a vision, illicit emotion, and are prone to mob reactions. However, I wonder how much of that is changing due to the fact that most talks are now available to view online. Once you can view talks at your own leisure, you can spend more time thinking about the speaker's points (via seeking and pausing) and you are also not susceptible to the react…

> However, I wonder how much of that is changing due to the fact that most talks are now available to view online.

Interesting point. If ideas, arguments, and claims in video and audio can be visualized more effectively, that might change things even more.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#122

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

Speaking is way superior to writing, not the other way around like Paul states. Speaking includes writing.

It conveys emotional information, it adds intonation, gravity, spotlight over the important information.

About not having time to think about what you hear, that is what ipods and iphones are for. The ipod sound player has an icon for "repeat last 30 seconds" for that as much as you want.

I can not believe how much Paul insults those that are better than him on this particular area. I like how Paul writes but it seems that he feels the need to downplay those who he could learn most from.

Psychology teaches us that in order for us to learn from someone else we need fist to admire him. Paul is despising those that are better than him in order to not improve in this area.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#123

Post by drumdance »

mattmanser wrote: post #80
apl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two key passages: > Having good ideas is most of writing well. Disagreed. Written style matters, and whenever it doesn't matter, neither would it matter in spoken form. Your writing style happens to be lean, concise, reduced. But that doesn't just happen -- or are all your essays first drafts? Would they work as well in flowery prose? > (...) it was a revelation to me how much less ideas mattered > in speaking than w…

Why is it 'of course not true'? pg's stance seems the far less controversial one than yours to be honest. I think it is far rarer to see a flashy writer than a flashy speaker. Malcolm Gladwell is the only one that springs to mind. I think it's actually very hard to pull off as a writer. This is precisely because of the 'other channels' you mentioned. It's very easy to spot someone trying to pander in writing, where i…

Tom Robbins. Everyone seems to think he's a genius, but I can't get past the sense that he's a show-off.

OTOH people who like him tend not to like Dave Eggers, and vice versa. I personally love Dave Eggers.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#124

Post by sidman »

I think your right PG but there are some caveats. For one i think to be able to pass it off that ideas are better then speaking (which i do agree with) you need to have some clout behind you and prove your worth and you have surely done that with respect to startups and the tech world. Honestly if anyone else did the talk you did (new ideas) and delivered it the way you did (lots of um's) i'm sure the crowed would have passed it of as a lunatic with crazy ideas who cant even speak. I sometimes empathize and if it was me that was there I would classify myself as a raving lunatic who cant speak.

I think this is again part of the subset of ideas that looking good and looking smart is actually better then being smart cause perception is everything. I personally have always look at whats inside and what the actual words mean, even when im listening to a song i listen to the words and if they effect me rather then the sexiness of the singer (like i know most of my friends do)

I remember watching a movie called puncture with chris odonnel(sp?) where he was a lawyer promoting safe needles that could save front line health workers from getting accidentally stuck and the inventor of the needle didn't know how to present infront of the investors. As a result he got nothing even though he had a great product with great potential. (the movie was based on a true story)

So i do agree with you however i think for most of us without much clout still trying to prove ourselves in the world learning to speak well is just as important as learning to write and have ideas (i hate speaking publicly but im trying). If we cant present ourselves to investors or to customers well (or intelligently) we wont even get into the door :)

Re: Writing and Speaking

#125

Post by mbh »

I am sorry but OP is missing the point here. A good speaker knows his audience and hence prepares his talk accordingly. If it is techies, he should put for technical content which stimulates their brain. If it is children of the 3rd grade, he should know to keep it light and crack jokes or tell stories. A good speaker will change his speech depending on how dumb or intelligent the audience is. Thats his trait. Now if he has a large and varied audience, this task gets a lot harder, but then again there is a trend in the audience.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#128

Post by jeffdavis »

I think a lot of the value of a talk is that it is constrained. It takes much less time to read than to hear the same words, so talks must be delivered with fewer words.

Constraints are paradoxical in a way. Most (all?) forms of art are subject to constraints, and in some ways are defined by them. That could be a musical structure, or a medium. After all, wouldn't origami be easier with scissors and glue? For that matter, maybe you could just use a 3D printer, and it would look more realistic. But that takes away the art.

So what does the constraint of a talk -- fewer words -- have to offer? I think it changes the message to focus more on convincing the audience to care about the topic, and less about the details. In writing, you have to account for many of the objections someone might raise without being too boring. When giving a talk, you can just convince the audience to care, and then they will request clarifications along the way.

Some of those clarifications are during the talk and can be settled immediately. Some are during the "hall track" of a conference, or in follow-up blog posts. After a presidential speech, a lot of the clarifications are handled by the press secretary.

So, a talk is a different structure of information flow, and I don't think it's inferior in that regard to writing.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#129

Post by antirez »

It's hardly so black and white, writing or speaking. For instance tweets are in many ways more similar to talking than writing, it's not something you think a lot about, but more like a long conversation where it is important to keep people interested while actually providing some information.

Re: Writing and Speaking

#130

Post by bambax »

pg wrote: post #41
o1iver wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well then he should have said that and not tried to argue that people who can speak cannot think!

Can you tell me the sentence where I claimed that?

> Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction.

You didn't say "trying to be a good speaker pushes you in the opposite direction of having good ideas"; you said "being", which implies some kind of essence / gift. You are effectively saying, in this sentence, that the gift of speak hinders one's ability to produce good ideas.

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