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

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

#161

Post by shiandow »

Kon5ole wrote: post #108

This used to be true because most published books were well written. I don't think that's true anymore. Too much noise and too little signal so to speak. I feel a growing trend where books read like the author's main inspiration is TV shows, down to villains surprising the main character by jumping out from "behind the camera" and dialogue that reads like the book has no ability to convey thoughts and emotions except…

A sense of which writing is better is the very thing that reading lots of books helps you discover.

And I don't think only reading "quality" literature is necessary, you just need to not mindlessly read the same thing over and over again.

I've found my enjoyment of all media improved massively when I stopped trying to find what made it bad and started to look for what made it good.

Though some techniques start to feel cheap, like how fast food makes everything palatable by being crunchy salt and sweet.

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

#163

Post by [deleted] »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #124
Guestmodinfo wrote: post #68

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…

John Updike. Better than average prose in all of his books, but his debut The Poorhouse Fair is outstanding. It may be too much for modern readers - not many explosions or super heroics - but even if you only get a chapter in, it shows what can be done with English. Moby Dick is unexpectedly stylish. You'd think a story about a whale would be more genre-ish, but the writing is very fun. Then there are heavy hitters a…

[deleted]

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

#164

Post by BoingBoomTschak »

vintagedave wrote: post #91
BoingBoomTschak wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read some mature Discworld content ( Guards! Guards! is the best entry point, I'd say), it's an easy read too. Pratchett's skill with English would make even a tax report smooth and riveting. No need to always flex with some highbrow stuff to find a masterful style.

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…

Well, I think the wisdom is too neatly packaged (basically: Vetinari speaks, so listen you pillock) and his simplistic views often hamfisted by shaping the world to make them sound Right^tm to be "highbrow" per se, but still, it's not for the idiot either.

> He writes sentences around how they're, eh, delivered? Can't think of a better word. And the timing of his words make the jokes.

You put the words in my mouth, very accurate way of describing his style!

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

#165

Post by randcraw »

estetlinus wrote: post #81

I guess what you mean to say is ”read as much BOOKS as you can”. God knows I am reading all day long, but it’s usually news papers, blogs, weapons grade sloptonium from a colleague, etc.

I think reading short stories is a great way to develop both writing and storytelling skills. A SS compresses the storyline and character development into a more palatable and succinct morsel than can a full-sized book. And the brevity of SSs should make them more digestible.

Classic literature was written in an era when readers had more patience and fewer distractions than today. But classic short stories should offer the best of those, IMO, better-written times: more thoughtful exposition in fewer words.

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

#166

Post by throwa356262 »

fugaziboutit wrote: post #52
throwa356262 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you think about it, humans have never been reading as much as we do right now thanks to Internet and digitalisation. Yet the quality has gone down when you compare it to, say, 1600's greatest works.

This is attributable to survivorship bias and the democratisation of information. We aren't exposed to the 99% worst books, plays, pamphlets, and sermons of the 17th century, but we experience the dull ramblings of our fellow 21st-century citizens daily and through many delivery channels.

That is correct, but if we compare the top 10 literally work of the last 20 years to the same period 500 years ago... Do you think the quality has improved?

Do you think many people will read Stephen King in 500 years?

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

#167

Post by codingdave »

YuechenLi wrote: post #20

A lot of time I'm not very confident in what I wrote because I have a tendency to ramble and not get to the point quickly. Reading helps, but it's more about style, doesn't help me express myself more eloquently at all. Another thing is that I find myself using AI-isms in daily conversations more and more the more I use them to help me code. "Load-baaring" and "not X but Y" are phrases that I actively have to catch m…

Rambling is often an effective writing technique. Go ahead, ramble... then go back later, figure out where in the writing you stopped rambling and actually hit your stride, and delete all the rambling that came before that point.

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

#168

Post by alexpotato »

I started a podcast recently and two things are VERY in line with this post:

1. If you listen to tons of podcasts, you slowly internalize what is a good vs bad interview. e.g. you learn to automatically ask leading questions, direct the guest in an arc (if that's what you want to do etc). One of my guests was a professional sports journalist and he mentioned "How did you learn to interview people so well??"

2. I asked some more experienced podcasters what gear I needed, what format to use etc and they ALL said: "Just go start doing it! You will very quickly learn what works and doesn't and then just iterate from there."

Given that this was also an article about writing: a few years ago I was inspired by Twitter user @visakanv to start writing Twitter threads. I'm up to 200+ [1] which surprises me as much as anyone. Similar to the above, if you read a lot of other people's work and then start writing your own, you quickly develop a style. Having a style and people respond to it is fun and then you get excited about writing more and it takes on it's own momentum.

0 - https://alexpotato.com/podcast/

1 - https://x.com/alexpotato/status/2012723178577985948?s=20

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

#169

Post by mega_dean »

Guestmodinfo wrote: post #68
vintagedave wrote: post #63

> 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…

I really liked "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera because of the style of writing and not because of the story. The author goes on a lot of thought-provoking philosophical tangents. Here's an example from the very beginning of the book:

But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.

What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

Parmenides posed this very question in the sixth century before Christ. He saw the world divided into pairs of opposites: light/darkness, fineness/coarseness, warmth/cold, being/non-being. One half of the opposition he called positive (light, fineness, warmth, being), the other negative. We might find this division into positive and negative poles childishly simple except for one difficulty: which one is positive, weight or lightness?

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

#170

Post by codingdave »

antirez wrote: post #140

This is simply not true, even if it is commonly repeated among the folks that usually don't really write. Like how reading every source code that comes handy will not turn yourself into a great programmer, to be a good writer you need to: 1. Read selected books, and re-read good books more often then reading new stuff, to understand why they are good. 2. Read, from time to time, some bad book, and understand why it i…

So you feel that reading being necessary to write well is not true, yet the first 2 points of advice include directions to read, to re-read, to understand what you read, and then to read more. And in your last point, to write while remembering what you read.

Are you sure you actually disagree with the article?

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